Colombia's sovereignty over the canal strip, expressed, acknowledged, confirmed and preserved her sovereignty over it.'

"It was never asserted until lately that the canal is exclusively our property. It was proclaimed over and over again that it was to be a neutral waterway for the benefit of the commerce of the world, with only so much control over it by us as was necessary to enable us to guarantee its neutrality and to provide properly for its guardianship and operation."

Senator McCumber says:

"When we build a canal in the United States we do not make a contract with any other nation. The fact that we did make a contract with another nation concerning the Panama Canal presupposes that we did not have a free hand to do just as we pleased, but that we were compelled to secure certain rights, and that to secure those rights we naturally were compelled to bind ourselves to certain conditions to do something on our part. And what we want to arrive at is what we agreed to do.

* * *

"The remission of tolls to our coastwise vessels, or to any other vessels belonging to the citizens of the United States or of any other country, is a clear violation of our international agreement. When the Senate of the United States voted in favor of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty it did so on the clear and unequivocal understanding that this treaty on which it was voting, irrespective of any and all previous utterances and declarations of the Government, and irrespective of whether the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty was alive or dead, did bind this country to treat all vessels

of the world on an equality with our own vessels. I will not say that there might not have been some individual Senator who might have carried in the secret chambers of his mind a conviction that he could at some future time, if called upon, give the treaty a different construction. What I do say is that if he had any such conviction he did not publicly disclose it in the debates, and he knew that the Senate as a body and the Committee on Foreign Relations which reported the treaty, as clearly shown in its reports, did understand that the treaty did bind us to this equality of treatment. And while there was a vigorous minority report by Senator Morgan, that minority report took no issue, but confirmed the construction placed upon the treaty by the majority.

"With these two reports before the Senate it would be a slander upon both its judgment and its sense of integrity to say that while without a word of protest it voted for this treaty that it nevertheless so voted with a secret conviction that these committee reports, which gave a certain construction to the Hay-Pauncefote treaty-a construction in harmony with the views of Secretary Hay and Lord Pauncefote-could at some future time be repudiated.

"I put this question squarely up to Senators on both sides of this Chamber: Admitting that the treaty by its terms does not preclude a construction authorizing us to discriminate in favor of our own vessels, but that both countries understood that it did so, that both Mr. Hay and Lord Pauncefote understood that it did preclude us from discriminating in favor of our vessels, and that the Senate when it confirmed the treaty knew that the parties under

stood it that way, and the Senate as a whole understood it the same way, would you then declare that, notwithstanding this mutual understanding, we should give it a construction contrary to what was then understood?

"Or, putting it in another form, if the contract itself is uncertain as to its intent, but the parties to the contract were agreed as to its intent when they executed it, should or should not each party be morally bound to give the contract a construction in harmony with their intent when they executed it?

"I shall omit all the earlier history pertaining to this question, every word of which gives added strength to my contention, and immediately proceed to the conditions surrounding the negotiations of the first and second Hay-Pauncefote treaties, reaching back of that only momentarily to draw from the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850 only a paragraph always referred to thereafter as the 'general principle,' and which was the only part of that old agreement retained, in any form, in the new. That ‘general principle' was expressed in these words:

And the same canals or railways being open to the citizens and subjects of the United States and Great Britain on equal terms, shall be open on like terms to the citizens and subjects of every other State

"This is our starting point. There is the 'general principle'; and while it was reiterated a thousand times thereafter, it has never been reiterated in the sense that it has been modified.

"We start right here from this 'general principle,' which guaranteed equality of treatment to not only vessels

of the United States and Great Britain, but also to vessels of all other nations. Now, that 'general principle' was asserted and re-asserted by both parties again and again down to the adoption of the second Hay-Pauncefote treaty. Up to that time it meant equality of treatment of all vessels, including those of the United States. If it is now to have another meaning, that other meaning must be found either in an expressed declaration to that effect, or in a clear inference because of change from individual to Government ownership and control of the canal.

"At that time in the discussions in the press of our own country we took the position that the interest upon the investment and the operating expenses should be borne by all vessels passing through that canal. All our estimates for receipts in tolls to repay interest included all our vessels, coastwise and otherwise. That was what we understood on this side

of the ocean.

*

"In closing, I cannot but feel, and deeply feel, that this is not a mere question of dollars and cents. The matter of the payment of these tolls is a bagatelle, but we cannot measure national integrity in dollars and cents. We can throw our dollars to the winds, but we cannot throw national character to the winds. The President of the United States has taken a lofty stand in this case, and no matter whether we be Democrats or Republicans, we ought to stand by him in his effort to uphold the national integrity of this Government in the eyes of the whole world."

We will now use excerpts from the scholarly speech of Representative Stevens:

"It seems to me that the difference in the discussion between the two sides of this question is fundamental in this particular. Those of us who contend for equal tolls without discrimination as to any nation believe that the principal basis in the settlement of this question should be international, and that domestic considerations should be secondary. Those who differ with us believe that domestic considerations should be primary and that international questions should be secondary.

*

"The geography of the world clearly shows its international importance. The Panama Canal is a strait connecting the two greatest oceans of the world. Upon these oceans face practically every great civilized and commercial nation of the world. Upon these oceans has been and will be carried the great mass of the waterborne commerce of the world. Upon these oceans, as we do, face nine nations, with more or less coastwise commerce between their coasts. Upon these oceans front the mother and the colonial possessions of the most important nations in the world, and upon these oceans and passing through that canal will be an increasing intercourse, which will change, more or less-probably more, as the years go on-the destiny, political, commercial and social, of all of these great peoples and countries. We must realize, then, that all of these peoples and all interests of all nations are greatly interested in the management and operation of this canal. They are interested in their own right, and they have natural, God-given rights in this great connecting waterway, which must be considered by any just people to whom may be intrusted the task of administering it.