When, on February 20, 1915, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition opens its gates to the world, in celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal, it expects to offer to the nations of the earth a spectacle the like of which has never been equaled in the history of expositions. It is estimated that $50,000,000 will be spent in thus celebrating the great triumph of American genius at Panama. And those who know the spirit of the people of California, who are immediately responsible to the United States and to the world for the success of the undertaking, understand that nothing will be overlooked that might please the eye, stir the fancy, or arouse the patriotism of those who journey to the Golden Gate to behold the wonders of this great show.

The spirit that was San Francisco's following the terrible calamity of April 18, 1906, when the city was shaken to its foundations by a great earthquake, and when uncontrollable fire completed the ruin and devastation which the earthquake had begun, has been the spirit that has planned and is carrying to a successful culmination the Panama-Pacific Exposition. The San Francisco earthquake came as the most terrific blow that ever descended upon an American city. It left the metropolis of the Pacific a mass of ruins and ashes. In five years a newer and a prouder San Francisco arose from the ashes of the old, and greeted the world as the highest example of municipal greatness to which a community can rise at times when nothing is left to man but hope, and that hope is half despair.

The fire destroyed 8,000 houses, leaving such a hopeless mass of dÉbris that $20,000,000 had to be raised to reclaim the bare earth itself. In five years 31,000 finer and better houses had taken their places. Assessed values before the fire were $30,000,000 less than five years after. Bank clearings increased by a third and savings-bank deposits were greater after only five years than they were before the terrible catastrophe.

It may be imagined what wonders this spirit of the Golden West will accomplish when applied to the creation of an exposition. It is easy to forecast that, beautiful as have been the expositions of the past, and magnificent as has been the scale upon which they were planned, fresh palms will be awarded to San Francisco and the great fair it will offer to the World in 1915.

The city of the Golden Gate was planning a great celebration nearly two years before the calamity which overtook it in 1906. The first suggestion for holding a world's fair at San Francisco was made on June 12, 1904, when Mr. R. B. Hale wrote a letter to the San Francisco Merchants' Association advising its members that it would be wise to take steps toward securing for that city a great celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, in 1913. The matter was agitated for a year and a half and, a little more than three months prior to the earthquake, Representative Julius Kahn introduced in the National House of Representatives a bill providing for the celebration of the discovery of the Pacific, in 1913. Then followed the great catastrophe, and for the eight months next ensuing the problems of planning a new and greater San Francisco demanded all the attention of the people of that city. In December, 1906, however, the Pacific Ocean Exposition Company was incorporated with a capital stock of $5,000,000.

By 1910 New Orleans had loomed up as an aspirant for the honor of holding the great international celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal, and San Francisco understood that time for action was at hand, and, moreover, that money raised at home for the exposition would be the most eloquent advocate before Congress. Realizing this, a great mass meeting was called and in two hours subscriptions amounting to $4,089,000 were raised, headed by 40 subscriptions of $25,000 each.

In the fall of that year San Francisco was afforded an opportunity of attesting the universality of its interest in the success of the exposition. A proposition to vote $5,000,000 worth of bonds for the exposition was referred to the people. It carried by a vote of 42,040 to 2,122. The State of California also gave its citizens an opportunity to show their feeling, and by a vote of 174,000 to 50,000 made available bonds for $5,000,000 for the purposes of the exposition. The result has been that from first to last, within the confines of California's borders, a sum approximating $20,000,000 has been raised for exposition purposes. To this, $30,000,000 will be added by outside governments and by exhibitors and concessionaires.

The fight which led to the choosing of San Francisco as the city for holding the Panama celebration is, for the most part, familiar history. The law under which this choice was made was signed by President Taft on February 15, 1911. The presidential signature was the signal for the beginning of operations looking to the completion of all of the exposition buildings a full six months ahead of the opening date. The details of the site were worked out promptly. The site selected includes the western half of Golden Gate Park; Lincoln Park, which is situated on a high bluff overlooking the approach from the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate; and Harbor View, which is an extensive tract of level land, stretching along the shore of San Francisco Bay and back to the hills and the principal residential portion of the city.

