7 1 8 Presidential Addresses 



alternatives of action open to us. There were sev- 

 eral possibilities. One was that Colombia would 

 at the last moment see the unwisdom of her posi- 

 tion. That there might be nothing omitted, Secre- 

 tary Hay, through the minister at Bogota, repeat- 

 edly warned Colombia that grave consequences 

 might follow from her rejection of the treaty. Al- 

 though it was a constantly diminishing chance, yet 

 the possibility of ratification did not wholly pass 

 away until the close of the session of the Colombian 

 Congress. 



A second alternative was that by the close of the 

 session on the last day of October, without the rati- 

 fication of the treaty by Colombia and without any 

 steps taken by Panama, the American Congress on 

 assembling early in November would be confronted 

 with a situation in which there had been a failure 

 to come to terms as to building the canal along the 

 Panama route, and yet there had not been a lapse 

 of a reasonable time using the word reasonable in 

 any proper sense such as would justify the Ad- 

 ministration going to the Nicaragua route. This 

 situation seemed on the whole the most likely, and 

 as a matter of fact I had made the original draft 

 of my Message to the Congress with a view to its 

 existence. 



It was the opinion of eminent international jurists 

 that in view of the fact that the great design of our 

 guarantee under the treaty of 1846 was to dedicate 

 the Isthmus to the purposes of interoceanic transit, 

 and above all to secure the construction of an inter- 



