The gigantic work of the union of the oceans begun for the glory and utility of mankind by a French company is going to reach its apotheosis, thanks to the generous efforts of the people of the United States.

Will the story of its transmission from the French owners to the Government of America be written by taking as its base an unfaithful document dictated by a sordid interest?

If this document were true there would be a deep veil of shame on the memories of great American citizens, which ought to be on the contrary worshipped as those of men inspired by the most lofty ideals and served by a powerful intelligence, as those of men who have filled one of the noble pages of the history of their country.

If this document were true it would show the legislative power of the United States to be at the disposal of mercenary influences in questions of the highest gravity, and not, as it is, inspired by the sincere desire of serving the great interests of the Nation to the best of its ability.

This question is infinitely above any division of parties; it concerns the honor of the United States one might say the honor of all free nations having representative governments.

I have thought that this monument of deceit should not be left in the congressional documentation without placing at its side another document demonstrating its untruthfulness, and thereby vindicating the honor of those who have been the real forces which have determined the adoption of the Panama route by the United States. The United States have not to blush of the history of the adoption of the Panama Canal, any more than France has to blush of the history of its conception and creation, if in both cases the history is written disinterestedly, sincerely, and faithfully.

I know what terrible disorders fictitious stories about Panama have created in France because the necessary jet of light has not been thrown on their mendacity.

I have thought it to be my duty to prevent the dissemination of the offensive fictions inserted in the so-called Story of Panama presented before a committee of Congress, and I have prepared for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives a statement on behalf of historical truth. You will find it inclosed.

I allow myself, Mr. Speaker, to address it to this committee, through you as the head of the House of Representatives, with the respectful request, if the committee deems it justified, to insert it next to the Story of Panama in order to redress its misleading and deceitful errors.

Very respectfully,

P. BUNAU-VARILLA.

In writing this statement I attach to it the same moral authority and legal responsibility as if it were made under oath.

The so-called Story of Panama as told in the hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives by Mr. Henry H. Hall is a fiction. This fiction is composed of true facts and documents mixed with fabricated assertions and fanciful documents. It does not differ from similar productions so often read in the public press and due to imaginative journalism.

My purpose is to demonstrate this statement by documentary evidence. I think it is my duty to do it, because said fiction has gained access to congressional documentation and should not be left there unexposed.

A STANDARD SAMPLE OF MR. HALL'S FABRICATED ASSERTIONS.

Before going seriatim into the study of the elements of that imaginary story I may be allowed to exhibit a standard example of the methods employe i for fabricating it. I am selecting this sample because it is the only one of Mr. Hall's statements which has been widely reported by the press.

Mr. Hall (pp. 414-415) first reproduces a cablegram of the Secretary of State, Mr. Hay, to the American consul in Panama. It reads:

AMERICAN CONSUL GENERAL,

Panama:

WASHINGTON, November 5, 1903.

I send for your information and guidance in the execution of the instructions cabled to you to-day the text of a telegram dispatched this day to the United States minister at Bogota:

"The people of the Isthmus having by an apparently unanimous movement dis solved their political connection with the Republic of Colombia and resumed their independence He (the President of the United States) holds that he is

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bound not merely by treaty obligations but by the interest of civilization, to see that the peaceable traffic of the world across the Isthmus of Panama shall not longer be disturbed by constant succession of unnecessary and wasteful civil wars."

HAY.

Then after giving two other cablegrams referring to the appointment of Philippe Bunau-Varilla as envoy extraordinary of Panama to Washington, Mr. Hall says: "Now I think there is a good place to point out a remarkable coincidence. We have the State Department telegraphing to its agent in Bogota on the 6th of November this dispatch, beginning:

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The people of Panama having by an apparently unanimous consent,' and ending 'constant succession of unnecessary and wasteful civil wars,' The same day or rather the next morning, not from Washington, but in New York, Mr. Philippe BunauVarilla wrote to the State Department announcing that he was appointed as minister plenipotentiary of the Republic of Panama to the United States, and his letter reads: "NEW YORK, November 7, 1903.

"His Excellency JOHN HAY,

"Secretary of State, Washington:

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"I have the privilege and honor of notifying you that It (the United States) has rescued it (Panama) from the barbarism of unnecessary and wasteful civil wars to consecrate it to the destiny assigned to it by Providence, the service of humanity, and the progress of civilization. "PHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA.

"There you have Bunau-Varilla using the very words unnecessary and wasteful civil wars used a few hours previously by Secretary Hay in his dispatch to the American minister at Bogota, and the coincidence is almost as remarkable as," etc.

On page 419 Mr. Hall comes back on the same point and says:

"You will recall how in that communication to the State Department Bunau-Varilla made use of the same words, 'unnecessary and wasteful civil wars,' which Mr. Hay also made use of in a confidential dispatch to the American minister in Bogota."