Each element in this extensive site possesses its own peculiar charm; Golden Gate Park with its great variety of flowers and semitropical plants and trees; Lincoln Park with its outlook on the broad Pacific and along the rugged coastline to the north; and Harbor View with the Golden Gate to the left, a chain of climbing hills across the harbor in front, and the long sweep of bay and islands to the right. What nature has not done for the site of the exposition will be done by the art of the landscape gardener.

An ocean boulevard, to be made one of the most beautiful drives in the world, will become one of the permanent memorials of the exposition. A great esplanade, planted with cypress and eucalypti and liberally provided with seats, will extend along the water's edge for about half the entire length of the exposition grounds, affording ample opportunity for the thousands of visitors to watch the great water events which will constitute one of the features of the exposition. On the south side of this esplanade the principal exposition buildings, consisting of eight great palaces, will be located. A great wall, 60 feet high, will be built along the northern and western waterfronts for the purpose of breaking the winds which sweep down the harbor, and will be continued around the other two sides of the exposition grounds proper so as to constitute a walled inclosure which, in appearance, will remind one of the old walled towns of southern France and Spain.

The two principal gateways to the exposition grounds will open into great interior courts, around which the buildings will be ranged. It will be possible for the visitor to go from one building to another and complete the entire circuit of eight main exhibition palaces without once stepping from under cover. The three largest courts are named: The Court of the Sun and Stars, the Court of Abundance, and the Court of the Four Seasons. The Court of Abundance represents the Orient, and the Court of the Four Seasons, the Occident; the Court of the Sun and Stars, uniting the other two, will typify the linking of the Orient and the Occident through the completion of the Panama Canal. There will also be two lesser courts, known as the Court of Flowers and the Court of Palms. Outside of the walled city there will be five other important exhibition palaces.

The Panama-Pacific Exposition will be different from any that has gone before. Where others have been built on broad, level plains, this one will be located in one of nature's most beautiful natural amphitheaters, with the residential portions of San Francisco and the towns of the surrounding country looking down upon it. The architecture will be of such a nature that will make the "Fair City" indeed a fair city to behold.

If Chicago had its "White City," the San Francisco fair will be all aglow with rich color. It will be made to harmonize with the "vibrant tints of the native wild flowers, the soft browns of the surrounding hills, the gold of the orangeries, the blue of the sea." The artist in charge of this phase of the work declares that, "as the musician builds his symphony around a motif or chord," so it became his duty to "strike a chord of color and build his symphony upon it." The one thing upon which he insisted was that there should be no white, and the pillars, statues, fountains, masts, walls, and flagpoles that are to contrast with the tinted decorations are to be of ivory yellow. Even the dyeing of the bunting for flags and draperies is under the personal supervision of the artist in charge of the color scheme of the exposition. The roofs of the buildings will be harmoniously colored and the city will be a great party-colored area of red tiles, golden domes, and copper-green minarets. "Imagine," said Jules Guerin, the artist, "a gigantic Persian rug of soft melting tones with brilliant splotches here and there, spread down for a mile or more, and you may get some idea of what the Panama-Pacific Exposition will look like when viewed from a distance."

The lighting of the exposition will be by indirect illumination, affording practically the same intensity of light by night as by day. Lights will be hidden behind the colonnades, above the cornices, and behind masts on the roofs. Sculpture will stand out without shadow at night as by day. Great searchlights, many of them concentrated upon jets of steam, and playing in varying color, will add to the beauty of the scene. Even the fogs of the harbor will be made to contribute to the night effect of the exposition, and auroras will spread like draped lilies in the sky over the exhibition.

The sculpture will be unique in the history of exposition-giving. That phase of the work is under the control of Karl Bitter. In front of the main entrance, at the tower gate, there will be an allegory of the Panama Canal called "Energy; the lord of the Isthmian way." It will be represented by an enormous horse standing on a heavy pedestal, the horse carrying a man with extended arms pushing the waters apart. In the Court of the Sun and Stars two great sculptural fountains, typical of the rising and setting of the sun, will carry out the idea of "the world united and the land divided." In every part of the exposition scheme the sculpture will tell the story of the unification of the nations of the East and the West through the construction of the Panama Canal.

