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trious friend"-in defence of the American army against some German criticisms, this American writer in a foreign journal assured his foreign readers that "during the Spanish war of 1898 the military authorities at Washington treated the army mainly as a means of political jobbery;" that "the commanders of brigades, divisions, and army corps were as a rule profoundly ignorant of elementary military matters;"-to wit, Generals Miles, Wheeler, Shafter, Lee, Chaffee, Lawton, Brooke, Merritt, Grant, Wilson, Stone, MacArthur, et al.; that "our generals are mainly conspicuous for not having been educated at West Point;" that "the American army is not fit to take the field to-day. The same spirit which made it the tool of political jobbers during the Spanish war is dominant to-day," et cetera. If these strictures and railings had been true, the publication of them in an American paper might have been entirely justifiable, and commendable. But to select a foreign medium and a foreign constituency for the publication of such a belittlement of one's own country, might well be regarded as indicating a mental habit as much at variance with patriotic manners and morals as that shown in the Panama article was at variance with truth.

It was in reviewing such utterances as those which I have cited in this chapter, of which the name, all through the year 1905, was legion, that President Roosevelt, on January 8, 1906, wrote in a message to Congress:

"From time to time various publications have been made, and from time to time in the future various similar publications, doubtless, will be made, purporting to give an account of jobbing or immorality or inefficiency or misery as obtaining on the Isthmus. I have carefully examined into each of these accusations which seemed worthy of attention. In every instance the accusations have proved to be without foundation in any shape or form. They spring from several sources. Sometimes they take the shape of statements by irresponsible investigators of a sensational habit of mind, incapable of observing or repeating with accuracy what they see, and desirous of obtaining notoriety, by wide-spread slan

der. More often they originate with or are given currency by individuals with a personal grievance. The sensation mongers, both those who stay at home and those who visit the Isthmus, may ground their accusations on false statements by some engineer, who, having applied for service on the Commission and been refused such service, now endeavours to discredit his successful competitors, or by some lessee or owner of real estate who has sought action or inaction by the Commission to increase the value of his lots, and is bitter because the Commission cannot be used for such purposes, or on the tales of disappointed bidders for contracts, or of officeholders who have proved incompetent or who have been suspected of corruption and dismissed, or who have been overcome by panic and have fled from the Isthmus. Every specific charge relating to jobbery, to immorality, or to inefficiency, from whatever source it has come, has been immediately investigated and in no single instance have the statements of these sensation mongers and the interested complainants behind them proved true. The only discredit inhering in these false accusations is to those who originate and give them currency, and who, to the extent of their abilities, thereby hamper and obstruct the completion of the great work in which both the honour and the interest of America are so deeply involved. It matters not whether those guilty of these false accusations utter them in mere wanton recklessness and folly, or in a spirit of sinister malice to gratify some personal or political grudge."

To that, we may well add that it is high time we were at an end of this flood of folly and worse than folly, and were at least within measurable distance of an end of the discussions and investigations of Panaman affairs which have been so copious for most of the time since the great enterprise was undertaken. That view of the case was well expressed by Secretary Taft, in a public address at Detroit, Michigan, in February, 1906. He had been speaking of the then current investigation into canal affairs, and had made it clear that neither he nor the President nor anybody else in authority shrank from the most searching scrutiny of everything that had been done. But, he continued:

"After one thorough investigation has been completed and every truthful man and every liar has been heard, then let

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the work go on. You can't be answering questions and building a canal at the same time. You can't have the chief engineer and the other constructing officers engaged in that work both in Washington and on the Isthmus. Therefore, I say that all those who wish to be heard ought to be heard now, or ever after hold their peace."

There spoke the voice of common sense and justice. Discussion and investigation have doubtless been necessary. But some day there should be an end of them, and that day should be somewhere this side of the Greek Kalends.

CHAPTER XX

THE NEXT THING

THE task before us at Panama is well begun. Despite the proverb, however, it is not half done, and it will not be done years hence when the canal is opened to the commerce of the world. It is a never-ending task which we have undertaken, a perpetual responsibility which we have assumed. That is a fact which should be well borne in mind. "Do the next thing" is a wise counsel; and we may supplement it with many others to the same effect, from the divine "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," to the homely adjuration not to cross a bridge until we reach it. But there is an equal marshalling of authorities to the contrary effect, that it is not wise to begin building a house until the plans are drawn and the cost is counted. Assuredly it would not be wise to engage in a permanent undertaking upon a temporary basis. In every detail of our work at Panama, therefore, it is to be remembered that we are doing a work for all time; whether in engineering, or in sanitation, or in the establishment of political and social relationships with the Isthmian people.

That was one powerful argument in favour of a sea-level canal, as I have already tried to show. If we were constructing a canal for ten or twenty years, one at high level might be preferable, and would certainly be the less expensive. But we are making a canal for all time, to be in use as long as the trade winds sweep the Caribbean and the tides of the Pacific rise and fall. The plan of it should, therefore, be determined and adopted with such destiny in view. And there are still those who hold that, despite the contrary decision now made and the high-level plan now adopted, we