on terms of entire equality; but the Panama Canal Act of August 24, 1912, provided that no tolls should be levied on the coastwise vessels of the United States.1 The British government protested against this exemption and suggested that the question be submitted to arbitration. The United States claimed that "all nations" meant all nations except the United States, since the remission of tolls was merely a subsidy to our shipping and therefore not a discrimination against foreign shipping.2 Neither was the United States willing to submit the question to arbitration. However, upon the advent of the Democratic administration, President Wilson took the position that a great nation like the United States was hardly justified in quibbling about the interpretation of a clause in order to advance its financial interests, and hence he asked Congress that the tolls-exemption clause be repealed. After a spirited debate, Congress granted his request, carefully stipulating, however, that such action should not be construed as a relinquishment of the right of the United States to discriminate in favor of its vessels by exempting them from the payment of tolls for passage through the canal.3

This act held throughout the Wilson administration. But inasmuch as its repeal was demanded in the Republican platform of 1920 and in President Harding's speech of acceptance, the question was again raised in Congress in 1921. There seems to be little doubt that when the treaty was drawn the phrase "all vessels" was meant to be taken literally, and, considering our general attitude towards nations that hold treaties to be mere "scraps of paper," it would seem both politic and just to maintain the treaty in its spirit rather than to seek profit through the loop-hole of legal technicalities. However, party pledges had to be redeemed, and the Senate, after a heated discussion, finally

passed the tolls-exemption clause. Although not openly recanting his stand as a candidate, the President was apparently not very desirous of having the bill come to him for his signature, particularly at a time when the United States was planning to receive Great Britain and her allies as guests in a conference looking towards disarmamenta meeting whose sole chance of success lay in the implicit confidence of the participants in the inviolability of their pledged agreements. The bill was therefore sent to the House, where, as a former President once remarked, it was "relegated to innocuous desuetude," and without any noticeable grief on the part of its friends.

It would not be proper to conclude this chapter without a word concerning the canal itself. As an engineering feat it stands unparalleled-in the words of a former British ambassador, Lord Bryce, "it is the greatest liberty man has ever taken with nature." Culebra Cut, a nine-mile channel, nowhere less than 300 feet in width and averaging 120 feet in depth, was hewn through a mountain. This great ditch, which necessitated the excavation of more than 100,000,000 cubic yards of material, or about twenty-five times as much as was used in the largest of the Egyptian pyramids, was perhaps the greatest feat. Yet the Gatun Dam, a mile and a half long, half a mile wide at its base, and containing more than 20,000,000 cubic yards of material, or more than five times as much as is found in the Cheops pyramid, ranks well with it. The problem of obtaining sufficient labor, the question of health, and the task of stamping out yellow fever and malaria were difficulties almost commensurate with the engineering problems. Work on the canal was started in 1904 and completed within a decade, at a cost of $375,000,000. With the fortifications added, the total cost of construction has been about $400,000,000, and the cost of maintenance is approximately four millions annually. From the beginning, the canal has demonstrated 1 Cong. Rec., Vol. LXI, No. 125, p. 6893 f.

its necessity, and during the first thirteen months of its operation, in spite of the European war, six and one half million tons of merchandise were carried through it. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1920, 2,478 commercial vessels, carrying almost nine and one half million tons of cargo, went through the waterway, and in addition 267 government vessels were towed through. The total revenues for this period were $8,900,000 and the total expenses $6,550,000; but there was no profit in a commercial sense, because interest charges and depreciation were not counted.1 But a route which cuts off 7,873 miles in traveling by water from New York to San Francisco, and 8,868 miles between New Orleans and San Francisco, which brings the United States 3,000 miles nearer the Chilean nitrate fields, and the western grain markets of the United States 5,000 miles nearer to Europe, has a value to humanity that can never be measured in dollars and cents alone.

1 Annual Report of the Governor of the Panama Canal (1920), p. 2.

SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS

P. Bunau-Varilla, Panama, Creation, Destruction, and Resurrection (N. Y., 1914).

J. C. Freehof, America and the Canal Title (N. Y., 1916).

J. H. Latané, The United States and Latin America (N. Y., 1920), pp. 183-192.

C. Lloyd Jones, Caribbean Interests of the United States (N. Y., 196), Chap. XI.

Norman Thomson, Colombia and the United States (Lond., 1914).

P. J. Eder, Colombia (Lond., 1913).

H. Arias, The Panama Canal (Lond., 1911).

L. Graham, "Canal Diplomacy," North Amer. Rev., Vol. 197, p. 31 (Jan., 1913).

Diplomatic History of the Panama Canal, Sen. Doc. No. 474, 63d Cong., 2nd sess.

The Story of Panama, hearings on the Rainey resolution (Wash., 1913). M. Poindexter, "Our Rights in Panama," Forum, Vol. 65, p. 129 (Feb. 1921).

J. Cox, "Colombian Treaty," Jour. of Int. Relations, Vol. II, p. 549 (April, 1921).

I. E. Bennett, History of the Panama Canal (Wash., 1915).

J. F. Fraser, Panama and What It Means (N. Y., 1913).

J. B. Bishop, The Panama Gateway (N. Y., 1913).

F. J. Haskin, The Panama Canal (N. Y., 1914).

CHAPTER V

MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES

one were to form one's impressions of Mexico solely from the reports of some of the numerous organizations and committees in the United States engaged in investigating Mexican affairs, one might well believe that Mexico, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts-first and most important, the foreign oil interests; second and largest, the country given over to bandits and outrages; third and of little consequence, the Mexican government. But Mexico is a land that does not disclose itself to the casual observer. Where the representative of big business would see nothing but rich deposits of mineral and oil, the archæologist would discover prehistoric temples, monoliths, painted caves, and picture-writing, all giving evidence of a marvelous prehistoric civilization. Where the politician would find nothing but revolution and anarchy, the historian would note the traces of the Toltecs, the great civilized race that came and went before Columbus, and the Aztecs, who, under the glorious rule of the Montezumas, made Mexico City the Venice of America. Mexico is indeed, as a recent writer has described it, a land of contrasts: "It is a land of mystery and a land of commonplace dirt and existence. Areas of fabulously rich soil contrast with arid desert regions. On the one hand, romance, adventure, chivalry, sacrifice, lofty ideals; on the other, oppression, cruelty, sordid ambition, pestilence. Great wealth confronts the direst poverty. The lights are always strong, the shadows always dark." 1 There are no tales in the world's history more 1E. D. Trowbridge, Mexico To-day and To-morrow (N. Y., 1919), p. 1.