Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-05-11
Look at It from This Angle.

LOOK at " TFofN tHtS N'SfS'
| The New York Evening Post, criti-
cizing the address of Senator O'Gor-
man on Panama canal tolls, boasts of
the logic of Representative Stevens,
saying:
THE point was forcibly put by Rep
resentative Stevens, whose speech is,
by common consent, reckoned the
iablest that has been delivered on TINS
whole subject. Referring to the fact
that Panama still has, in ex-President
Taft's phrase, a shadow of sovereign
ty' over the Zone, Mr.. Stevens asked
what would happen if we were TO
abandon the canal project entirely.
why, the land would revert to Panama
automatically! So far is it from being
true. as Senator OGorman affirms,
that our sovereignty at Panama is as
unlimited as it is in Fourteenth
street"
! From the Posts angle of observance
mr.. Stevens speech may have been
the ablest delivered on the subject, but
we doubt IL common consent" will be
given that the quoted suggestion that
the United States could abandon the
canal project, is able" argument. If
1.-THE Post bases its broad declaration
that Mr.. Stevens speech was best of
all, upon such a nonsensical suppose
ton, we should unhesitatingly claim
that his speech was fiat failure.
! Did Representative Stevens mean
that there existed possibility of the
United States expanding half billion
dollars in this grand work of supple
imenting the hand of the Almighty, for
fhe sake of showing the world that
what others had tried and failed in.
lat could do? Did he mean that the
tUnited States is likely to abandon the
icanal project entirely because the
rest of the world does not wish to
do the simple part of bearing just as
easements for the support of Americas
magnificent gift to the world?
Or did he mean just what the course
suf certain ill-advised Americans seems
TO indicate as their desire-to abandon
this entire mighty accomplishment of
American capital and energy and gem
iious, upon American territory, to the
Idictation of Great Britain, which
seems to be playing narrow, penuri-
yous, penny pinching game?
:. If England, standing alone in its
mean position of haggling over its
fpart of the support of the canal,
thinks Americans are unfair what
ARE Americans to think of the English
position?
\ Taking Mr. Stevens own able"
ground of argument, from far more
Reasonable footing, suppose we aban-
don the entire project of collecting
fkoils, and make the canal free to the
world? Would that justify our position
with Great Britain?
We have expended five hundred mil
lions of dollars in purchasing the land
and in building the canal 1t is our
canal and we must protect and sup
port it. If other powers are deter
mined to make a spectacle of their
natural meanness, why not donate the
tolls to the world and stand four
square, independent American, neither
asking nor accepting support or ad-
Nice as to the control of our canal?
II would cost US less than $4,000, 900
a year to support the canal and we
would be under no obligations to any
iniggardly, bigoted diplomacy on earth.
That would look like true American
spirit, and is an hundred times more
probable than that America would
ever abandon the project" as SO
ABLY advocated by the Posts chosen
orator and logician.
I Were the canal made free the peo-
pie of America would save the tolls in
the cost of living, and the skinfiint
attitude of Great Britain would re-
.ceive proper rebuke. II is not
wholly what British government and
commercial interests think of the
American canal policy but what the
whole American people are going to
bitterly settle down to regarding Brit
dsh stinginess.