In a few words Mr. Hall thus demonstrates to his own satisfaction that the same hand has traced the Secretary of State's confidential dispatch and the Panama minister's notification. Therefore, according to Mr. Hall, Mr. Bunau-Varilla is a puppet of straw handled by the American Government.

Who would doubt such obvious facts brought forth by a man who describes himself as a man who "has employed whatsoever of ability he possesses" and "the experience gained in more than 20 years of active newspaper work"; who has "endeavored fairly and impartially to place the truth before the Committee on Foreign Affairs as he saw it in the documents gathered by the World"; as a man who "firmly believes that righteousness alone exalteth a nation"; as a man who thinks that "with nations even more than with individuals honesty is the best policy "; as a man who "speaks in the name of Truth, Justice, and Honor." (All quotations from p. 471, Story of Panama.1) Who would doubt the assertions on points of facts made by a man who insists "that he has really confined himself, as the committee is aware, solely to documents and statements that could be substantiated" (p. 461).

Evidently nobody can refuse to give credence to such a proof brought forward by such a man.

However, all that he asserts on this point is a fiction, to say the least.

Even the almighty power of Truth, Justice, and Honor can not enable Mr. Hall to substantiate that a document, which he copies on page 414 with the date November 5, 1903, has been made on the day just before another document of which he gives a copy bearing the date November 7. Even the combined efforts of Truth, Justice, and Honor can not make the miracle of placing the morning of the 7th on the day following the 5th of November. (See p. 414 date of Mr. Hay's dispatch 5th of November, and p. 415, date of Mr. Bunau-Varilla's notification 7th of November.)

The three divinities above named even associated with the 20 years of journalism of Mr. Hall will also find it difficult to enable the writer of the "Story" to substantiate that a document is confidential when it is published by all the newspapers of the United States on the day following its date and preceding that of the other document, which borrows an expression in the first one.

This is precisely the case of the message of Mr. Hay bearing the date of the 5th November and which Mr. Hall terms confidential. All the evening newspapers of New York published on the 6th Mr. Hay's dispatch ending by "unnecessary and wasteful civil wars." All the morning newspapers of the 7th repeated it.

Now, is it possible that the so many endeavors of Mr. Hall, all the ability he possesses, all the experience he has gathered in 20 years' journalism, should have resulted in allowing his imagination to fabricate simply a fiction?

1 Whenever I shall afterwards quote a page without further designation it must be understood that it is taken from the Story of Panama, hearings on the Rainey resolution before the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives Jan. 26 to Feb. 20, 1912.

It seems impossible, but it is so.

The simple truth is that having read in the evening papers of the 6th of November, 1903, Mr. Hay's dispatch of the 5th, I thought it courteous to employ his own expression "unnecessary and wasteful civil wars" in my communication of the day following. If it was confidential when I read it I was sharing the confidence with 80,000,000 people.

This is a very correct sample of the method by which the Story of Panama has been fabricated.

It was not unnecessary to expose this method at the start. We shall find its consequences everywhere. When a fact does not please the writer of the "story," it is either turned upside down or entirely replaced by another one. The substitute is furnished by imagination and solemnly presented as warranted by proofs and documents above the most severe suspicion.

Let us now turn to the base of the "story," that is the plea for fees made by Mr. Cromwell before the court of arbitration. Let us examine its impartiality first, its veracity afterwards.

What is the impartiality of Mr. Cromwell's plea for fees?

To judge this question it is necessary to know first for what kind of professional activities Mr. Cromwell demanded a high fee. Mr. Cromwell, besides the legal profession, practices another one. What is Mr. Cromwell's profession (outside of the legal one)? He will himself answer the question in the plea for fees. On page 96 it reads:

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"In the course of a very active and very extended professional career firm Sullivan & Cromwell had found itself placed in intimate relations, susceptible of being used to advantage with men possessing influence and power they (the members of the firm) have also come to know and be in a position to influence a considerable number of public men in political life It is not suggested that the remuneration should be based upon this consideration alone." Any commentary seems perfectly superfluous. Whether this clear definition of the kind of activities for which the fees are asked is in harmony with the ethics of the legal profession in America, it is not for me but for the Bar Association of New York to answer. But the question is not there. It was necessary to recall the clear definition given of Mr. Cromwell's profession by himself to understand that a plea for fees on account of such services can not possibly be impartial.

Human nature tends always to exaggerate in a man's mind the results of his efforts. If the aim of the effort is to influence public men in political life, vanity only will lead any man to think that his influence has been greater than it really was. An active go-between will easily think he is the author of the messages he has to carry. But if he claims a fee for having exercised such influence the appetite for money adds itself to the appetite for vanity and the result is an extraordinary exaggeration of the facts presented by the claimant.

