COLONEL GEORGE W. GOETHALS, GOVERNOR OF THE CANAL ZONE COLONEL GOETHALS, who was last month nominated by President Wilson as Governor of the Canal Zone and promptly confirmed by the Senate, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., on June 29, 1858. After several years of study at the College of the City of New York, he was admitted to the Military Academy at West Point, from which he was graduated in 1880. He was successively promoted to First Lieutenant, Captain, and Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers, and during the Spanish-American war served as Chief of Engineers in the volunteer service. In 1900 he was made Major of the Engineer Corps. In February, 1907, President Roosevelt made Colonel Goethals the Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal, and during the past seven years the responsibility for the success of that great engineering feat has centered in him. So fully has he shown his administrative capacity in this great undertaking that many important governmental posts have been offered him in anticipation of the completion of the work at Panama. One of these posts was the Police Commissionership of New York City, which Mayor Mitchel earnestly besought Colonel Goethals to accept. He was unwilling, however, to leave the Canal Zone until he should feel that his task had been completely carried through. THE AMERICAN VOL. XLIX NEW YORK, MARCH, 1914 THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD Col. Goethals at Panama No. 3 movements of the navy. Mayor Mitchel, of New York, hopes and declares that Colonel Goethals will eventually become commissioner of the metropolitan police and do great things for the welfare of his native city. But at present he is most needed at Panama. The approaching completion of tion, to complete its defenses, to give it presGovernor the Panama Canal has a wide tige and efficiency as a highway of world combearing upon many matters of merce, and to make it serve the people of the national and international interest. States United States in domestic traffic and in the men and experts all over the world are making careful study of the military and commercial significance of the new waterway, and it would be unfortunate for us if our own governing authorities and leaders of public opinion should not be equally alert and intelligent. President Wilson has greatly pleased the country by naming Colonel Goethals as Governor of the Canal Zone, with full authority to organize the operating business of the canal, exercise police and sani- the Canal Zone a healthful place to live and tary control, and direct all the functions work. The army surgeons have achieved a of government, whether civil or military. It more brilliant triumph even than the army is plain that there must be unified manage- engineers, in their operations at Panama. ment at Panama; and the great engineer who What Dr. Gorgas and his associates have has commanded the willing and efficient army of workers and built the canal ahead of time and within cost estimates, is by common consent the best man to put the canal into opera HELLO VES KIND OFFER-VES- Dr. Gorgas The Panama Canal could hardly have been built if our authorities had not found out how to make done is destined to make the tropics habitable for all races, and greatly to affect the history of civilization in the immediate future. Dr. Gorgas, with the new military rank of Brigadier-General, has been promoted by President Wilson to be Surgeon-General of the Army. We are very glad to publish in this number of the REVIEW an extended article descriptive of his services to his country and the world, and also interpreting the kind of progress in the field of preventive medicine with which his life work has been associated. We are also presenting an account of the work of the nation's Public Health Service as directed by Surgeon-General Rupert Blue. There is reason to expect great further progress in the prevention of disease under the direction of men so brilliant, so energetic, and so devoted as Dr. Gorgas and Dr. Blue. In Porto Rico, and at Manila (under Dr. Heiser), our sanitary achievements will need further encouragement, and there is much to do in our own seaports. Dr. Allen's article COL. GOETHALS, THE MAN OF THE HOUR shows what fine coöperation New York will From the Central Press Association (Cleveland) give under Drs. Biggs and Goldwater. Copyright, 1914, by THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY 259 Again the There has been a very sincere Clayton-Bulwer treaty of sixty-four years difference of opinion upon the ago was generally regarded as being in effect, question of Panama Canal tolls. or as having any bearing upon the canal proIn August, 1912, Congress enacted a law pro- jects which Congress began to discuss at the viding for the future administration of the end of the Spanish-American war. That Canal and of the ten-mile-wide zone through treaty of 1850 was related in the most spewhich the canal