PANAMA CANAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1, 2 September 1913, Page 5

PANAMA CANAL.

MEETING OF THE WATERS NEARING COMPLETION. ißt Electrio Telegraph —Copyright] [United Press Association.] New York, September J. The last barrier of the Pacific cm of the Panama Canal has been blown up. There were 541 shots. 4 lie water flowed quickly and dredges are working clearing the channel. The dredges will start clearing the last of the Atlantic end on September 2, and when they have finished the canal will be navigable for ships. In celebrating the final cutting of the Panama Canal the exposition will mark a characteristic American feaf with tpyical American thoroughness and enterprise and ingenuity. There is really no practical reason why the neck of that little isthmus should not have been cut a generation ago (writes H.J.H. for the Sydney Daily Telegraph). Men have done as big things, ns the great wall of China, the Pyramids, and the Peruvian roads attest; and in their demands upon endurance i and physical strength and patience and “solid Teutonic pluck” what did any of these ask of humanity comparable to what Franklin and Scott and Peary and Amundsen boldly stood up to at the Poles? Even now another canal might bo cut were not the Americans shrewd enough to forestall any such attempt by sending their armed forces to make a paternal intervention in the domestic affairs of Nicaragua. But the result is the test, and the result in this case is that after various foreign attempts to make a nick between North America and the leg-of-mutton continent below the United States |ias come in and is triumphantly doing the job. It is thus an American business—as it always should have been—and it is properly Americans who will jubilate over its completion. In the main entrance to the walled city of the exposition there will be a Panama Canal allegory. On a gigantic horse an heroic man, “with extended arms pushing the waters apart.” One carps, perhaps; the true idea would seem to be man, Atlasempowered. pushing continents apart, hut no doubt the designers have got i tright.' Elsewhere and everywhere sculptures indicative of junction between the rising-and setting suns, of oast and west fraternising, in now and unexpected conjunction, of youth ambitiously aiming an arrow at the sun, of great illuminated globes typifying coming and going suns—and other things allegorical of the great new sea road which must mean so much to the world of commerce and industry, and therefore of individual effort everywhere. Americans are shovelling millions while other nations are a-ls n shelling out freely. Japan talks, of spending a million dollars on gardens and architecture—though whether if does so must he very dubiously on the knees of the gods in view of present relations between America and j that country. And France has asked for a- reserve of twelve acres. Who thor in thfe meantime it will he worth Australia’s while to put more money j into the venture is also for time to show, and depends largely on American political events. If the ports of the groat Republic arc to he made free to our meat and wool, it may he worth while taking this chance of huge American advertisements.