One might say that the more proper will be the methods by which the influence is exercised, the greater will be the exaggeration.

I think it is unnecessary to state that the great American citizens who had to treat this national question were infinitely above any improper consideration. Therefore, for both reasons above stated, the influence said to have been exercised over them was grossly and enormously exaggerated, if not entirely imagined by the man who wants a remuneration for it. It is the eternal story of the tail which sustains that it is wagging the dog.

A plea for fees written under these conditions of mind can not be impartial. It is, therefore, an unfit base for writing the story of any great event. However, if not impartial, it could keep the relation of events within the boundaries of verity. Let us examine if this is the case.

WHAT IS THE VERACITY OF MR. CROMWELL'S PLEA FOR FEES?

Suspicions were raised in the committee about a lack of veracity of Mr. Cromwell's assertions as exhibited by Mr. Hall in his presentation of extracts of the plea for fees. On page 144 the following can be read:

"Mr. KENDALL. That is what Mr. Cromwell says in his report to these employees of his?

"Mr. HALL. Yes, sir.

"Mr. KENDALL. He was trying to get his $800,000 fee?

"Mr. HALL. We must presume he was telling the truth.

"Mr. KENDALL. His purpose was to convince them how difficult it had been for him to accomplish the results he did?

"Mr. HALL. I suppose so, sir."

It seems that contrary to Mr. Hall's opinion in a plea for fees referring to an influence supposed to have been exercised over public men in political life the presumption is an exaggeration of that supposed influence, if not much more than exaggeration. Further, on page 291, the same doubt is raised about the veracity of Mr. Cromwell's plea for fees.

"Mr. GARNER. In behalf of Mr. Hay, who is deceased, would it not be assumed that Mr. Cromwell was making statements that could not be sustained by facts in order to secure a fee from the French company? In other words, to use a harsh term, it is not possible that Mr. Cromwell is lying about the matter of what Mr. Hay did? "Mr. HALL. Quite possible.

"The CHAIRMAN. He certainly was trying to get a big fee."

Mr. Hall, who, as we will see later on, will attribute to Mr. Cromwell's plea for fees the value of a document under oath was evidently for a moment taken by surprise. Candidly, he admits that Mr. Cromwell may be, as Mr. Garner says, lying. This is a spontaneous and perfectly fair acknowledgement of what the document may be. If the Story of Panama is based upon such a doubtful document, what is it? But Mr. Hall will later on try to strengthen his base of action, and on page 293 the following dialogue takes place:

"Mr. KENDALL. These statements of Mr. Cromwell involving Mr. Hay, as Judge Difenderfer inquires, were not under oath, they were simply incorporated in his brief filed with that board.

"Mr. HALL. This is his brief. The point I was making was not in any way, shape or form a reflection upon the late Secretary of State, but in justice to Mr. Cromwell it is inconceivable that a man of Mr. Cromwell's standing at the New York bar should in a brief presented to arbitrators in a matter of this kind make statements which he would not be ready to substantiate under oath."

The same effort of Mr. Hall to strengthen the weak authority of the base of his "story" is further renewed on page 457.

"Mr. FLOOD. The accomplishments of Mr. Cromwell in getting officials to change their position on this question are based on his own testimony?

"Mr. HALL. On his own testimony, sir. The many assertions he makes affecting Secretary of State Hay, who is dead, and Senator Hanna, who is dead, are matters which rest on his own authority. It is improbable, of course, knowing that the company was in possession of all his correspondence and of all his accounts, that he would put forward statements he could not substantiate. Having made weekly and monthly reports to them covering a period of six years and having received their replies and acknowledgments, it is hardly to be believed that he could deliberately add into this brief anything he had not reported to the company at the time. Also, Mr. Cromwell's standing at the bar in New York is a very high one, and it would mean his disbarment if he were to present in an arbitration for remuneration for professional services facts which were not true. Of course, I have accorded the weight of testimony to Mr. Cromwell's own written assertions."

In trying to defend the shaky base of his "story" Mr. Hall thus represents Mr. Cromwell as acting under the formal and rigid supervision and checking of his employers, the company.

At this moment Mr. Hall unfortunately forgets that he has been obliged to disqualify the employers of Mr Cromwell for the necessities of his "story." These necessities have compelled him to attribute to Mr. Cromwell a universal power in all directions. On page 328 he had said of the president of the New Panama Co.:

"The president of the Credit Lyonnais was Marius Bo, also the president of the New Panama Canal Co. and Cromwell's chief instrument in France in its manipulation." In spite of his endeavors to "fairly and impartially place the truth before the committee" (p. 471), Mr. Hall will find some difficulties in reconciling contradictory facts. He can not very well, in spite of his solemn declaration that (p. 461) “he confines himself solely to documents and statements that could be substantiated," demonstrate that the same Bo, who is a tool in the hands of Cromwell, on page 328, becomes a severe and incorruptible comptroller on page 457.

