The Editor's Bag bound ourselves to police the canal and to keep it open on a basis of equality to all the nations observing its neu trality. From this position it is not in our power to recede. We cannot dis criminate in favor of American shipping by releasing our own vessels from the payment of tolls, though there is nothing to prevent the maintenance of maximum and minimum tolls to put unsubsidized shipping on an equality with the shipping of subsidizing coun tries. So clearly is the character of the canal as an international waterway de termined by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, that it is astonishing to find the proposal that it be treated as a "domestic canal" seriously advanced. It is one thing to urge fortification of the canal in order that it may adequately be policed, and another to urge that it be fortified on account of its strategical importance, to maintain our military supremacy in the Western hemisphere. There is nothing in the Monroe Doctrine, soundly construed, which justifies the ex ploitation of the canal for military objects. The precedent of the Suez Canal Convention would doubtless justify the United States in demanding that it have undisputed command of the ap proaches of the canal, so far as police protection may make it necessary. On this ground, a claim of the right to pre vent any foreign power from getting a foothold in Magdalena Bay, for example, might receive favorable consideration from the Hague court, and the rights conferred on this nation by the HayPauncefote treaty might in that event strengthen the Monroe Doctrine pro tanto. On the other hand, the exclusion of a foreign company from establishing itself in Magdalena Bay for legitimate trading purposes could with propriety be condemned by the other Powers as an
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unreasonable act, and would be one of the very things that would endanger the Monroe Doctrine. The obligations which this country assumed when it undertook to police the canal did not place this nation in a position inviting collision with other Powers or entailing any serious burden on our Government. If we remember that we are in the Isthmus of Panama for purposes of police rather than for purposes of exploitation, it will be in our power to give the world an example of the peaceable and beneficent activity of a great nation whose policy in Central and South America is not determined by love of conquest, and the indirect consequence of this kind of activity cannot fail to be a strengthening of the Monroe Doctrine as a legitimate policy of national defense. We shall reap the fruits of that policy in the readier admission by the nations of both hemi spheres, of all reasonable claims based upon that Doctrine in the growing authority of the Doctrine as a principle of international law, and in the increased possibility of the settlement of contro versies by arbitration and diplomacy rather than by resort to arms. If the Monroe Doctrine cannot be so applied as to relieve the United States of the burden of maintaining costly armaments, it is difficult to see how it can longer be of much practical use to us. OUR UNDERPAID JUDICIARY THAT a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States should die without having been able on the salary he receives to make adequate provision for his family is not merely painful, it is scandalous. If Congress is not dis posed to alter this most unjust situation, certainly the bar cannot be accused of a failure to perceive the duty of the
