THE CANAL OF THE CENTURY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE CANAL OF THE CENTURY.

BT TOKTJNGA. The canal of the Nineteenth Century was that of Suez. The canal of the Twentieth Century will be that of Panama. The Suez Canal affected Auckland and New Zealand comparatively little, but the Panama Canal must affect Auckland and. New Zealand a very great deal. In fact, there are a thousand reasons for thinking that the effect of the Panama Canal upon civilisation and mankind will be enormously greater than any other engineering work could possibly be, and that it will not be confined to the deviation of trade routes, but will shift the balance of political power and disturb the balance of commercial activity.

The Suez Canal rejuvenated Egypt, and is having an invigorating influence upon Asia Minor, but the great sandy deserts of North-Eastern Africa and South-Western Asia offer little opportunity to civilisation. As the great modern liner moves slowly along from Suez to Port Said, it passes through a scene of desolation which impresses the mind of every traveller, and during the dreaded run through the sweltering Red Sea there is nothing to tempt a landing upon inhospitable and barren coasts. Not until . the Indian Ocean is crossed and Ceylon reached does fertility gladden the eye; one might be a ghost in a dead land, sailing in a spectral ship across spectral seas. And there, in the Canal, one crosses the ancient caravan route which has remained unchanged since the Midianitish merchants carried Joseph captive into Egypt, and which may remain unchanged after the Canal has silted up again, as it would do in a year if Western Civilisation fell back before the renewed onslaught of the East. ,

East of Suez—let us frankly admit it — the European has made no lasting impression. We rule India, and we have marched to Pekin and Lhassa, and we have sold cruisers to Japan, but we are but sojourners even where we wield authority. We have not planted an inch of land with anything but European bones. We have not built in all the wide lands of "Asia a single English home. Steer southward to Fremantle and you come to where the English speech fills the air, and the English folk throng the street and spread over the land. But Asia is alien, and can never be anything but alien.* The Suez Canal is a' trade route only, the short cut of. the European over another man's barren fields. The Panama Canal will be more than this.

When the Panama Canal is cut through the European world will swing on its commercial exis, and, there will be a flow of population seeking the new levels. New Zealand will; not greatly shorten its distance from London by using the new Canal, but it will immensely shorten its distance from the population centres of the Englishspeaking world. Suez leads to nowhere but the Canal and the Far East. Panama leads to all the American coasts and to all the American States. The London-bound traveller may diverge from the Canal to California or to Peru, may branch off by way; of the Mississippi to Canada and the Great Lakes, or by way of the Magdalena to the wonderland of the Incas. The Suez : Canal opens eastwardly upon the most desolate of coasts, and into the most oppres- '■ sive of - seas.; i< the Panama Canal will opestraight into the Spanish Main, with its thronging ports and its rich commerce, and the vast back-countries which still wait for the adventurous Northerner. Mexico and Louisiana, Guatemala and Venezuela, the West Indies and the Leeward Islands, Alabama and Florida, names that conjure up a thousand traditions, all are in the broadening path opened up by the Canal.'

We talk of rich countries, but the richest region of the world lies An European hands around the Spanish Main. To New Orleans, the Father of Waters and its tributaries bear the wheat of far Wisconsin and the stock of Kentucky, the sugar and cotton of a dozen sub-tropical States. And while the northern coast is yielding its utmost under strong American hands, the southern lies dozing in feeble Latin possession. Gold and silver and cocoa, rubber and quinine, copper and iron and asphalt, cattle and sheep and horses— that men desire is to be found or grown in the Central and South American regions which drain into the Spanish Main. .

The Panama Canal will not only divert the trading ships from the inhospitable Horn, but it will flood with enterprising settlers and adventurers these long neglected treasuries. The English-speaking man will break into them from New Orleans and Galveston and Key West and San Francisco. The Australian and the New Zealander will be found in the van. From the mother-hives of the Northern hordes, that lie about the North Sea, and from the swarming Italian provinces where millions are being battened" below hatches by American exclusion law, great emigrant movements will set in for the Spanish Main. And all this will gradually overshadow Europe. The great navies that will someday muster at Panama may be under one flag, but it will be a flag that has not yet been seen on a European battle-field.

While the British are occupying Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the other English-speaking nation will not be standing still. Already it is straddling the Panama Isthmus like a Colossus, holding in lease a ten-mile-wide road, which the might that is right has already made practically freehold.' By the ditch it is digging at a monstrous cost its warships will pass from coast to coast, and with its warships its merchant vessels and the trading ships of all friendly nations. . Primarily, the Canal is a naval weapon that cannot be the end of it. A Canal dug to prevent the fatal division of a national fleet does more than unite oceans it transforms the face of the world.

As, for instance, its effect upon the European occupation of the tropics. The American Government has swept malaria and yellow fever from one of the most pestiferous regions known to man. It has set itself to keep its canal-diggers healthy, and in the process has discovered that sanitary science can conquer tropical diseases, and enable a man to live as long at Panama as at New York or Auckland. This is a discovery of which the ultimate issue must be tremendous. For it will give the key to the European occupation of the entire Spanish Mam, and to the reassertion of European occupation in those States of the American Union where it has appeared to be failing. Right upon the heels of this comes the discovery that the incapacity and lassitude—commonly called " laziness" the poor whites in the Southern States of the Union is due to a parasite, imported with the negroes from Africa, against which parasite the negroes are' constitutionally immune, while well-to-do whites are protected by their cleanliness and sanitary measures. From Panama, then, the European may invade the tropics as a settler and an occupier. By the end of the Century, the Stars and Stripes may wave form the St. Lawrence to the Amazon, and be the national symbol of 200,000,000 Eng-lish-speaking people. When they are jotted down, the changes inevitable after the Canal is cut form a long and startling list. Summed up, they indicate that the centre of European civilisation will move westward, and that if we hold our own in the Pacific for a couple of generations, we need not be afraid of any dislodgement : by any Asiatic invasion. That . danger lies irt the near future, and to train every man to meet it is the best possible preventative, as well as the 6urest remedy. ' ' "