Nothing seems to have been overlooked in the plans that have been made to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal at San Francisco. There will be a working model of the Panama Canal, with a capacity of handling 2,000 people every 20 minutes. A reproduction of the Grand Canyon of Arizona will be another feature. The liberality of the prizes offered is indicated by the fact that premiums in the live-stock exhibits alone aggregate $175,000.

One of the greatest events of the exposition will be the rendezvous of representative ships from the fleets of all the nations of the earth in Hampton Roads in January and February, 1915. Their commanders will visit Washington and be received by the President. He will return with them to Hampton Roads and there review what promises to be the greatest international naval display in history. After this a long procession of fighting craft, perhaps accompanied by an equally long procession of tourist steamers, private yachts, and ships of commerce, will steam out of the Virginia Capes and turn their prows down the Spanish Main to Colon. Here the canal authorities will formally welcome the shipping world and pass its representatives through to the Pacific, whence they will sail to San Francisco, there to participate in the great celebration during the months which will follow. It may be that this great procession will be headed by the U. S. S. Oregon, whose trip around South America in 1898 proclaimed in tones that were heard in every hamlet in the United States the necessity of building the great waterway.

In addition to the great exposition at San Francisco, another will throw open its gates during 1915—the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego. This exposition will be held at a total outlay of, perhaps, $20,000,000. Nearly $6,000,000 is being spent on a magnificent sea wall. The San Diego and Arizona Railway is being built on a new and lower grade for nearly 220 miles. About $5,000,000 will be spent in making the exposition proper in Balboa Park. Over 11 miles of docks and a thousand acres of reclaimed land for warehouses and factory sites will be ready when the exposition opens on January 1, 1915. The fair will have 30 acres of Spanish gardens. A great Indian congress and exhibit will be held, representing every tribe of North and South America. This exposition will in nowise interfere with the big show at San Francisco, but will be supplemental to it.

When the Suez Canal was finished, its opening was celebrated by the most magnificent fete of modern times, the profligate Khedive Ismail Pasha apparently endeavoring to outdo the traditions of his Mussulman predecessors, Haroun al Raschid and Akbar. The fete lasted for four weeks, Cairo was decorated and illuminated as no city, of either Occident or Orient, ever had been before. The expense of the month's carnival was more than $21,000,000.

An opera house was built especially for the occasion, and Verdi, the famous Italian composer, was employed to write a special opera for the occasion. That the opera was "Aida," and that it marked the high tide of Verdi's genius, was perhaps more than might have been expected of a work of art produced at the command of an extravagant prince's gold.

The canal itself was opened on November 16, 1869, a procession of forty-eight ships, men of war, royal yachts and merchantmen, making the transit of the Isthmus in three days' time. In the first ship was Eugenie, Empress of the French. In another was the Emperor of Austria, and in still another the Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VII. A more imposing gathering of imperial and royal personages never before had been witnessed, and all of them were the Christian guests of the Moslem Ismail.

When the procession of royal vessels had passed through, the captains and the kings went to Cairo for the fete. The canal was open for traffic. It was significant that the first vessel to pass through in the course of ordinary business, paying its tolls, flew the British ensign. The building of the canal had wrecked Egypt, financially and politically; was destined to end forever the hope of Asiatic empire for France; and was to make certain England's dominion over India, a thing de Lesseps and Napoleon III had intended it to destroy.

The celebration of the completion of the Suez Canal was the wildest orgy of modern times, the last attempt to Orientalize a commercial undertaking of the Age of Steam and Steel.

The celebration at San Francisco will be more magnificent in its way, and will cost more money. But the millions will not be thrown away for the mere delectation of the senses of two score princes—they will be expended for the entertainment and the education of millions of people, the humblest of whom will have his full share in the celebration.

From the spruce woods of Maine, from the orange groves of Florida, from the wide fields of the Mississippi Valley, from the broad plains of the Colorado, from the blue ridges of the Alleghenies and the snow peaks of the Rockies, Americans will go to the Golden Gate to commemorate in their American way the closer union of their States, the consummation of the journeys of Columbus: The Land Divided—the World United.

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