shadow of suspicion which, owing to our dominant and at times domineering power, had darkened and chilled our relations with the people of Latin America had at last been lifted. A world power we had been for many long years, but we had at last be. come a world power in the finer sense, a power whose active participation and beneficent influence were recognized and desired by other nations in those great questions which concerned the welfare and happiness of all mankind. This great position and this commanding influence have been largely lost. I have no desire to open up old questions or to trace the steps by which this result has come to pass, still less to indulge in criticism or censure upon anyone. I merely note the fact. I am not in the councils of the President of the United States, but I believe that during the past year the present position of the United States in its foreign relations has become very apparent to him, as it has to other responsible and reflecting men, and with this appreciation of our present position has come the earnest wish to retrace some of our steps, at least, and to regain, so far as possible, the high plane which we formerly occupied. It would be an obvious impropriety to point out the specific conditions of our present relations with the various nations, both in the Old World and the New; it is enough to note the fact that we are regarded by other nations with distrust and in some cases with dislike. Rightly or wrongly, they have come to believe that we are not to be trusted; that we make our international relations the sport of politics and treat them as if they were in no wise different from questions of domestic legislation. This has not been in accord with our history or our tradition. Only once have we abrogated a treaty, and then actual if not declared war existed. We have scrupulously observed our international agreements, and where differences have arisen we have settled them not with the high hand of power but by negotiation and arbitration. The President has written the history of his country, and it would be strange, indeed, if he did not desire to maintain our tradition of good faith and fair dealing with the other nations of the earth. It is not well for any country, no matter how powerful, to be an outlaw among the nations. Not so many years ago there were people in England who used to speak with pride of her "splendid isolation," but they soon found out that while isolation might be splendid, it was in the highest degree undesirable. Since those days England has been making every effort to escape from her "splendid isolation," as has been conspicuously shown by the alliance with Japan and the entente with France.

I suppose that at this moment in the midst of the adroitly stimulated passions raised against the President's recommendation that we should repeal the toll exemption it will be thought very poor spirited and even truckling-I believe that is the accepted word-to suggest that in deciding this question we should take into consideration the opinions of other nations. Nevertheless, I consider this a very important element in any decision which I may reach, and I am encouraged to believe that I am right in so thinking, because I have the warrant and authority of the author of the Declaration of Independence. When Jefferson framed that great instrument he declared that the impelling reason for making the Declaration was "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." That decent respect to the

opinions of mankind ought never to be forgotten in the decision of any question which involves the relations of our own country with the other nations of the earth.

The long delay in the ratification by the Senate of the treaties renewing the arbitration treaties of 1908 produced a widespread feeling among other nations that our championship of the principle of arbitration and our loud boasts of our devotion to the cause of peace were the merest hypocrisy, because we seemed ready to abandon the cause of arbitration when it looked as if our treaties might bring us to the arbitration of questions which we did not desire to have decided by an impartial tribunal. The President renewed the arbitration treaties, and finally, after a delay which, as I have said, aroused unpleasant suspicions, those which have been sent to the Senate have been ratified. This was the President's first step, as I look at it, in his effort to restore the influence and reputation of the United States, which he had found to be impaired. His second step is his recommendation of the repeal of the toll-exemption clause of the canal act. I speak wholly without authority, but I believe that he must have thought that our insistence upon a contested interpretation of a treaty and upon a disputed method of relieving our vessels from the payment of tolls has injured us in the opinion of civilized mankind, and that he believes that the object sought in no way justifies the results which will necessarily follow in the attitude of other nations toward us.

He must be, I believe, satisfied, as I am satisfied, that other nations will hesitate long before they will enter upon treaties with a country which insists on deciding all disputed points in treaties in its own favor by a majority vote of Congress. It would not surprise me to learn that the President is of opinion that such disputed points ought to be settled as we have settled them in the past, with which, as a historian, he is familiar, either by negotiation or by arbitration and not by our own votes without appeal and open only to the arbitrament of the sword. He must feel, I think, that by our action, considered in other lands to be in disregard of treaty obligations, we are raising a serious obstacle to the development of closer trade relations with the countries of South America, which are so important to us on every ground. These reasons, which I think must also be very weighty with the President, seem to me not only sound but convincing. There is no particular courage required to insist upon passing our own ships through the canal without the payment of tolls. We incur no physical danger in doing so, and to hurl defiance at the rest of the world under these conditions is no doubt a very agreeable pastime to those who engage in it, more especially as it has the added attraction of being a perfectly safe amusement, but it seems not wholly satisfying as an argument. The attitude of Ajax defying the lightning is not a very inspiring one if there is no lightning to be feared. The outcry about exhibiting subserviency to Great Britain or any other country because we see fit to repeal the tolls seems to me hardly worthy of serious consideration. The United States is altogether too great and too powerful to be subservient to anyone, and the mere fact of suggesting it seems to me to indicate an uneasy suspicion on the part of those from whom it emanates not only of the validity of their position but of the power and greatness of their own country, as to which I, 38939-13153

for one, am troubled by no doubts. As I have listened to some recent stirring declarations of our utter fearlessness, of our readiness to face a world in arms, in defense of toll exemption, about which noble cause no country would think of fighting, there have been moments when I have marveled as I thought of the coolness and indifference with which we have contemplated the murder of more than a hundred and fifty Americans not many miles from our own border. The violated rights, the unavenged, the almost unnoticed deaths of those innocent people have seemed to make heroics about canal tolls, where there is no peril to anyone peculiarly out of place.

