The Spirit Of Imperialism

A good many of the warm administration organs have, with great frankness, ben discussing the possibility and propriety of seizing the strip of land through which it is proposed to build the Panama Canal. They argue that if Columbia will not grant the concession that the United States cannot afford to be balked from the great enterprise by the constitutional obstacles that the Colombians say are in the way of the ratification of the treaty. Others of these republican newspapers favor the fomenting of a rebellion in the state of Panama against the Colombian government and then landing a force of marines to make it successful. This bald way of stating that the United States should exercise its undoubted physical ability to coerce a weaker state, is on par with other imperialistic ideas that have been rampant under the present regime.

But these vicious public advisors forget the terms of the congressional enactment which authorized the building of an interoceanic canal, that if the Colombian government would not ratify the treaty the President of the United States was authorized to open negotiations with Nicaragua and Costa Rica and build the canal by the Nicaragua route. That is the duty of President Roosevelt, and to suffle and palter and attempt to coerce Colombia to ratify a treaty that the Congress of that country does not approve would be playing into the hands of the transcontinental railroads, who have so far been able to defeat the building of the canal. There is very good reason to believe that the Nicaragua route would have been adopted if the railroad influences led by Senator Hanna had not been omnipotent in the Senate.

This whole question may be fought over and over again at the next session of Congress, and it may become one of the issues in the next presidential campaign.