passes. One of the sections of cific way to a project of private capital then that law gives free passage through the canal on foot to open a canal through Nicaragua. to the coastwise ships of the United States. The project failed, all the conditions The British Government objected to our changed, and the Clayton-Bulwer convenfavored treatment of our own shipping; but tion had for a generation been regarded as a Mr. Taft, who was then President, em- lapsed arrangement, and had been so treated phatically agreed with Mr. Knox, who was by both countries in a number of actual inthen Secretary of State, in upholding the stances. The circumstances under which legislation. In a treaty drawn by the late Mr. John Hay, singly and without suggesMr. Hay and signed by Lord Pauncefote on tion, brought to life a treaty that had passed behalf of England-known as the Hay- into history as completely as any old instruPauncefote Treaty-our Government had ment between Athens and Sparta, or between stated that it was going to give equal treat- Carthage and Rome, constitute one of the ment to the ships of all countries in the canal. most curious episodes in all the history of The British Government holds that in allow- diplomacy. It is not much to the discredit ing our coastwise ships to use the canal with- of Mr. Hay, whose motives were of the highout paying tolls we are violating that treaty est but who was not an authority in the suband doing a harm to Great Britain. ject-matter. Nor is it to the discredit of Lord Pauncefote and the British Government, who A Treaty and its Origin A Quib- Since there was no possible reason for our making any treaty at all with England regarding canal Our coastwise trade has always accepted with ill-concealed astonishment the by law been confined to Ameri- position in which the United States had can ships. The intention of the placed itself wholly of its own accord. But American people in constructing the canal it is decidedly to the discredit of the Senate was to make it an extension of our coast line. of the United States that it should, a dozen The public was not at any time aware that years ago, have ratified a treaty the meanthe late Mr. John Hay was signing away ing of which it is disputing about our right to apply our policy regarding do- day. mestic trade to the canal which we were building at the national expense, on territory under our own jurisdiction, with the express object of extending our coastline and uniting our seaboards. This magazine gave particu- tolls, any more than with Japan or with Norlar attention, at the time of their promulga- way, it might seem both quibbling and ungention, to the treaties known as the first and erous on the part of England to insist that second Hay-Pauncefote conventions. Both we must construe the treaty against ourselves of them were so drawn as to be bound to on a point that is open to construction in two raise troublesome questions. There was not different ways, and which amounts to nothing the slightest reason for drawing or signing substantial when closely analyzed. Since or ratifying either one of them. But at that nearly all governments subsidize their shiptime the Senate of the United States was ping, and since England is at liberty to remit preoccupied, and it seemed to be wanting in the tolls of British merchant ships passing its usual intelligence and foresight; and Mr. through the canal by the simple plan of payHay, who was the sole author of both ing them in the form of a subsidy, it is not treaties, happened to have a point of view denied that the United States may collect the quite different from that prevailing in this tolls from its coastwise ships through one country. Reviving a Lapsed Contract officer and pay them back in the form of a subsidy, five minutes later, through another No maritime power in the world officer. Mr. Taft and Mr. Knox, together imagined that it had any right with a majority in both houses of Congress whatsoever to place limitations in 1912, held that "equal treatment" meant upon the United States as respects the uses that we should treat all foreign nations alike, of a waterway constructed by the Govern- because we could have had no reason for subment itself. It is not true that the old jecting a purely domestic policy regarding our own shipping to agreement with foreign countries, any more than those countries would have thought of subjecting their subsidy policies to negotiations with us. There Are Policy versus Right It does not follow, however, that it is the best policy to exempt ships from payment of toll, even though it may be within the right of our Government to subsidize its coastwise ships There has been, on the part of in one way or in another. President Wilson Two Con- many newspapers and periodicals strongly recommends that Congress repeal structions of this country, an eager acquies- the free-tolls provision. He made this view cence in the view that the treaty is open to plain in a letter published early