The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-08-08
CCopynEht, 9l5.l

(Copyrisht, pl5l
1t would be very humiliating. OF
course but in case of war an enemy
could easily tie a can to our pet
canal"
So spoke a retired naval officer who
is one of my shipmates on this trip
from New York to San Francisco by
way of the isthmus.
1t would be a very simple mat
ter" he continued. for the enemy to
launch an airship from a vessel away
out at sea or from somewhere in Co.
lor1bIa or Costa RiCa. fly it over the
canal and drop a bomb or two in one of
the locks. That can of dynamite is the
can / mean. 1t would tie the canal up
for a year. Break up one of those locks
and your s40o,Ooo,OoO canal has to go
into drydock."
In looking the ground over l see that
my naval friend is about right. From
either ocean the canal is practically inn
pregna BILE. The land defenses, when
completed. will be as adequate as mod
ern military science can make them
There is no heavier or more effective
ordnance in any fertilization in the
world than the government has begun
TO place there. The biggest guns we can
NAL Ike go there. Then. with effective
feet at either end We should be able to
keep out anything that floats.
But the canal is undefended from the
sky.
Our fine fleet. our modern forts. our
great guns would cut no ice when an in
significant little monoplane carrying two
men and half a dozen bombs came rapid
" darting through the black tropical
night and scooting low over the Chagres
River and Gatun Lake there would be
no difficulty in seeing just when TO drop
the bombs. The landmarks are too OBJ
,I@ ., i
expanse of the artificial Gatun Lake that
nothing can hide. and at its end the long
dam and the wide. white. concrete locks
that are as plain as the powdered nose of
a soubrette. The darker the night the
better you can see them. ENtinguishing
the lights would not make the slightest
difference.
Moreover. it would not matter much
where the bomb was dropped either. In
any of the locks at either end or along
the dam would do the trick. Rip a hole
in the dam and the canal is all over
with. for a while at least
Nobody is to blame for this. It's SIM
ply the condition that exists. When the
canal was planned and built the en-
gineers and military experts could not
possibly foresee the development of
airships and their possibilities in war
fare. ! am not scolding. l am telling
of things as l find them.
Ny naval friend, however. is a little
querulous. He claims that a sea-level
canal would have solved every prob
lem. That then it couldn't be blown
up any more than you can blow up a
river. and that all the trouble of ope-
rating locks and dams and the labor
OF building them would have been
avoided: that the canal then would
have been an ideal waterway while !
now II is only an expensive toy and /,
will never pay for the investment or |
be Of any great service: that it was |
really built as a military measure of ,
defense, and is now only a military |
menace.
Well. it's too hot on the Isthmus to
argue about that.
No sooner had we got to the West
Indies than everybody on board began
to look for the Southern Cross. People
who never saw stars except when theyI
bumped their heads. and others who