We obtained by the passage of the toll-exemption clause no legal rights which we did not already possess; we waive none by its repeal. All we have we retain, for the law is merely our own statute for the regulation of the terms upon which the canal shall be used. The larger question which is raised by the toll exemption, however, has a purely international character, and that we ought to decide, now and in the future, not on considerations of pecuniary profit or momentary political exigencies, but on the broad grounds which I have indicated We should determine what is right without fear and without favor. In reaching our decision let us not forget the words of Washington that

The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

I am not blind to the political temptations which the situa tion at this moment presents. I am a strong party man. I believe in government by parties and in party responsibility. I have for many years fought the battles of the Republican Party, alike in days of sunshine and in days of storm and darkness. If life and strength continue, I shall to the best of my ability oppose President Wilson if he is a candidate for reelection and the party which he leads. The allurements of political advantage appeal as strongly to me as they can to any man. But when the relations of my country with other nations are involved I can not yield to them. My politics have always stopped at the water's edge. In any question involving our international relations I have always felt compelled to decide it upon its merits as they appeared to me, without regard to politics. This feeling has twice, at least, obliged me to oppose Presidents of my own political faith upon treaties which they had recommended, a misfortune and unhappiness which I wish might have been spared to me. In a great international question I felt it to be my duty on one occasion to sustain President Cleveland, but his policy in regard to Venezuela in resistance to British claims involved serious issues and grave possibilities; it was not mere posturing and declamation against another country, importing no danger and adapted only to raise the temperature around our polling booths. To-day I must stillObey the voice at eve, obeyed at prime.

I voted and spoke against the toll exemption embodied in the canal act. I can not change now merely because a Democratic President recommends the repeal of that clause which I earnestly resisted. Within our own borders Mr. Wilson is the leader and chief of the Democratic Party. In the presence of

foreign nations he is to me simply the President of the United States. If in his high responsibility as the representative of the Nation before the world he does or tries to do what I believe in my conscience to be wrong I shall resist him, no matter what his political faith may be. But if he is doing or trying to do what I conscientiously believe to be right he shall have my full support without regard to party or to politics. To thwart the purposes or to discredit the policies of the official head of a political party is legitimate political warfare. To discredit or break down the President of the United States upon a question of foreign policy is quite another thing, never to be undertaken except for very grave reasons. In the one case we overthrow a party leader and political chief within the arena where the American people alone sit in judgment; in the other we break down and discredit the representative of the whole country in the great forum of the nations of the earth and paralyze his future power and usefulness in that field where he and he alone can declare and represent the policies, the honor, and the dignity of the United States. Conditions may arise where this last resort must be accepted, but it can only be justified by grim necessity. With my view as to the tolls, with my deep convictions as to what is due to the President of the United States when he faces foreign nations, I should be faithless to the principles I have always cherished if I did not now give him an unreserved support.

For these reasons which I have set forth, although I believe we have the right to exempt our vessels from tolls, I have come to the conclusion that this clause in the canal act, which I have opposed from the outset, ought to be repealed. I think it should be repealed because we can obtain the same results, if we desire them, in an undisputed manner and without any greater charge upon the Treasury of the United States. I think so because foreign opinion is united against us, while opinion in our own country is divided as to the proper interpretation of the language of the treaty, and I am not willing to have the good faith of the United States impugned on account of action taken upon such a contested ground as this. I think the exemption clause should be repealed because the understanding upon which the treaty was made is declared by all our negotiators to have been contrary to that which I think a strict legal interpretation of the terms of the rules would warrant. Finally, I think it should be repealed because a decent respect for the opinions of mankind and the high position of the United States among the nations of the world demand it.

Mr. President, the construction of the Panama Canal is one of the greatest achievements of the people of the United States. We owe a debt to the French who preceded us in the attempt to cut the Isthmus at that point, and we freely acknowledge the benefit which we have derived, not only from their surveys and their engineering but from the sacrifices which they so freely made in behalf of this great undertaking. I sincerely hope that the bill proposed by the Senator from Mississippi, to erect a monument to De Lesseps at the entrance to the canal, will be passed, and that that monument will also commemorate the deeds of the men who gave their lives to the task which their country had imposed. I hope, too, that when the canal is opened we shall permit the little boat named Louise, in38939-13153

herited by us from the French, to pass through with the first American battleship, and that we shall then give it to France, so that it may rest upon the waters of the Seine, a memorial to a great work which the people of France first attempted and also to the long friendship of the two nations.

But while France made the first effort and failed, we took up the work and carried it to completion. It is the greatest engineering feat of modern times, and the triumphant result is due not only to the genius of our military engineers but to the labor of the medical officers of the Army, who converted hotbeds of pestilence into a region as healthful as any on the face of the earth. Nothing, to my thinking, could be finer than the work of the great army which Col. Goethals has led to this victory of peace, and which has never faltered or swerved in its onward march through mount ins and by lakes. In all that vast expenditure, in all the enormous labors which have been begun and completed upon that historic Isthmus there is no spot or blemish to be found. Not only the canal itself but the manner in which it has been built are among the noblest national achievements, which the history of the United States will cherish and preserve. I trust that all this glory and that this noble work, done not merely for our own profit but for the benefit of the world, will not be disfigured by a desire to put money into the pockets of a few American citizens in a questionable manner. I should be grieved to see this great monument of American genius and American skill defaced by a sorry effort to affront other nations when we complete a vast work designed to promote not trade alone but peace and good will among all mankind.

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