J. Saxon Mills

“ It is such a revolution as never has been and never again can be foreordained before chaos primeval for this twentieth century of the Christian era, for there are no more hemispheres to cut in two. There are no more oceans, with half the water area on the world and twenty million square miles more than all the land surface of the globe, to be suddenly transferred into the arena of world trade. There are no more continents with the widest reaches, the richest resources, and the densest populations of the world to be awakened and developed after Asia has achieved its resurrection. ”

“ Panama asked for nothing better than that a rich and powerful country like the United States should continue the French enterprise and carry it through. The canal would run right through the province, and would bring it into the main stream of the world's traffic and commerce. No doubt the central government at Bogotá would skim off as much as possible of this new wealth and prosperity at the isthmus; but even so, Panama would reap a great advantage from the running of this new and much-frequented highway of communication between east and west through its territory. ”

“ The Gatun locks, each chamber of which is a sort of "canyon of cement," will almost oppress the imagination with the sense of immensity. At the foot of the locks the vessel will surrender its own volition and entrust itself wholly to the canal operators. It will be attached to the electric apparatus ashore and gently towed into the lock-chambers. In less than an hour it should have climbed the three gigantic steps and be afloat on the surface of the lake, 85 feet above sea-level. The traveller might fail even to notice of himself the great dam which abuts on the locks to the west. ”

“ This gloomy, God-forsaken isthmus is a nightmare region. One descriptive writer has truly said of it that it is a land where the flowers have no odour, the birds no song; where the men are without honour and the women without virtue. He is not far wrong. The birds, brilliant as is their plumage, have no musical notes. The dense forests teem with bright-hued parrots, parroquets, and other birds, which squeak and scream but do not sing. There are beautiful orchids to be found in the swamps and jungles—fair to look upon, but they have no odour. ”

“ But we must not overlook the growth in passenger traffic. The sea-passage round by the canal from Europe to the Pacific states of North America will be much cheaper and to many people more pleasant than the fatiguing transcontinental railway journey. Fresh brain and muscle will enter Canada by its western portals, new needs will arise, new industries spring up, a new æon of progress and enterprise begin on the far Pacific slopes when the first vessel mounts and descends the mighty steps of this wonder-working isthmian highway. ”

“ The Panama Canal belongs to the "age of concrete." All other vast works of construction, such as the Pyramids of antiquity and the Assouan Dam of to-day, have been built of live natural rock. At Panama everything—locks, wharves, piers, breakwaters—has been constructed of concrete. The Americans have not only built these incomparable piles of masonry; they have manufactured the material out of which they are built. This circumstance makes the rapid completion of the canal all the more wonderful. ”

“ Occupying, as she does, the central point between Europe, Asia, and Africa, she could become the entrepot of the commerce of all these countries, and obtain over them immense preponderance; for in politics, as in strategy, a central position always commands the circumference. This is what the proud city of Constantine could be, but it is what she is not, because, as Montesquieu says, "God permitted that the Turks should exist on earth, as a people most fit to possess uselessly a great empire." ”

“ If there be a war in which the United States is not a party, [Pg 75] the canal will be used by belligerents in exactly the same way as was the Suez Canal—for example, in the Russo-Japanese War—and the government of the United States has pledged itself to see that such neutrality is preserved. But if there be a war in which the United States is a party, the circumstances of fortification and operation by the United States in fact render it impossible for the other belligerent to use the canal, and are intended to have that effect. ”

“ The result of the high standards of comfort thus imposed has been that the cost in wages and food to run American ships under American conditions across the Pacific is double that in European or Japanese steamers. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that some people in the United States regard the Panama Canal as a very disinterested gift from the United States to humanity at large, especially perhaps to Great Britain and Japan—as an example of altruism run mad. ”

“ Is the Panama Canal likely to be used by sailing vessels? The prevailing idea is that it will be no more practicable a route for such craft than the Suez Canal. Winds, tides, and currents have much more to say to the sailing vessel than to the steamer, and the terminals of the canal, especially on the Pacific end, are not always easy of approach to wind-driven ships. One effect of the opening of the Panama Canal will be to hasten the decline of these old-fashioned and more beautiful craft. ”

“ There exists in the New World a state as admirably situated as Constantinople, and we must say, up to this time, as uselessly occupied. We allude to the State of Nicaragua. As Constantinople is the centre of the Ancient World, so is the town of Leon the centre of the New, and if the tongue of land which separates its two lakes from the Pacific Ocean were cut through, she would command by virtue of her central position the entire coast of North and South America. ”

“ Pan-Teutonic alliance, embracing the British and German Empires and the United States.
England has two responsibilities in the Pacific—the one to herself and her empire, and the other to Christendom and Western civilization. If she is true to the former, she cannot well be false to the latter. She must bring her fleets back to this great ocean and assert an influence in its politics proportionate to her territorial domains and the extent of her commerce in those regions. But there are objects more important than the interests of any single Power. ”

“ No sensible person imagines that the nimble Japanese, the inscrutable [Pg 322] Chinaman, and the subtle Hindoo are suddenly going to rise as one man and throw down the gage of challenge to Christianity and the West. East, like West, has its own political and religious divisions; nevertheless it is impossible to foresee what the results of the Oriental resurgence may mean, and England and the United States, and perhaps Germany, may some day have a joint responsibility in the Pacific compared with which their rivalries among themselves may seem trifling and irrational. ”

