The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1904-02-23
ROOT SPEAKS ON
PANAMA CANAL
Explains the Attitude of United
States
DEFENDS THE EXECUTIVE
Address Is Made Before Union League
Club In Chicago In Celebration
of Washlngton's
Birthday.
DEFENDS THE EXECUTIVE

Chicago, FEBRUARY 22.-At the Union
league celebration of Washington's birth
day tonight the principal speaker was
former Secretary of War Elihu Root.
Secretary Root said in part:
The conduct of the United States gov
eminent in recognizing the in6,pend-
ence of Panama, in making the treaty.
and in exercising police power over ter
ritory traversed by the Panama railroad
and the partly constructed canal, dur
ing the period the revolution, has been
severity criticised by some of our own
citizens, who have said, in substance,
that in this business our government has
violated the rules of international law,
has been grasping and unfair, and has,
by the exercise of brute force. trampled
down the rights of a weaker nation, in
violation of those principles of justice
which should control the conduct of ma
lions as of men.
Good and Sincere Men,
Nevertheless, there remain good and
sincere men and women who have thought
our course to be wrong, and many others,
whose character and patriotism entitle
them to the highest respect as troubled
in spirit. They would be glad to be sure
that our country Is not justly chargeable
with dishonorable conduct. May the time
never come when such men and women
are wanting or are constrained to remain
silent, IN America. May the time never
come when the conscience Of America
shall cease to apply the rules of upright
conduct to national, as we'll as to per-
sonal life! when our governments feel
absolved from the obligation to answer
in that forum for conformity to the rules
OF right, or when material advantage
shall be held to excuse injusticei For,
if such a time ever does come the be-
ginning of the end of free Institutions
will have come also.
Must Control Future.
The stupendous fact that has dominated
the history and must control the future
of the Isthmus of Panama Is the pos
sibility of communication between the two
oceans 1t is possible for human hands
to pierce the narrow forty miles of solid
earth which separate the Caribbean from
the Bay of Panama to realize the dreams
of the early navgators, to make the
pathway to the orient they vainly sought,
to relieve commerce from the tolls and
peris of its nine thousand miles of navi-
cation around Cape Horn through stormy
seas and along dangerous coasts with its
constant burden of wasted effort and
shipwreck and loss of life, and to push
forward by mighty impulse that inter
communication between the distant ma
tons of the earth which Is doing away
with MISUNDERSTANDING, with race preiu
dice and bigotry, with ignorance of hui
man rights and opportunity for oppres-
sion, and making all the world kin.
BY the rules Of right and Justice uni
versally recognized among men and which
are the law of nations, the sovereignty OF
Colombia over the Isthmus of Panama
was qualified and limited by the right of
the other civilized nations of the earth
to have the canal constructed across the
isthmus and to have 1t maintained for
their free and unobstructed passage.
Are the Real Owners.
The people of Panama were the real
owners of the canal route; II was because
their fathers dwelt in the land, because
they won their independence from Spain
because they organized a civil society
there, that 1t was not to be treated as one
of the waste places of the EARTH They
owned that part of the earth's surface
just as much as the state of New York
owns the Erie canal. When the sovereign
state of Panama confederated itself with
the other states of Colombia under the
constitution of 1863 1t did not part with
its title or its substantial rights, but con-
stituted the federal government its trus-
tee for the representation of its rights
in all foreign relations. and imposed
upon that government the duty of pro
tecting them. The trustee was faithless
to it's trust; 1t repudated its obligations
without the consent of the true owner
1t seized by the strong hand of military