Bisbee daily review., 1914-02-08
GERMANY'S CANAL WOULD STEAL OUR
 PANAMA THUNDER
Emperor William to Have Gel ebration to Mark Opening
 of Baltic; North Sea Route

President Wilscn in canal celebrations by opening the enlarged waterway con.
 meeting the Baltic and North Seas | probably as early as April. The work of improvement. which has cost more than the builimg of he original canal
 in 1887, win enable the passage of the biggest battleships. The Emperor will probably accomplish this for the first time by personally commanding the main German battlefleet through the inland waterway.
 Such worldwide attention has been directed to American enterprise in connecting the two oceans that 1t is scarcely realized that the German engineers have been building locks even bigger than those at Panama. The Emperor. who is fond of making comparisons between his canal and the American enterprise, is never weary Of pointing cut that American battle ships now under construction can barely squeeze through the Gatun lccks follow tfe path of the Oregon around Cape Horn to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. The Ger man canal will have locks S2 feet ionger, STE feet broader and of four feet greater draurht than these of Panama and will accommodate 60., O00-ton battleship. should naval .e. singers go as high as that in the fu. ture. There is room and 900 feet 10 spare in them for the newest and big. gest Ccean liners of t'e lmperator and Aquitania class. SO that ample pro visicn has been made for possible de- velcpm ents of commercial navigation as we'll
 Tho existing canal was opened fin 1895, the cruiser Brooklyn commanded by Captain "Bcb' Evans representing the United States in the international naval pigoant on that occasion. l. runs fi-m Kiel on the Baltic tc Brunsbuttel on the Elbe estuary. a short distance from tse sea and cIt off the long and rather sazardou. passage through the Cattergut and around the northern end of Denm ark. lt jumpe into importance immedi ately as a maritime highway and was used by about 10000 vessels during it's first year The traffic steadily grew, tte cana being traversed in 1912 by 57,3G6 ships Of 9.924,237 t,-. tai net tons, a traffic larger than that Of the Suez canal. To the German ,,a,..- q. ...,. ,F fp.ots.,.II. -araptava enabling commander tc t'Tow the entire fleet from one sea 70 the other in few hours and to menace forl gmple. the opp sing British fleet from points several hundred miles apart. With the advent of Dread raughts. however, this advantage was lost, as the o,d lccks 800 feet long. so feet wide and 90 feet deep, were too small to accommodate the naval monsters and 1t was determine to pt-vide larger locks and double the width cf the canal
 The new locks, which lack tfe i'm posing height fthcse at Panama. but are bigger in every other re- spect, are 1882 feet long (Panama. 1000 feeD, 147h feet wide (Panama. no feet, and have q mean depth of . feet Cf water t4l feet) over the sills The new canal is 400 feet wide at the surface, 150 feet wide at the bottcm of the excavation and has been provided with eleven sdings" at which vessels may psss New harhors have been built at each end, several sharp curves have been eliminated, above the canal have Teen provided cw5 siew railway Dlidges l50 fee ana other details have brought the cost of the improvement up to S55,' 600,000. whereas the original canal cost was only $392. S,0G0. The enlarse- ment involved the excavation of l40 million cubic yards of earth; the original canal, 1l2 million cutie yards. The work, which has occupied five years, has been carried on without in' terrupting traffic in the canal, the new locks, one at each end of the canal. having been built beside the old ones.
 TO protect the p-cks of the Panama canal from bonn ardment and destruc- ton by a hostile fleet they were placed several miles inland from the ends of the canals. In the Kaiser VII hem canal the same result has been obtained by having the canal termi- nate at one end Of the Klel Flora a lonfi, narrow arm of the Baltle, and at the other in the Elbe river scme fifteen miles from its mouth. Both riv' CT and ford are heavily fcrtihel.
 About 5000 workmen of various na- tlonalities fTve been employed on the work. They have been housed in g-vernment barracks and have been fed and lodged at a cost Co them Of from 20 to 25 cents per day Remark able for such q police-ru.ed state as Germany Is the fact that the main ' tenapce of order has been left entirely in the hands of the workmen, who have their own barracks and rO,m "ohieftains' and keep disorderly com rades under sharp control. Over zeal ous gendarmes, whc felt ttat a lahor- ing community without a policeman in immediate control was an impos. sibllity and started rounds of inspec- tion in the barracks were warned off