The poetry that is latent in modern science, still awaiting its singer, shows in the story of the Panama Canal. Nature fought the great French engineer, de Lesseps, on that narrow peninsula, and conquered him. His project for uniting the waterways of the Pacific and the Atlantic was defeated. But not by hills or distances. Nature's chief means of resistance to science was the mobilising of her armies of subtle poisoners. The microbes of malaria, yellow fever, of other diseases of the tropical marshes, fell upon the canal workers. The mortality was frightful. Coolie workers, according to one calculation, had a year's probability of life when they took to work on the canal. The superintendents and engineers of the White Race went to their tasks as soldiers go to a forlorn hope. Finally the forces of disease conquered. The French project for cutting a canal through the isthmus of Panama was abandoned, having ruined the majority of those who had subscribed to its funds, having killed the majority of those who had given to it of their labour.

The United States having decided to take over the responsibility for a task of such advantage to the world's civilisation, gave to it at the outset the benefit of a scientific consideration touched with imagination. There were hills to be levelled, ditches to be dug, water-courses to be tamed, locks to be built. All that was clear enough. But how to secure the safety of the workers? Nature's defenders, though fed fat with victory, were still eager, relentless for new victims. Science said that to build a canal wholesome working conditions must be created: yellow fever and malaria abolished. Science also told how. The massacre of the mosquitoes of the isthmus was the first task in canal-building.

The mosquitoes, the disseminators of the deadly tropical diseases, were attacked in their breeding grounds, and their larvÆ easily destroyed by putting a film of oil over the surface of the shallow waters in which they lived. The oil smothered the life in the larvÆ, and they perished before they had fully developed. The insect fortunately has no great range of flight. Its life is short, and it cannot pass far from its birthplace. Herodotus tells how Egyptians avoided mosquitoes by sleeping in high towers. The natives of Papua escape them by building their huts in the forks of great trees. If the mosquitoes are effectively exterminated within a certain area, there is certainty of future immunity from them within that area if the marshes, the pools—the stagnant waters generally on its boundaries—are thereafter guarded during the hatching season against the chance of mosquito larvÆ coming to winged life. At Suez scientists had found this all out. Science conquered the mosquito in Panama as it had been conquered elsewhere, and the entrenchments of Nature crumbled away. Henceforth it was a matter of rock-cutters, steam shovels and explosives, the A B C of modern knowledge. But the mosquito put up a stubborn fight. Driven out of the marshes, it found a refuge in the cisterns of houses, even in the holy-water founts of churches. Every bit of stagnant water within the isthmus area had to be protected against the chance of mosquitoes coming to life before the campaign was successful. To-day the isthmus of Panama is by no means unhealthy, and the work of canal-cutting progresses so well that Mr President Taft was able to announce recently the probability of it being opened two years before the due date. That brings the canal as a realised fact right into the present.

Some few facts regarding this engineering work. It will cost about £70,000,000. The total length of the canal to be made from sea to sea is 50-1/2 miles, with a maximum width on the bottom of 1000 feet. The land excavation is 40-1/2 miles of cutting through rock, sand and clay, leaving 10 miles of channel to be deepened to reach the sea at either end. Some of the other construction dimensions are these:—

Locks, usable length 1,000 feet.
Locks, usable width 110 feet.
Gatun Lake, area 164 square miles.
Gatun Lake, channel depth 84 to 45 feet.
Excavation, estimated total 174,666,594 cubic yards.
Concrete, total estimated for canal 5,000,000 cubic yards.

The Gatun is the greatest rock and earth-fill dam ever attempted. Forming Gatun Lake by impounding the waters of the Chagres and other streams, it will be nearly 1-1/2 miles long, nearly 1/2 mile wide at its base, about 400 feet wide at the water surface, about 100 feet wide at the top. Its crest, as planned, will be at an elevation of 115 feet above mean sea-level, or 30 feet above the normal level of the lake. The interior of the dam is being formed of a natural mixture of sand and clay placed between two large masses of rock, and miscellaneous material obtained from steam-shovel excavation at various points along the canal.

