75 Presidential Addresses 



party. The construction of the canal was to be 

 relegated to the indefinite future, while Colombia 

 was, by reason of her own delay, to be placed in 

 the "more advantageous" position of claiming not 

 merely the compensation to be paid by the United 

 States for the privilege of completing the canal, but 

 also the forty millions authorized by the act of 1902 

 to be paid for the property of the New Panama 

 Canal Company. That the attempt to carry out 

 this scheme would have brought Colombia into con- 

 flict with the Government of France can not be 

 doubted; nor could the United States have counted 

 upon immunity from the consequences of the at- 

 tempt, even apart from the indefinite delays to which 

 the construction of the canal was to be subjected. 

 On the first appearance of danger to Colombia, this 

 Government would have been summoned to inter- 

 pose, in order to give effect to the guarantees of the 

 treaty of 1846; and all this in support of a plan 

 which, while characterized in its first stage by the 

 wanton disregard of our own highest interests, was 

 fitly to end in further injury to the citizens of a 

 friendly nation, whose enormous losses in their gen- 

 erous efforts to pierce the Isthmus have become a 

 matter of history. 



In the third place, I confidently maintain that the 

 recognition of the Republic of Panama was an act 

 justified by the interests of collective civilization. 

 If ever a government could be said to have received 

 a mandate from civilization to effect an object the 

 accomplishment of which was demanded in the in- 



