PANAMA CANAL

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15853, 26 November 1923, Page 8

PANAMA CANAL

CROSBROAD OF THE WORLD.

OCCIDENT AND ORIENT MEET

Everyone has sought since word? > began to find the literal expression ol the idea of the crossroads of the world, where men and ships and caravans meet and barter and pass on. ' Babylon, Tyre, Corinth, Alexandria, Carthage, Rome, Venice, m the litt'le world of the Mediterranean, and in later epochs Constantinople, Suez, and Singapore —none of these has achieved the fullness of the idea of the "Crossroads of the World.” Not until our time, declares Wallace Thompson in the “Christian Science Monitor,” not ■ until the canal was cut at Panama and traffic east and west, north and south, came to pass the same gateways, was the romantic dream of humanity brought to realisation, Panama is literally such a crossroads. Here mingle all the races of I lie world, from the turbaned Hindu to the members of the American jazz orchestra of the newest Pacific mail liner. There is no greater surprise I in store for the traveller, no more dej finite and tangible thrill, than this I realisation that the bazaars of the | Orient and the tourists of the Occident | meet and mingle and arc home, in the | cities of Panama. Tourist and sailor j and orchestra leader wander Panama together, to buy ivory from India. "Panama” hats from Ecuador, stuffed lizards from the sandhills of Ihe canal, and picture post-cards from Germany.

The “natives” of Panama are Chinese and Negroes from the British West Indies and if one doubts the preponderance of the dusky British subjects in the thought of the community, one quickly learns the mistake on finding the rule of the road throughout all Panama (and Ihe Canal zone) is to pass to the loft, a rule which England has with difficulty imjresscd on only a few of her own colonies. Of “Panamanians” there ore a dwindling few, an aristocracy of Spanish descent and substratum of mixed Spanisli and Indian—steadily beinc mixed yet more with the Chinese and Hacks of the already predominant “immigrants.” Yet the country is still theirs, and if one doubts it, try to get along with English and no Spanish, say, 200 yards away ftom the edge of the canal zone! For Spain persists as it has persisted in language wliercever its sons have touched, all the wide world around, India, Africa, the Philip--1 ines, and alt of ihe Americans save the United Slates, Canada, and Portuguese Brazil

I Where the Canal Winds. ! Panama and the Republic thereof are | very much alive and very tangible i realities. Through the heart of the i country runs the canal, but beyond the ; i.ne of the canal zone all is PanamaI niaii, the streets and the shops and the people and the very life that, at first i blush, seems to the traveller to carry | with it ail the odour of romance of | that idea of the "Crossroads of- the | World.” It is in Panama that one will find the remains of all the things anu scenes that have marked the gath- ! ( ring places of rough men and passing I ships since ages before the days of Marco Polo. They are all there, in their tilth and their colour and their | ugliness and their exotic lure. But : U is not these circles of romance nor j yet the world that eddies around the edges of these merry scenes that | make Panama typical of the Crossroads I of the World as no other of al'l the 1 orts and caravan stations of history have been. Straight across the Republic of Panama from north to south, wide on each side of the canal, runs a strip of land, the Canal Zone. Legally this land Lelongs to the United States; actually it, is the “plant” of the greatest business enterprise which the world has ever seen concentrated into a similar space. For the canal is one of the great businesses of the world. No one needs to be told its size, or its magnificence as an engineering feat. It represents, in white concrete and interlocking railways, an investment of a \ust sum of money, covered by a bond issue, without a eenl of capital stock, and yet with 1td,000,000 stockholders, the people who, when they look on this great and significant investment sigh, individually; "Well, I’m glad my four dollars is in it!” The canal itself is the simplestlooking part of it, for it is this hit of America which is there which is significant, the nouses buiit by the canal, the executive offices which are the models of the world, and the cafeterias which would make even Los Angeles jealous. There are paved streets, winding drives up the hill at Balboa, a beautiful army post with trim white buildings and gTeen parade grounds. I It is all one of the quiet wonders of j modern civilisation, that in the midst of the tropics which fer cenLuries baffled every other force brought to j bear upon them, Americans have been permitted to build and to maintain this vast example of efficiency, faith, and sublimated honour —for the canal is all of that. Panama, across the line, lingers on, dirty, ugly, overrun with the riffraff of the world, in the background of her history, her most romantic thoughts tales of the pirates of the Spanish main, her chief show place the dismal ruins where Sir Henry Morgan sacked and burnt an older City of Panama 300 years ago.

World Grips Hands Here, The “crossroads of the World" is an ideal full of thrills and romance, sought for amid the dirt of East and West, and found, strangely and unexpectedly, in a spot where human dreams and hopes have brought forth a place where (he world passes and grips hands in the narrow waters, and where a Iropic sun looks down on white buildings, on grey cement locks, and on silent, tiny electric locomotives pulling great ships easily from sea to sea

Panama and her dirt and saloons end filth will pass away—progressive native government sees the handwriling on the wall and begs (and gets) the opportunity and Ihe money to clean the cities and to make smooth the ways. Some, day there will he no more clamour when the Canal Zone talks of letting someone establish shops in the limits of the American concession, and some day there will he not even a shudder from (he Panama Government when someone liinls that the free and independent Republic may he coerced into closing (he saloons (whose taxes, we are told, pay most of Ihe expenses of government).

Bui for the moment the old Panama it mains, Irvins' ils best In fulllll the old idoa of Iho world’s crossroads, as picturesque as ever romance could describe it. But beside it, within it, the real crossroads, the clean efficiency and impel sonalness of the American Administration, the expensive but com-

forting Canal Zone hotels (in strikin contrast to the best of the nath town). A place of Gargantuan contrast Panama, and never has contrast c new and old come so dlose. The oJ “crossroads” arc there in Panama stil with all the odours of Singapon Gibraltar, Suez, and Bagdad. Do beside it the gleaming grey-white o the canal cement and stucco, the lock* the hotels, the houses, the tenni courts, the roads and the overhangin, white eaves of the United States Go vemment Cafeteria, with Panama lot) ster at 30 cents the lobster—boiled I The old order changetti, and the lob ster takes up its dwelling in the cafe teria, while the cabaret languishes ii dismal realisation that its end is dost at hand.