Presidential Addresses 



tendent Shaler to allow the railroad to transport 

 troops for either party. That is our story. 



I call especial attention to the concluding portion 

 of this interview, which states the willingness of 

 the Panama people to fight the Colombian troops and 

 the refusal of Commander Hubbard to permit them 

 to use the railroad and therefore to get into a posi- 

 tion where the fight could take place. It thus clearly 

 appears that the fact that there was no bloodshed 

 on the Isthmus was directly due and only due to 

 the prompt and firm enforcement by the United 

 States of its traditional policy. During the past 

 forty years revolutions and attempts at revolution 

 have succeeded one another with monotonous regu- 

 larity on the Isthmus, and again and again United 

 States sailors and marines have been landed as they 

 were landed in this instance and under similar in- 

 structions to protect the transit. One of these revo- 

 lutions resulted in three years of warfare; and the 

 aggregate of bloodshed and misery caused by them 

 has been incalculable. The fact that in this last revo- 

 lution not a life was lost, save that of the man killed 

 by the shells of the Colombian gunboat, and no prop- 

 erty destroyed, was due to the action which I have 

 described. We, in effect, policed the Isthmus in the 

 interest of its inhabitants and of our own national 

 needs, and for the good of the entire civilized world. 

 Failure to act as the Administration acted would 

 have meant great waste of life, great suffering, great 

 destruction of property ; all of which was avoided by 