Let us in passing say that Mr. Bo never was in his life nor ever will be president of the Credit Lyonnais. In spite of his 20 years' journalism, Mr. Hall ignores that by giving without any semblance of reason to Mr. Bo the leadership of one of the greatest banks in the world, he again allows his imagination to create a wholly erroneous and misleading fact.

Mr. Bo is in reality a director of the Credit Lyonnais; this is the true fact. It does not mean much for Mr. Hall's "story." He immediately fabricates another fact instead, and Mr. Bo, the tool of Mr. Cromwell at one place, his severe comptroller at another. is fabricated president of the great banking institution by Mr. Hall's fancy for the sake of the "story."

After having established what spontaneous suspicions of untruthfulness the plea for fees raised in the committee, let us try to look into this question of veracity.

Of course, when a man is dead, his secretary can always pretend that the secretary was dictating the letters and not his master. That is practically what the members of the committee above named suspected when they listened to Mr. Cromwell's contentions for getting a high fee. It is difficult to establish the untruthfulness of the statement as regards men who are dead. To be sure, it is most unlikely that men of the mental greatness of Hay or Hanna ever were handled like straw puppets. However, if it can be demonstrated by documental evidence that in all places where documents speak alone the plea for fees presents facts untruthfully, the hesitation will cease. The suspicions of the members of the committee will be vindicated. The lack of veracity of the offensive assertions cast on the great memories of Hay and Hanna must be then considered as established. It is indeed obvious that if the plea for fees absolutely disfigures facts when they can be reconstituted by public documents, one will be sure that the facts relating to dead men's attitudes or actions will be still more adulterated if not entirely fabricated.

In probing thus the veracity of the plea for fees we shall choose as examples a series of facts. These facts are chosen not only because they can be reconstituted by public documents, but also because they are placed at the origin of critical periods. Thus it will be established that the lack of veracity so demonstrated is not exceptional, but systematic; that there is a very high probability that it is the spirit pervading the whole document.

The first critical period in the relations between the New Panama Canal Co. and Mr. Cromwell is the beginning of Mr. Cromwell's activities in their behalf in 1896. The second one is the entrance of the Panama Canal into the list of solutions proposed to America. This entrance entirely depended upon the success or failure of the Nicaragua bill in the session ending March 4, 1899. A third one is the period during which Mr. Cromwell was dismissed from the service of the canal company-July, 1901, to January, 1902. A fourth one is from the presentation of the Spooner bill to its adoption (January-June, 1902). A fifth one is the period from the signing of the HayBunau-Varilla treaty (November, 1903) till its ratification (February, 1904).

Of course there are many other critical periods, but as the facts can not be exhibited without introducing as evidence exclusively public documents I shall leave them aside. The lack of veracity of the plea for fees will be amply established by the five examples herein stated.

FIRST DEMONSTRATION OF AN ABSOLUTE LACK OF VERACITY ON A GIVEN POINT IN MESSRS. SULLIVAN AND CROMWELL'S PLEA FOR FEES.

On page 164 the plea for fees begins the description of Mr. Cromwell's activities on behalf of the company as follows:

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"Thus, when we were intrusted with the affair in January, 1896, we found ourselves face to face with a general and almost unanimous opinion in the United States in favor of the Nicaragua Canal We ascertained also that * * bills were pending in Congress before the Senate and the House with a view to the adoption of the Nicaragua route * * * and that Congress had authorized the appointment of a special commission to again survey and report on the feasibility of this route, and the commission was then engaged in this work."

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Then comes a chapter entitled: "January-December, 1896. Recapitulation of work done in 1896." It contains the following sentence: "Between January and June, 1896, Mr. Cromwell and Mr. Curtis made alternative stays in Washington for the purpose. They devoted themselves actively to the case had interviews with number of Senators and Representatives. * * Mr. Cromwell also had frequent interviews with Col. Ludlow in regard to investigations by his commission and urged upon (presented to him) the superior advantages of Panama. As a result of this exposition the Ludlow commission in its subsequent (ultérieur)2 report made very favorable references to the Panama route."

Further on page 165 we find another chapter entitled: "Result: There was no legislation for Nicaragua that year 1896.”

1 The word "January" which translates the word "Janvier" existing in the original text has been omitted in the translation given by Mr. Hall. I reestablish it.

2 In the original text the adjective used before the word "report" is "ultérieur," which means subsequent. In the translation given by Mr. Hall it is expressed by "supplementary," which has quite a different meaning. The French word "ultérieur" is in the said translation put into parenthesis to show the hesitation about the proper use of "supplementary" by which it is wrongly translated. The real meaning of "postérieur" there, which is "subsequent," has been reestablished in the extract I give.