THE PANAMA CANAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9765, 2 April 1914, Page 4

THE PANAMA CANAL.

In securing by so substantial a majority the passage of the Bill repealing the exemption granted to American shipping from payment of Panama tolls, President Wilson has not only enhanced his reputation as a statesman, but has saved his great nation from an act which would have been accounted dishonourable by the rest of the world. His course has not been an easy one, but with quiet power the President has pursued the straight path, quite unmindful of fierce attacks of hired politicians and the yellow press. The American people, great in so many respects, are singularly prone to a species of magnified parochialism, and this has been particularly in evidence during the tortuous negotiations over the waterway which is about to unite two oceans. America's private gains have, even by reputable statesmen like Mr Champ Clark, been put above her national honour, and the arguments used to explain away her treaty obligations have not infrequently bordered ion caricature. The now famous HayPauncefote treaty appeared to the ordinary mind quite incapable of any other interpretation than that put on it by Great Britain and the rest of the nations—that the United States has no legal or moral right to discriminate in favour of its own shipping. The terms of the document are surely plain enough: 'The canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules, on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of traffic or otherwise. Such conditions and charges of traffic shall be just and equitable." American ingenuity, however, was equal to twisting even that explicit understanding. Ex-President Taft, for instance, contended that "all nations" meant all nations except the United States. Another way out of the awkward hole was the suggestion that it was competent for the American Government to pay a portion of the tolls for shipping under the flag of the United States, or that rebates could be made, and that provided the tolls were estimated on the basis of all shipping paying full rates, the action of the United States Government in making rebates, or in making good the deficiency resulting from the payment of lower rates by its shipping, would not infringe the terms of the treaty. This, however, was merely another evasion of the plain duty of the States, and it must come as a pleasant surprise to find that the honourable course has been now approved by Congress, where, to quote a New York journal, the forces of national dishonour too often appear to hold the stronger hand.