of the Colombian Navy, and Alban G. Snyder, Consul General of the United States. At this time the coat-ofarms of the United States at the consulate at Cartagena was desecrated in the most revolting manner, and Capt. Lovelace cabled the facts to the State Department at Washington. Admiral Sigsbee on the Olympia was sent to Cartagena to demand a public apology from the governor, who promptly made it.

Following this incident, Capt. Lovelace, then acting United States consul at Barranquilla, was sent to Bogota as special messenger with the Hay-Herran Treaty. Threats had been made on the coast and in the interior against any person who attempted to deliver the treaty to Mr. Beaupre, the American Minister at Bogota. Capt. Lovelace delivered the treaty and one week later Mr, Alban G. Snyder, the newly appointed consul general to Colombia, was due to arrive. The foreign ministers, realizing the strained relations between the United States and Colombia, in order to prevent any demonstration on Mr. Snyder's arrival, met at the Hotel Metropolitan. Capt. Lovelace was requested to meet Mr. Snyder at the station and escort him to the hotel. Capt. Lovelace approached Mr. Snyder on alighting from the train and requested him to take a street car instead of a carriage, in order to foil any attempt upon his life; but unfortunately, Mr. Snyder's military bearing and American appearance subjected him to scrutiny, and while in the car a vicious attack was made on him. An Antiochian colonel raised a heavy cane and struck at Mr. Snyder's head when Lovelace knocked the colonel off the car. A riot then ensued and the fight continued to the hotel, the mob breaking through the heavy doors. The foreign ministers tried in vain to stop the riot and it was not until soldiers arrived that order was restored.

After this the Hay-Herran treaty was considered an i rejected by the Colombian Senate and the $10,000,000 offered by the United States to Colombia for the Canal concession was simultaneously refused. Panama seceded and received the money plus $250,000 a year.

The bitter feeling then existing in Colombia toward Americans is shown by the following incidents: The governor of Magdalena, General Juan B. Tova, asked the protection of the United States Consulate. The Colombian mob, at Barranquilla, sought to kill him for his failure to subdue the Panama revolutionists. With tears he told Capt. Lovelace, then United States vice-consul there, that "Panama had passed." Despite danger to his life the old general declined to enter the consulate until the United States flag on the office wall was placed in the safe out of his sight. The vice-consul in consideration of the Colombian's feelings placed it there and the report of the incident is of record in the State Department at Washington.

It is not generally known how the Panamanian gunboat "Oriente," having a speed of 23.4 knots an hour, was purchased from the Nixons about the time of Panama's secession, or of the events preceding its purchase. The interesting telegram in this connection received at the Imperial Hotel, New York, in part said: ".

procure

'one' big and fast enough to lick the gunboat (Colombian) 'Cartagena' ," would make history.

The same man, Capt. T. T. Lovelace, who delivered the Hay-Herran treaty to United States Minister Beaupre at Bogota and who was United States vice consul at Baranquilla, was appointed the first captain of the "Oriente." At the termination of his command his sealed orders, "not to be opened unless you lose your ship," were collected from him at Colon by an American civilian

who said he was from Washington, and who produced the duplicate of the series and number inscribed on the "sealed orders." Of course they would not have been surrendered if sufficient proof of authority had not been forthcoming.

Some time before this a torpedo boat destroyer, with four funnels, sans flag, sans number, sans nationality, was lying not far from Colon. Someone has said the sealed orders referred to the idle destroyer. "Anyway," as politicians have it, it is believed that the destroyer was subsequently broken up at the Norfolk Navy Yard. During Panama's rebellion against Colombia, the United States gunboat "Helena" was conveniently near Aspinwall. During all this intrigue and since the United States apparently overlooked a most important matter in another part of Colombia.

Until the State of Panama was severed from the Colombian union, Colombia possessed two Pacific coast ports, Panama and Buenaventura. The latter as a Pacific exit for the commerce of the interior is more important and Colombia still retains it. As a coaling station it is most important and is only some three hundred miles southeast of Panama.

Lord Murray left London about the middle of 1913 for Bogota. Lord Cowdray, his associate, was interested in Colombian oil and other projects in that Republic. Wide concessions were granted to Lords Murray and Cowdray by the Colombian government, and rumors were current that these were not to the liking of the Washington administration. Reports had it that these concessions were subsequently nullified, much to the satisfaction of the United States, and Lord Murray returned to London. Simultaneously with his withdrawal from Colombia, Mr. C. N. Breitung, a New York financier, left for Colombia

following in Lord Murray's footsteps. As Mr. Breitung and Lord Cowdray have business relations, many persons have said that he "picked up the trail" where Lord Murray temporarily abandoned it, thus forming a pivot of interests masking the British position.

Was oil the only motive of Lord Murray's journey from London to Bogota, or was the prime motive to arrange and procure the contracts for the acquisition of the Ferro-Carril-del-Cauca and the Port of Buenaventura?

The Cauca railroad has its terminal at Buenaventura and is built across the western Cordillera to the Cauca Valley, that Eden in the Andes. The extension of this line north from Cali through Buga to connect with Sir Rivers Wilson's Colombian Atlantic railroad system will complete the all-British transcontinental Colombian route, and will be of tremendous commercial and strategic importance; which taken together with Lord Cowdray's Inter-Oceanic Tehauntepec railroad effectually flanks the Panama Canal in Tehauntepec to the Northwest and the Colombian Trans-continental to the southeast.

As a coaling station for Great Britain, Buenaventura is most convenient and renders British vessels entirely independent of the Panama coal storage at the islands of Nace and Flamingo in Panama Bay. Especially is it a convenient port since the vast coal deposits on the line of railroad in the vicinity of Cali are less than eighty miles from Buenaventura and are the only known coal deposits between the Canadian frontier and Valparaiso on the Pacific Coast.

Is it possible that President Wilson had all this in mind when he said in his speech to Congress asking for the repeal of the Panama Canal Act of 1912: "I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even greater

delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me in an ungrudging measure.

If the United States prohibits Japan's private corporations from colonizing Magdalena Bay in Mexico, perhaps for similar reasons it will employ the Monroe Doctrine to prohibit Great Britain's private corporations from obtaining the most valuable harbor and coaling station on the Pacific Coast, only one day's steam from Panama.

If Lord Cowdray "lets go" the Colombian concessions granted to Lord Murray, it would be interesting to know as a matter of curiosity, how much of the $25,000,000 that the United States is about to pay to Colombia, will be turned over to Lord Cowdray for his surrender.

An annual report of Rear Admiral Bradford, chief of the Equipment Bureau of the United States Navy, says that he spent in one year $2,273,111 for coal. Thousands of tons of Welsh and Australian coal are annually imported to San Francisco for the United States Navy. The figures available show 105,066 tons of foreign coal in the year of his report and 9000 tons of domestic coal from the Atlantic seaboard at a cost of $9.25 per ton in each instance. Apart from this the Pacific Coast ports use nearly 250,000 tons of foreign coal per annum which sells for $15 U. S. C. per ton alongside. Coal can be placed alongside at Buenaventura for less than $2.50 per ton, and the British control it and the port.

In a speech just before the last Balkan war, the present British King said to his people: "Wake up England.” Those words embodied the most cogent command he has ever uttered as a constitutional monarch. Those three words will be handed down in the history of his country. He felt their necessitious import. He expressed all he felt in them. If some great man could say, "United States, wake up," or "Stop drifting," and have those