Gatun Lake will cover an area of 164 square miles, with a depth in the ship channel varying from 85 to 45 feet. The necessity for this artificial lake is because of the rugged hills of Panama. A sea-level canal would have been a financial impossibility. By a lock system lifting vessels up to Gatun Lake (a height of 85 feet), an immense amount of excavation was saved. Incidentally the alarm was allayed of that ingenious speculator who foretold that the Gulf Stream would take a new path through the Panama Canal and desert the West Coast of Europe, on the climate of which it has so profound an influence. When the canal was opened England was to revert to her "natural climate"—that of Labrador! But since the canal will not be a sea-level one, it cannot of course have the slightest effect on ocean currents. The amount of Pacific and Atlantic water which will be mutually exchanged by its agency each year will be insignificant.

The Panama Canal, when opened, will be exclusively United States property; it will be fortified and defended by the United States army and navy: and it will probably in time of peace be used to help United States trade, and in time of war to help the United States arms. All those conclusions are natural, since the United States has found the money for the work, and claims under the Monroe doctrine an exclusive hegemony of the American continent south of the Canadian border. But originally it was thought that the canal would be, in a sense, an international one. Later the idea was entertained, and actually embodied, in a treaty between Great Britain and the United States that whilst "the United States should have the exclusive right of providing for the regulation and management of the canal," it should not be fortified. But the Treaty of 1902 between Great Britain and the United States abrogated that, and provided for the "neutralisation" of the canal. It was stipulated that "the United States adopts, as the basis of the neutralisation of such ship canal, the following rules, substantially as embodied in the Convention of Constantinople, signed the 28th October 1888, for the free navigation of the Suez Canal." The Rules provide that the canal shall be open to the vessels of commerce and war of all nations on terms of equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any nation or its citizens or subjects in respect to conditions or charges.

Rule 2 states: "The canal shall never be blockaded, nor shall any right of war be exercised, nor any act of hostility be committed within it. The United States, however, shall be at liberty to maintain such military police along the canal as may be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and disorder." The third rule prohibits vessels of war of a belligerent from revictualling or taking on stores in the canal except so far as may be strictly necessary. Under Rule 4 belligerents may not embark or disembark troops, munitions of war, or warlike materials, except in case of accidental hindrance in transit, "and in that case the transit shall be resumed with all possible despatch. Waters adjacent to the canal within three marine miles of either end are considered as part of the canal. Vessels of war of a belligerent are not permitted to remain in those waters longer than twenty-four hours, except in case of distress." The last rule makes the plant, establishments, buildings, and the works necessary for the construction, maintenance and operation of the canal part of the canal, "and in time of war, as in time of peace, they shall enjoy complete immunity from attack or injury by belligerents, and from acts calculated to impair their usefulness as part of the canal."

But it seems clear that anything, stated or implied, in that Treaty, which is calculated to limit the sovereign rights of the United States in regard to the canal, will be allowed to be forgotten, for the canal has lately, since the question of the control of the Pacific came to the front, shown to the United States even more as a military than as an industrial necessity. In war time the United States will use the canal so that she may mobilise her Fleet in either ocean. Already she has passed estimates amounting to £3,000,000 for installing 14-inch guns, searchlights, and submarine mines at either entrance. She is also establishing a naval base at Cuba to guard the Atlantic entrance, and designs yet another base at the Galapagos Islands. At present those islands belong to Ecuador, and Ecuador objects to parting with them. But it is probable that a way will be found out of that difficulty, for it is clear that a strong United States naval base must be established on the Pacific as well as the Atlantic threshold of the canal. This base, with another at Cuba, would meet the objection I saw raised by an American Admiral last year when he said: "In the event of the United States being at war with a first-class naval Power, I doubt very much whether the canal would be used once hostilities were declared. I assume that our opponent would have so disposed his Fleets as to engage ours in the Atlantic or Pacific coasts according as circumstances might require, and that if we were stupid or careless enough to be caught napping with our vessels scattered, no person in authority with any sense would risk sending our ships through the canal. Our enemy would lie in wait for us and pick off our vessels as they entered or emerged from the canal, and every advantage would be on their side and against us. This, of course, is on the assumption that the opposing force would be at least as powerful as our own. If we had preponderating strength conditions would be different, but if the navies were evenly matched it would be hazardous in the extreme to use the canal. Nor would the fortifications be of much help to us. So long as our ships remained within the waters of the canal zone they would, of course, be under the protection of the guns of the forts, but as soon as they came on the high seas, where they would have to come if they were to be of any use, the fortifications would be of little benefit to them, and little injury to the enemy."