“ At the time of the French occupation of the isthmus nothing was known of the real nature and cause of yellow fever and malaria, of the manner in which they are transmitted, and the only effective means of prevention. All the recent and marvellous advance in scientific knowledge of these diseases was available when the Americans began their work, and was applied with the greatest efficiency and success. Medical science, quite as much as engineering skill, made a Panama canal possible, and we shall have a good deal more to say on this subject when we come to describe the American operations. ”

“ There may be differences of opinion on the fiscal question, but surely everybody must agree that the naval power and political prestige of the British Empire must be represented in the Caribbean Sea by something rather more impressive than two small and obsolete cruisers. If England is to maintain her position against the severer competition she will now have to face, if she is to get her share of the new commerce now in prospect, she will have to give her traders, and shippers, and merchants all the confidence and encouragement which her flag should inspire. ”

“ The two branches of the Anglo-Saxon family ought to be able, while each maintaining its own life and growth, to remain happily side by side, sharing in the new prosperity which the world owes to this latest achievement of the great republic. ”

“ When I was studying malaria in Greece in 1906, I was struck with the impossibility of conceiving that the people who are now intensely afflicted with malaria could be like the ancient Greeks who did so much for the world ”

“ But there is another region of the British Empire which will benefit only less, if less at all, than the Pacific province of Canada. The West Indies will feel at once the throb of a new life and interest when the canal is thrown open to the world's traffic. ”

“ Some readers may perhaps think that these forecasts of the results of running a canal through the isthmus of Panama are somewhat exaggerated. It is sufficient to point out to such a critic how different the course of American and world history might have been if Nature had left a practicable channel between the two Americas. The effect of erecting an artificial passage there in these days may be even greater than at present we can imagine. Some of these results will be apparent at once; others may take decades or even centuries to materialize. ”

“ Trinidad and Kingston seem likely to benefit most from the traffic to and from Cristobal, the new Atlantic terminal of the canal. Both are splendidly equipped by Nature to act as coaling and repairing stations as well as centres for the distribution of goods. Kingston has a superb harbour, and so also has Port of Spain (the capital of Trinidad) in the Gulf of Paria, a natural landlocked harbour in which the fleets of the whole world could lie in safety—and, it is important to add, outside the hurricane zone. Trinidad lies right athwart the mouths of the Orinoco River. ”

“ This one thing—this canal—costing us nothing—will double, quadruple, and quintuple values out there in a few brief years. With easier access will come new trade, and new demands will create new products, and soon the innumerable water-powers of British Columbia will start the wheels of a thousand new industries. The illimitable resources of the province will be opened up, developed, and utilized at home or shipped abroad. ”

“ It has been truly said that the canal zone will have all the disadvantages, without any of the advantages, of an island. It will be entirely dependent on imported supplies and isolated from the centre of American power. If the American fleet lost the command of the sea even for a short time, the enemy could land troops at any part of the isthmus, march them against any point of the extended canal line and inflict on the United States a wound in a very sensitive, if not a vital region. ”

“ Such a possession, an empire in itself, held so precariously and offering such a ceaseless temptation to swarming land-hungry hordes, is rather a weakness than a strength to England on the threshold of the new era. ”

“ The mines of British Columbia, which have already produced over £70,000,000, will leap forward with renewed prosperity. Her fisheries, which have produced £21,000,000, will be more extensively developed and, let us hope, be made again a British asset—since they are wholly in the hands of the Japanese, who not only send their earnings home to Japan, but are criminally wasteful in their methods. The coal deposits of the province, which promise to be the most extensive in the world, will, with immense deposits of iron, be opened to the world's markets. ”

“ Before we go on to describe the canal and its method of construction, we must look at the sort of social life and civil administration which has prevailed since the Americans arrived. Construction camps in tropical climes are not usually distinguished for order and good morals. The Americans determined to make an exception at Panama. They had a perfectly free hand and the enjoyment of all sovereign rights at the isthmus, and were able to construct a brand-new little state on the most approved and ideal principles. ”

“ The case of the anopheles and his little contribution to human suffering is very different. Whereas the victim of yellow fever either dies or gets better and quickly ceases to be a source of infection to the mosquito, the victim of malaria seldom dies of the disease, but he remains infectious to the anopheles for three years. The disease does not simply attack new-comers or white people. Natives of the isthmus and the West Indies are subject to it, and, indeed, seem to be in a chronically malarious condition. ”

“ The eyes of all Europe were turned to the Atlantic, and an ocean route westwards to India and the Orient, the existence of which had been fabled from the days of Aristotle, became an economic necessity.
Columbus, as every one knows, died in the belief that he had discovered this route, and that the lands he had visited were fringes and islands of the Eastern Asiatic continent. The geographers of those days greatly exaggerated the eastern extension of Asia, with the result that the distance from Europe to China and India was underestimated by at least one-half. ”

“ Australia, and New Zealand have grown for another quarter of a century, and the United States have reaped for so long the advantage in wealth and power of the new waterway, the little islands of the United Kingdom may begin to appear as a detached and distant fragment, rather than as the "heart and hearth," of the British Empire and the English-speaking world. ”

“ Probably no single country in the world, certainly no portion of the British Empire, stands to gain so tremendously from the opening of the canal as British Columbia. England has not yet realized what enormous resources are locked up in this province of the furthest west, which looks out from a hundred harbours to the Pacific and across to the awakening East. ”