Mexico were suspicious of the Americans and even hated them. Moreover, he knew that they had some just cause to hate Americans and to speak contemptuously of them as "Gringoes." Therefore, he declared again his policy toward Mexico.

He was speaking, July 10, to the World's Congress of Salesmen in session in Detroit. He told his hearers who were concerned over the border states "we have to defend our border. That goes without saying. Of course, we must make good our own sovereignty. But we must respect the sovereignty of Mexico." And while these words were being uttered, the Secretary of War was massing troops on the border. But he assured this nation that such an act did not mean war. He declared that it was his purpose to help, not harm, Mexico. But he said that there were two ways of helping Mexico.

"I was trying," he said, "to expound in another place the other day the long way and the short way to get together. The long way is to fight. I have heard some gentlemen say that they want to help Mexico, and the way they purpose to help her is to overwhelm her with force. That is the long way to help Mexico, as well as the wrong way. Because, after the fighting you will have a nation full of justified suspicion and animated by well-founded hostility and hatred.

And then will you help them? Then will you establish cordial business relationship with them? Then will you go on as neighbors and establish their confidence? On the contrary, you will have shut every door as if it were of steel against you.

"What makes Mexico suspicious of us is that she does not believe as yet that we want to serve her. She believes we want to possess her. And she has justification for the belief in the way in which some of our fellow-citizens have tried to exploit her privileges and her possessions. For my part I will not serve the ambitions of those gentlemen, but I will try to serve all America, so far as intercourse with Mexico is concerned, by trying to serve Mexico herself."

CHAPTER XII

GOOD FAITH AND JUSTICE TOWARD ALL

NATIONS

Washington's Farewell Address to the people of the United States is regarded as a great American Classic and is taught in the public schools of America and held up to the youth as a political ideal. In speaking of our foreign relations, he said: "It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence." It was this ideal that President Wilson adopted for his guidance in dealing with foreign countries. The practice, however, of certain Senators and Members in drawing from the national treasury unfair and unjust appropriations for their respective states, contemptuously referred to as "pork barrel" legislation, is about the attitude, as a rule, of one nation to the remainder of the world.

In August, 1912, while the Presidential campaign was in a very acute stage, Congress enacted a law providing for the future administration of the Panama Canal. One section in that law gave free passage through the canal

to the ships of the United States engaged in coastwise trade, but provided that all other American ships, as well as all ships of foreign countries, passing through the canal, should pay a toll.

This whole question was very freely discussed by the people of this country before the passage of this act, and both political parties went on record as favoring the exemption from tolls of American ships engaged in coastwise trade. However, the British government and other nations objected to our favored treatment of our own shipping, on the ground that it violated the HayPauncefote Treaty. It was contended by the Taft administration and Congress that it was never understood when the treaty was ratified that Mr. John Hay, our ambassador, was signing away our rights to the free use of the canal for coastwise trade. Therefore, the law was passed over the protest of the British government and to the surprise of the nations of Europe.

When President Wilson was inaugurated, the canal was incomplete, but plans were being matured for its formal opening. The protests of foreign nations, however, against what they considered was an act of injustice on the part of the American government, seemed to rob this nation of much of the glory for bringing to completion such a tremendous undertaking.

After Mr. Wilson became President, he came to the conclusion that the old Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 was an agreement between the United States and Great

Britain that neither country should have exclusive control over any inter-ocean canal in Central America, and that the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, which superseded the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, was a guarantee to Great Britain, or its wording was such as to leave the impression on the European nations, that the canal would be open to both nations and to all nations on the same terms.

Moreover, it developed after the American coastwise vessels were exempt from toll, that out of the hundreds of regular trans-Atlantic liners, only six ships were flying the American flag, but that the American coastwise shipping was a vast fleet. According to the figures quoted by an English writer, Mr. Winthrop Marvin, our coastwise fleet was greater than the entire German merchant marine and greater than the combined merchant marines of France and Italy. It appeared, therefore, that very nearly all of the American vessels were exempt from toll by the Repeal Act, and Mr. Wilson considered this a violation certainly of the spirit, if not the letter, of the treaty.

The Panama Canal was not opened until August 14, 1914. In the meantime, President Wilson was giving the matter of toll exemption very careful study, and in February he wrote to Mr. William L. Marbury, of Baltimore, a letter which indicated how his mind was working on the problem:

"With regard to the question of canal tolls my