MORE AMERICAN BLUFF.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11567, 16 January 1913, Page 4

MORE AMERICAN BLUFF.

It is much easier to marvel at the ingenuity of some of the arguments with which American politicians are seeking to justify the Panama Canal Act than it is to conceive any respect for them.

Indeed, with every additional word they say ou the subject, the American apologists only appear to be piling the Pelion upon the Ossa of their own dishonour. The latest illustration of their no less futile than frantic endeavour to gloze over a flagrant and unpardonable violation of solemn treaty obligations was provided in a cable message which we printed yesterday. There we had tho comment of Mr P. C. Knox, the i American Secretary of State, upon the position. Mr Knox, we are told, "follows Mr Taft's arguments that the United States has full rights of control over coastwise shipping , . He also contends that there is nothing in the HayPauucefotc Treaty amounting to a surrender by the United States of the right to regulate its own shilling through the"canal. He interprets Article :■$ as binding on all nations except the United States, which, however, is bound not to discriminate against any one of them, provided they observe tho rules for the management of the canal." In its way, this is about the most masterly piece of sophistry we have yet lighted upon. Article 3, it appears, is binding on all nations except the United States. But Article 3 provides for the neutralisation of the canal upon the same lines as apply to the Suez Canal. It applies, therefore, in the absence of any express stipulation to the contrary, to all nations subject to international law, and it recites that "the canal is to be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations on equal terms, and on just and equitable conditions." When it is borne in mind that the HayPauncefotc Treaty represents a liberal concession to the United States by Great Britain in comparison with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty which it replaced, can' it for a moment be supposed that when it was negotiated the British Government entertained any conscious intention of sanctioning an interpretation of its terms which gives a tremendous advantage to American shipping over that of every other nation? The very idea is absurd to any non-American mind, and, as earlier cable messages have indicated, it is repulsive to every honest American mind.