But when to the actual fortification of the canal is added the provision of a strong advanced base near each entrance, this criticism falls to the ground. Between those advanced bases would be "American water," and on either base a portion of the American Fleet could hold an enemy in check until the mobilisation of the whole Fleet.

The world must make up its mind to the fact that the Panama Canal is intended by the United States as a means of securing her dominance in the Pacific, without leaving her Atlantic coast too bare of protection in the event of a great war. Great Britain is the only Power with any shadow of a claim to object, and her claim would be founded on treaties and arrangements which she has either abrogated or allowed to fall into oblivion. Probably it will never be put forward. By a course of negotiation, which, for steadiness of purpose and complete concealment of that purpose until the right time came for disclosure, might be a pattern to the most effective fighting despotism, the American democracy has surmounted all obstacles of diplomacy in Panama just as the obstacles of disease and distance were surmounted. The reluctance of a disorderly sister Republic to grant the territory for the canal was overcome by adding a beneficent one to its numerous useless revolutions. The jealousy of Europe was first soothed and ultimately defied. It is safe to venture the opinion that the reluctance of Ecuador to part with the Galapagos will also be overcome. Then from New York to Pekin will stretch a series of American naval bases—Cuba, Panama, the Galapagos, Hawaii, the Philippines.

The intention, announced on some authority, of the United States to use the canal in times of peace as a tariff weapon for the furthering of American trade may arouse some protest, but it is difficult to see how such a protest can have any effect. The United States will be able to reply that it is her canal, bought with her own money, and that it is her right, therefore, to do with it as she pleases. In a special message to Congress at the end of 1911, Mr Taft urged the necessity for the establishment of preferential rates for American shipping passing through the Panama Canal. He cited the practice of foreign Governments in subsidising their merchant vessels, and declared that an equivalent remission of canal tolls in favour of American commerce could not be held to be discrimination. The message went on: "Mr Taft does not believe that it would be the best policy wholly to remit the tolls for domestic commerce for reasons purely fiscal. He desires to make the canal sufficiently profitable to meet the debt amassed for its construction, and to pay the interest upon it. On the other hand, he wishes to encourage American commerce between the Atlantic and the Pacific, especially in so far as it will insure the effectiveness of the canal as a competitor with the trans-Continental railways." The President concluded, therefore, that some experimentation in tolls would be necessary before rates could be adjusted properly, or the burden which American shipping could equitably bear could be definitely ascertained. He hinted at the desirability of entrusting such experimentation to the executive rather than to the legislative branch of the Government.

In plain language, the United States Government asked for a free hand to shape rates for the use of the Panama Canal so that American shipping interests could be promoted. The shipping affected would not be merely from one American port to another, but between American and foreign countries. By the present shipping laws American "coastal trade" i.e. trade between one American port and another, even if one of the ports be Manila or Honolulu, is closely safeguarded for American bottoms by a rigid system of Protection.

A Daily Telegraph correspondent, writing from New York to London at the time of Mr President Taft's message, described the trend of American public opinion which was shown by the changing of the registry of the Red Star liners Kroonland and Finland from Belgian to American. "This morning Captain Bradshaw, an American, assumed command, and the ceremony of hauling down the foreign flag and hoisting the Stars and Stripes took place. The reasons for the change are not announced, but it is said that the approaching completion of the Panama Canal has something to do with it, and shipping circles here declare that the change of registry presages the entry of the Kroonland and her sister ship the Finland into the American coast trade between Pacific and Atlantic ports, via the Panama Canal. It is expected that a heavy subsidy will be given to American steamships by the United States Government carrying mails from the Atlantic to the Pacific via Panama, and it is generally believed that the owners of the Kroonland and the Finland have this in mind."

Clearly the United States, having expended £70,000,000 directly, and a great deal indirectly, on the Panama Canal, intends to put it to some profitable use, both in war time and in peace time. Naval supremacy in the Pacific in war time, industrial supremacy in peace time—those are the benefits which she expects to derive.