MR. CRAMMOND KENNEDY (of the District of Columbia). Mr. Chairman, that is the most astounding statement to be brought into a hall where some knowledge of diplomacy and of international law is supposed to exist! Some time ago when Admiral Mahan wrote his article in favor of fortifying the canal, he made the statement that the Senate had rejected the treaty, the first Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, which had a distinct prohibition of fortifying the canal. Having a great respect for the admiral's ability, I undertook to show in the New York Evening Post, that instead of that being the fact, the very contrary was truethat the United States Senate had ratified or rather advised and consented to the ratification of the first Hay-Pauncefote Treaty containing that express prohibition of fortifications. The Admiral wrote to the New York Evening Post confessing that his trust in the authenticity of certain information which had been furnished to him-perhaps it was some of Mr. Nixon's literature-had been betrayed and that what I said was true; that the first Hay-Pauncefote Treaty containing that prohibition had been ratified by the Senate. The Senate adopted a single amendment which the late Senator Morgan had opposed and on which he had written a minority report. That amendment provided in a few words that in case the defense of the United States by its own forces required it, the rules for neutralization, which have been dwelt upon so much, should give way; that is, nothing in the treaty was to stand in the way of the national safety of the United States, as it might be regarded by the government. When that amendment was brought to the attention of the British Government, it rejected the treaty in toto, because, as Senator Morgan had argued, it might nullify the general principle of neutralization. It simply meant that all the covenants for neutralization and freedom of passage and equality of terms should go for nothing if, in the judgment of the United States, a crisis had arisen that required the practical abrogation of the treaty. Instead of the earlier Hay-Pauncefote Treaty being, as Mr. Nixon has represented, the pro-British treaty and the later treaty being the pro-American treaty, almost the reverse of that is true. The first treaty was both the British and the American treaty, agreed upon between them both, with the single exception of the particular amendment I have mentioned. When that treaty was sent to Congress, we were told by the President of the United States-and remember that it had a provision in it expressly prohibiting fortifications, that it gave us everything that we had ever claimed or that we really wanted. Yet here today we are told in this presence that the Senate had rejected that treaty, whereas the Senate advised and consented to its ratification, and the only thing that prevented its proclamation by the two governments was the provision for nullification, under certain possible conditions, of neutralization and equal terms. Admiral Mahan was man enough to acknowledge that he had been misled as to a fundamental fact, and he made his apology accordingly. Although I served under General Grant in the Wilderness when I was scarcely of age and have always loved my adopted country with my whole soul, I still have enough of Scottish blood-or British blood if you like to change the adjective-running in my veins to be aggrieved when any false charge is made against the mother country. It does not pay. We are of the same race, and we really, deep down, love each other; and all these foolish and ignorant words, sometimes venomous in their malice, that are uttered with a tendency to alienate the two peoples, are to be deprecated. I want to say, as earnestly and forcibly as I can, that never in modern times, nor perhaps at all in history were more sincere efforts made to bring about a friendly understanding and a fair basis of agreement between two governments than were made not only in the negotiations of the ClaytonBulwer Treaty, but in the subsequent attempts to compose the differences that arose in regard to its true interpretation. I want to read just a little bit of history. I hold in my hand the unanimous report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate,1 except for that one dissent of Senator Morgan, and that was in the interest of the treaty, because he wanted it intact. In the course of that report, which was made by Senator Cushman K. Davis, who was well able to expound the law of nations, he refers to the conduct of Great Britain in regard to what happened after the ratification of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the complaints that were made from some quarters of the course that she pursued; and here is how these differences were composed. I read from page 6 of Senator Davis' report: Conceding that all our contentions were just, as they manifestly were, as to the conduct of Great Britian, in holding to the mouths of the San Juan River after the treaty was ratified, and in raising a logging camp to the dignity of a Crown colony at Belize, and in her aggressions at Ruatan and the Bay Islands, these aggressions 1Senate Document, No. 268, Fifty-sixth Congress, 1st Session, April 5, 1900. were intended by both governments to be corrected through the treaties made by Sir William Gore Ouseley with these three republics. That is, the Government of Great Britain constituted a special mission to the Central American countries-Guatemala and Honduras and Nicaragua-for the express purpose of so changing and modifying her sovereign rights in these parts of the world, including her relations with the Mosquito Indians, as to bring those relations by treaty into accordance with the ideas and demands of the United States. Now, see how that was done! Speaking of these Central American treatic. between 1858 and 1860, Mr. Davis said: Great Britain made All these treaties were most carefully examined by the President of the United States, and