yo6 Presidential Addresses 



that throughout this period revolutions, riots, and 

 factional disturbances of every kind have occurred 

 one after the other in almost uninterrupted succes- 

 sion, some of them lasting for months and even for 

 years, while the central government was unable to 

 put them down or to make peace with the rebels; 

 fourth, that these disturbances instead of showing 

 any sign of abating have tended to grow more nu- 

 merous and more serious in the immediate past; 

 fifth, that the control of Colombia over the Isthmus 

 of Panama could not be ^maintained without the 

 armed intervention and assistance of the United 

 States. In other words, the Government of Co- 

 lombia, though wholly unable to maintain order on 

 the Isthmus, has nevertheless declined to ratify a 

 treaty the conclusion of which opened the only 

 chance to secure its own stability and to guarantee 

 permanent peace on, and the construction of a canal 

 across, the Isthmus. 



Under such circumstances, the Government of the 

 United States would have been guilty of folly and 

 weakness, amounting in their sum to a crime against 

 the Nation, had it acted otherwise than it did when 

 the revolution of November 3 last took place in 

 Panama. This great enterprise of building the in- 

 teroceanic canal can not be held up to gratify the 

 whims, or out of respect to the governmental impo- 

 tence, or to the even more sinister and evil political 

 peculiarities, of people who, though they dwell afar 

 off, yet, against the wish of the actual dwellers on 

 the Isthmus, assert an unreal supremacy over the 



