The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-09-16
THE 1srHMIfs HusrNrss


 The President in his sassy letter of acceptance assumes an air of great | lfrankness. He pretends to tell all that he knows about this thing and that con- corning his administration. but his let 1 ter is none the less a deceitful docu- ment The deceit of it is nowhere more con spicuous than in his treatment of the canal question. The average Amer l ican. we are well aware, Is not so much concerned about how we got hold 1 of a strip of land at Panama as he is concerned to know that we have in fact secured a practical sovereignty over the Isthmus that we coveted. The hog" in the transaction gives many of us no bother. It is due to honest frankness to say this.
 The significant, the deeply significant feature of that whole affair is the light it throws on the character of President Roosevelt. And if we are not to be too palpably guilty of an Irish bull, his character is revealed through our very ignorance of the precise steps by which he put his scheme through. And this Is the point we would wish emphatic ally to make. the Senate has not dared to print the facts.
 Senator Hoar with that curious enig- matic conscience of his. inquiring cu- riously for the truth and always voting against the truth as 1t stands revealed. nrtn 70 Ii, a resolution he submitted to the Sem ateA every sentence of which tended to uncover what he manifestly believed had been perpetrated fraud at Pan anna. The reply to this resolution was sent in from the White House-and lander professed to be satisfied and the inquiry was hushed up. The country knows no more today than it knew when the resolution of inquiry was in- troduced. They know no more because the Republicans dared not give to the world the facts as to how Roosevelt got his booty. The Republicans were dc fled to print and let the world judge whether the President had acted dis honorable part There was no defense interposed, but their majority was in- terposed and the documents in the case remain under the Senate's seal of secrecy. We make bold to say that the publication of every official document relating to the revolution in Panama would so plainly discredit Roosevelt, that the revelation would alone defeat him for the Presidency. He mouths en- ergetically about the Democrats not daring to tell the truth about that whole transaction. The truth Is he does not dare and he never will dare tell the truth about 1t. The Senate suppressed the papers he sent Ito 1t, though there Is no conceivable reason for the sup Roosevelt to have been an unscrupu- icus freebooter. The Senate placed the seal of secrecy on the papers and the Senate has adjourned The papers are Sn file in the State Department and there Is no restriction in effect there to prevent the publication of every line that Hay and Roosevelt wrote while intriguing to secure possession of the Isthmus of Panama. Will they be printed? No; they will not be printed. But their contents ought to make the turbulent boy of oyster Bay blush when he flatly asserts the Democrats dare not tell the truth about his connection with the violent appropriation of a bit of Colombia's territory. He Is the coward. if there is one to be found A trimmer, with all his boasted inde- pendence. that Panama correspondence will never see the light. for 1t carries a conviction of that man.