ROM the days of Columbus the world has desired a canal across the American isthmus, and since the acquisition of California and a frontage on the Pacific the people of the United States have not ceased to consider how the isthmian barrier might be broken through. Now that the hope is about to be realized, what, it may well be asked, is it that the United States and the world are to gain by the expenditure of the $400,000,000 that it has cost to construct the water-way?

The Panama Canal has frequently been declared to be a commercial convenience and a military necessity for the people of the United States. This is such a generalization as would naturally be made by the military expert, and by those statesmen and publicists who place great emphasis upon the enhancement of the military power and naval prestige of the United States. This is not the point of view of business men and of the public generally; they regard the canal as a highway constructed to reduce the expenses and risks of commerce, to make possible the expansion of industry, and to enlarge the profitable employment of labor.

It is for peaceful purposes rather than for military uses that the canal has been built. The American people have not been animated mainly by military ambitions in the work they have done at Panama; their primary object has been to promote their domestic trade, and to remove the handicap under which they now compete with the people of Europe for the vast commerce of the Pacific.

asset.

Nevertheless, the Panama Canal will be a valuable, and most welcome, military The United States is a worldpower fronting the Atlantic and Pacific, upon both of which oceans it must maintain an efficient naval force. To-day the

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fleets that defend our eastern and western seaboards and hold the ægis of their protection over our foreign trade are thirteen thousand miles apart; they cannot support each other; each must be strong enough to do its own work, and to fight, unaided, its own battles.

The Panama Canal will bring the Atlantic and Pacific squadrons of the American navy closer to each other, and thus greatly increase the mobility of the fleets; and it will accomplish much more than that. The strong fortifications guarding the canal at the entrances will also protect coaling stations, docks, and machine-shops. The Canal Zone is thus made a secure and wellequipped naval base at which fleets may be assembled, from which a squadron may go forth to strike a blow, and to which it may confidently return for coal, supplies, and necessary repairs. The canal will thus practically unite the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.

Naval experts have said that the canal will double the efficiency of the American navy. This may be an exaggeration, but it is a roughly accurate generalization. Of course, one hardly needs to be a military expert to realize of what strategic value it will be to the United States to have strong fortifications and a secure naval base at the sole gateway between the Atlantic and Pacific.

By the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, as first drafted, the United States was not to fortify the canal, and the promise was made to Great Britain that treaties neutralizing the canal would be entered into with other nations. The Senate wisely took these provisions out of the proposed treaty, and the convention that was subsequently negotiated and ratified contained no references to fortifications. The existing Hay-Pauncefote treaty stipulates that "the canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and war

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