last month, only one possible construction, and that we in which he took the ground that "the exemphave plainly violated it in the legislation tion constitutes a very mistaken policy from which provides for free passage of our coast- every point of view.' He thought that it wise ships. The discussions that accompany would not be a real benefit to American shipthese expressions of view disclose no back- ping, but would at present benefit only a ground of acquaintance with the facts neces- monopoly. Furthermore, it seemed to him to sary to an intelligent understanding of the be "in clear violation of the terms of the Hayquestion. In this coinment we are dealing Pauncefote treaty." On this point President with the theoretical rights of the Government Wilson made the following interesting reand people of the United States as respects marks: the use of their own canal. It is our opinion There is, of course, much honest difference of that the rights of the United States are as opinion as to the last point, as there is, no doubt, complete and as unqualified as are its rights as to the others; but it is at least debatable, and if the promises we make in such matters are dein any of the harbors and ports of the country, batable, I for one do not care to debate them. I or in the Mississippi River. It is naturally think the country would prefer to let no question our policy to treat all nations alike; but we arise as to its whole-hearted purpose to redeem are under quite as much obligation to Ger- its promises in the light of any reasonable construction of them rather than debate a point of many as to England, and under no less obliga- honor. tion to Japan. Our treatment of our coastThis is a very high-minded posiwise ships in the Panama Canal is a local and President's tion, and it claims and holds our domestic matter, of no real concern to Japan, sympathy. If, indeed, a question Germany, or Great Britain. of our honor is at stake, we must uphold our The Position TWO PACIFIC COAST CARTOONS ON THE QUESTION OF PANAMA CANAL TOLLS quite dignified to raise a point of treaty construction apart from a downright explanation of the real trouble. Nobody supposes that the British Government would have raised the point on its own account, or that it attaches much value to it. The whole trouble seems to be that our Panama Canal Act is not agreeable to Canadian railroad companies that own ships, and that wish to enjoy privileges in the canal that are not even accorded by the law to railroad-owned ships flying the flag of the United States. The subject is one for careful study. Meanwhile. the American press ought not to be too hasty in reflecting upon the honor of our own Government in its international relations. A reasonably careful study of international and diplomatic affairs during our own times leads us to the view that our American standards of honor in these things have been consistently higher than those of most countries with which we have had negotiations. And as respects the matters dealt with in the HayPauncefote treaty, our whole attitude from the first has been that of a nation laboring under some sort of a quixotic hallucination. The honor and not quibble on our side. Unhappily, the quibbling seems rather to be on the other side. We are precisely in the position of a farmer who, without compensation and It has been stated rather bluntly through sheer generosity, tells his neighbor and crudely at Washington that in a letter that he is going to allow that the proposed repeal of the freeneighbor to enter his gates and take a short tolls clause is simply the price we are cut across his land to avoid a long detour by paying for England's friendliness at a the public highway. The neighbor begins to time when the Mexican situation and construe his privilege, wholly unpaid for, as a some other matters of foreign relationlegal right, and proceeds to question the man's ship are causing solicitude. There can be use of his own land and his own private roads no particular objection to repealing the critifor his own purposes. Our treatment of our cized clause, unless such action should lead own shipping in our own canal does not in any way curtail or obstruct the privileges in the canal which we have freely accorded on equal terms to all other nations. The point of honor seems to us to belong wholly on the other side. We have conferred a great boon upon the world in the construction of this canal, and British trade will benefit by our great work more than that of any other country. The point raised by Great Britain cannot affect us in any material sense, because we are at liberty, as no one denies, to remit the tolls in the form of a subsidy of equivalent point. It is what the homely old proverb calls "looking a gift horse in the mouth." REMOVE THE CHIP, MR. PRESIDENT! Such assertiveness does not reflect credit upon (Why allow a small matter to make trouble between British Government. Nor does it seem friends?) From the American (Baltimore) |