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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



el] to inform Lord Granville, on the 

 part of the English Government, "that 

 any movement in the sense of supple- 

 menting the guarantee contained there- 

 in " (that is, in the treaty with Colombia) 

 " would necessarily be regarded by this 

 government as an uncalled-for intrusion 

 into a field where the local and general 

 interests of the United States of Amer- 

 ica must be considered before any other 

 power, save those of the United States 

 of Colombia alone"; any such move- 

 ment " would be an extraordinary pro- 

 cedure, and would necessarily be viewed 

 by this Government with the gravest 

 concern " ; and, moreover, " would par- 

 take of the nature of an alliance against 

 the United States, and would be re- 

 garded by this Government as an indi- 

 cation of unfriendly feeling." 



Now, if a guarantee in this case is 

 the right thing, and if a valid guarantee 

 of neutrality is really wanted, common- 

 sense fails to see how it can be so well 

 secured as by treaty compact on the 

 part of all the powers from whom there 

 may ever be danger of its violation. 

 If desired at all, the stronger it can be 

 made the better; and, if this strength- 

 ening is objected to, what else can it 

 mean than that the objector has a sin- 

 ister object, and does not want a bona 

 fide guarantee? The plain import of 

 Mr. Blaine's letter is this : There shall 

 be no comprehensive and efficacious in- 

 ternational guarantee of the neutrality 

 of the interoceanic canal ; the United 

 States will give such a guarantee as it 

 thinks "proper"; it will take exclusive 

 possession of the canal, regardless of 

 the nation within whose territory it is, 

 and it will itself violate its neutrality 

 whenever its own interests may dictate 

 such a course. 



And what are those interests ? They 

 are not the bonds of commerce. The 

 nation has gone far to put itself outside 

 the pale of civilization by the destruc- 

 tion of its outside commercial relations. 

 It has "protected" what commerce it 

 had to death, and insanely persists in 



the policy by which it can never be re- 

 stored to life. As a consequence, it had 

 no need of a Panama Canal, and has no 

 concern about it now, except to get ex- 

 clusive possession of it for use in the 

 contingency of war. 



The New York " Evening Post " un- 

 doubtedly gives us the point of Mr. 

 Blaine's letter when it remarks, " We 

 can not say too plainly that we mean to 

 protect the canal ourselves exclusive- 

 ly." But what, then, can be Mr. Blaine's 

 meaning, when he says to Mr. Lowell : 



You will be careful, in * any conversa- 

 tions you may have, not to represent the po- 

 sition of the United States as the develop- 

 ment of a new policy, or the inauguration of 

 any advanced aggressive steps to be taken by 

 this Government ; it is nothing more than the 

 pronounced adherence of the United States to 

 principles long since enunciated by the high- 

 est authority of the Government, and now, in 

 the judgment of the President, firmly in- 

 woven as an integral ami important part of 

 our national policy. 



If not diplomatic, this is certainly 

 strange. In the view of common-sense, 

 which is of course our only guide in 

 interpreting the case, what Mr. Blaine 

 says is not true ; it is squarely contra- 

 dicted by all the facts; and, as Lord 

 Granville is presumably not a fool, it 

 would be interesting to know what 

 kind of a time Mr. Lowell had in carry- 

 ing out his very curious instructions. 

 The policy now advocated is emphat- 

 ically a " new policy " a policy that 

 has taken shape only when there began 

 to be some danger that the canal would 

 be made ; and it is not merely a change 

 in our course of action, but it is an en- 

 tire inversion of the historic policy of 

 the Government. This nation has again 

 and again explicitly proclaimed, and is 

 now under solemn covenant, that it will 

 hot do exactly the thing it is now pro- 

 posed to do. If the "new policy" is 

 not in the teeth of an existing treaty, 

 why are its advocates so frantic to have 

 that treaty "torn up" abrogated and 

 got out of the way ? 



If it bo said that our policy is that 