were laid before Congress in his annual message in December, 1860.2 Congress expressed no dissent to them, or to the President's declaration that "The dangerous questions arising from the Clayton and Bulwer treaty have been amicably settled." Mr. Chairman, it is an evil day when the official words of the President of the United States, addressed to our supreme legislature, can be whistled down the wind by assertions showing just as much malice, it seems to me, as ignorance. "Congress expressed no dissent to them nor to the President's declaration that "The dangerous questions arising from the Clayton and Bulwer treaty have been amicably settled.'" Speaking for the committee, Mr. Davis said: "We cannot now assert to the contrary-" Remember, this is the unanimous report which was made by the committee, with the qualification which I have named, and which was adopted by the Senate. The Senate committee says: We cannot now assert to the contrary, and, for the purpose of abrogating that treaty, we cannot insist that those questions are not settled. But the President went still more fully and carefully into the. matter and made the following conclusive statement, in which he points out the "discordant constructions" of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty as the matter that is settled. He says― 2Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. V, p. 639. That is, the President of the United States in an official communication to Congress, says: The discordant constructions of the Clayton and Bulwer treaty between the two governments, which at different periods of the discussion bore a threatening aspect, have resulted in a final settlement entirely satisfactory to this Government. Mr. Davis then goes on to say: As no Congress from that day to this has disputed the validity and finality of this settlement, it can scarcely be justifiable now to set up those same "discordant constructions," or the alleged want of good faith in the British Government in executing the treaty, as a reason for declaring that the treaty is in fact abrogated." My friend [Mr. Nixon] was dealing with the past, with what for a time had excited the public mind in the United States; but Sir William Ouseley's special mission had been sent to Central America and Great Britain had removed the causes of complaint of the United States, as announced to Congress by the President. Mr. Davis says further: The President then proceeds to restate the actual controversies and the manner of their settlement, as follows This is a careful statement by the President of the manner in which the British Government made such changes as conformed the situation to the wishes of this government, and, he might have added, of the people. This is the President's statement, as quoted by Mr. Davis: In my last annual message I informed Congress that the British Government had not then "completed treaty arrangements with the Republics of Honduras and Nicaragua in pursuance of the understanding between the two governments. It is, nevertheless, confidently expected that this good work will ere long be accomplished. This confident expectation has since been fulfilled. Her Britannic Majesty concluded a treaty with Honduras on the 20th November, 1859, and with Nicaragua on the 28th August, 1860, relinquishing the Mosquito protectorate. Besides, by the former the Bay Islands were recognized as a part of the Republic of Honduras. It may be observed that the stipulations of these treaties conform in every important particular to the amendments adopted by the Senate of the United States to the treaty concluded at London, on the 17th October, 1856, between the two Governments [The Dallas-Clarendon Treaty]. It will be recollected that this treaty was rejected by the British Government because of its objections to the just and important amendment of the Senate to the article relating to Ruatan and other islands in the Bay of Honduras. Mr. Davis then says: It is not possible to ignore a fact or situation so fully and impressively declared by the President in a message to Congress, and acquiesced in by the failure of Congress to signify any dissatisfaction toward the final settlement so declared, as to the only points of contention that had then arisen under the ClaytonBulwer Treaty. When the Senate came to ratify the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty now in force, it was done on the assumption and express declaration that nothing had happened, from 1850 to the date of the adoption of the new treaty, to impeach the good faith of Great Britain, or to impair the efficacy of the old Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. I am in no physical condition to make a long speech, but Dr. Scott has inquired whether I do not want to say a word or two about the matter of neutralization and neutrality. I do not know in what college my friend [Mr. Nixon] is professor of international law, but it seemed to me that all through his speech he was confusing two things that are very different, namely neutrality and neutralization. I am sorry to say that the Panama Canal cannot be said, in the strict and practical sense of the word "neutralization," to be neutralized. Neutralization cannot be maintained by one nation. alone. The publicists all agree that an essential part of the definition of neutralization is that it shall be guaranteed by a sufficient combination of the great Powers to insure its maintenance. Perhaps I may be pardoned for saying that it seems to me one of the great misfortunes of our times that the Panama Canal has not been, and is not now, neutralized, in that true and permanent sense. Suppose that, instead of the canal having been dug, God had made it. Suppose that in the dawn of creation instead of there having been the Isthmus of Panama, there had been the Straits of Panama. What nation, knowing the meaning of the "Freedom of the Seas," would have claimed the right to lay a finger on that connection between the |