186 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



found desirable to guarantee the safety and neutrality of the 

 passage by treaty stipulations. The importance of a canal 

 which will shorten by many hundreds of miles the usual 

 commercial routes, is coming to be considered too great to 

 be left to the control of any one nation. In the struggling 

 competition of trade, nations are indisposed to tolerate any 

 handicap which tends to interfere with its equality. In time 

 of war, it would become necessary for a belligerent to blockade 

 or to hold against the enemy a point so important as a ship 

 canal. Commerce would be interrupted, and the very object 

 for which the canal was constructed would be defeated. It is 

 natural, therefore, that nations have come to look upon ship 

 canals as subjects of international regulation. Indeed, from 

 the moment the construction of the Suez Canal was contem- 

 plated, this idea of international concert for its guarantee of 

 neutrality was considered a sine qua non of its financial suc- 

 cess. Prince Metternich had declared that its success must 

 depend upon confidence in its neutrality, and De Lesseps him- 

 self fully appreciated, as he acknowledged, the truth of his 

 statement. In the Act of Concession given by the Viceroy 

 of Egypt, and endorsed by the Sultan in 1856, a promise was 

 solemnly made that " the Grand Maritime Canal from Suez to 

 Pelusium and its dependent ports would be open forever, as 

 neutral passages to all ships of commerce passing from one sea 

 to the other, without any distinction, exclusion, or preference 

 of persons or nationalities. . . ." The mere promise of 

 Egypt in 1856 (then, as now, under the suzerainty of the 

 Sultan of Turkey) to maintain this status was regarded as 

 inadequate, and the principal nations of Europe, except Rus- 

 sia, signed a treaty in 1873, agreeing that the Suez Canal 

 should be open to the warships of all parties to the agree- 

 ment. Even this treaty was deemed insufficient to determine 

 clearly and positively the international character of the canal ; 

 and in 1887 the Convention of Constantinople was signed by 

 all the great European powers, again excepting Russia. 

 This convention declared that the canal shall forever be open 

 and free, in time of war as well as in time of peace, to the 

 ships of all nations. Its approaches shall never be block- 



