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shows that at 5 p.m. on the 22d, the last day for a ratification of the Hay-Herran treaty, no action upon the pending bill had been taken. The treaty was dead. If no request for an extension of time was made in the remaining hours of that day, what ought President Roosevelt to do? He is not required by the Spooner Act to turn immediately from Panama to Nicaragua and to make a treaty for a canal on the Nicaragua route. This will not be the alternative until he shall have failed to obtain from Colombia the needed rights and territorial control within "a reasonable time” and 10 upon "reasonable terms." He is empowered to decide that more time should be used in striving to reach a satisfactory agreement with Colombia. We hope that he will so decide, and that he will spare no effort to convince the Colombian Government that its own interests as well as those of the 15 entire civilized world require it to accept the liberal terms of the treaty negotiated and ratified at Washington.

We fear, however, that this cannot be accomplished unless some plan shall be devised for intimate and friendly conferences of the two contracting Powers. So far as we can 20 learn, the causes of the rejection of the treaty at Bogota were as follows: the opposition of a political party or faction to the President now in office, who accepted the agreement; the resentment of certain sensitive and impulsive SpanishAmerican legislators, because it seemed to them that our 25 State Department's friendly warning against any substantial amendment of the treaty was an attempt to restrain their liberty of action; a conviction that our Government would consent to pay $10,000,000 more, and that $10,000,000 could be extorted from the French company; a failure of 30 the Colombian politicians to agree among themselves as to a division of the spoils; Colombian ignorance of our ways and purposes, and the lack of means of easy and frequent communication between the two capitals. We have seen no indication that legislators at Bogota were corrupted by $35 persons or corporations desiring to prevent the construction

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of a canal. There is no more evidence of such interference than there is in support of Mr. Henry Watterson's remarkable assertion that our Senate was induced to prefer the Panama route by a bribe of half the sum to be paid to the French company $20,000,000 for the thieves in France and $20,000,000 for the thieves in America,” or of a suggestion that any Washington legislator's labors in behalf of the Nicaragua route have been stimulated by a desire to share in the sum that might be realized hereafter upon the 10 claims of the Maritime Canal Company. What has taken place at Bogota can be fully explained, we think, by a knowledge of the character and ways of the SpanishAmerican politician, and by the condition of a country that has been racked for four years by bloody revolution, and 15 whose currency is worth less than one cent on the dollar.

The Isthmian canal ought to be made on the Panama route. We desire to construct it there and are ready to begin the work. It is especially for the interest of Colombia that the canal should be in that place. We shall not take 20 possession of the Isthmus by force, nor shall we pretend that the old treaty of 1846 authorizes us to make there a waterway for ships. We shall not incite the people of Panama to revolt. If, however, those people should establish and maintain their independence without any assistance 25 from us, and should offer to us the privileges which Colombia has withheld, we might be able to accept them honorably. The merits of the Panama route, when it is compared with the route in Nicaragua, are so manifest, in our opinion, that all honorable methods should be used in an attempt to take 30 advantage of them.

What is needed now is an opportunity for friendly consultation and argument. In this matter, Colombia and the United States have seemed to be separated by almost as much space as yawns between two planets. There has been 35 no contact except by means of the two Ministers, and these have not been very efficient agents of communication. When

there was danger in Havana of a serious misunderstanding of the aims and purposes of the United States, we suggested that the entire Cuban Congress, or a Commission representing it, be brought to Washington for a friendly conference. A Commission was sent from Havana, and much good was accomplished by its visit. Our Government ought to know the views and the sentiment of Colombia with respect to this canal question; the leaders of Colombian opinion should have a better knowledge of our views and purposes than they now possess. This mutual enlightenment, so much to 10 be desired at this time, when perhaps the lack of it is the only thing that prevents an agreement as to the canal, might be gained by a conference or by the efforts of a joint Commission, sitting in some neutral city, or for a time at one capital and then at the other. The President and Congress 15 would find it profitable to consider such a plan for promoting international friendship, dispelling harmful illusions and prejudices, and smoothing the way for that great undertaking, the benefits of which Colombia is now inclined to reject. The canal is to be an agency for the promotion of the peace 20 and well-being of mankind; the construction of it should be the result of peaceful and honorable agreement, and not of intrigue, revolution or war.

VII.

Revelations in South Africa.

The Speaker, Sept. 5, 1903.

It is easy after the publication of the minutes of the evidence taken before the Commission on the War to under- 25 stand why that evidence was taken in private. If this amazing series of revelations had been made public day by day the storm of indignation would have been fatal to the Government, As a story of stupidity, incapacity, and frivọ

lous light-heartedness it will match the wildest histories of the madness which seizes men intent on conquest. The disease consists of seeing only what the victim wants to see. The men who made the Boer war and the men who made 5 the American war did not lack advisers who warned them of the truth, but in both cases they treated such advisers as another good Imperialist treated Michaiah, the son of Imlah. It would be easy to fill volumes with the minor follies of the war, the use of swords that would not cut, the 10 choice of unmounted men, the neglect of maps, and all the other thousand and one incidents that show how little a military career attracts of the intelligence of the country, and how soon a little clamour and excitement disperses what intelligence there is in the governing classes. Lord Lans15 downe, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Balfour are all intelligent men, but all these intelligent men, when put together, constitute a body so unintelligent that its proceedings read like a comic opera. Nobody consults anybody else. The Commander-in-Chief learns the most important decisions by 20 accident. Arrangements are made or left to make themselves in a happy-go-lucky spirit, and all the time these great personages, who knew as little as the Times, which thought the first army corps would finish the war, or almost as little as the Daily Mail, which thought the first engagement 25 would settle the Boers, were posing as the sober and circumspect leaders of the nation, absorbed in the cares and preparations for its struggle. It would probably be a shock to Mr. Balfour, who understands by a traitor a man who loves his country well enough to make it hate him, to be told that a 30 statesman who leaves anything to chance, or commits his country to such an adventure without mastering the facts, has forfeited all claims to the name of patriot. We hope that, when Parliament meets, the Liberal Party will see that the sternest judgment is passed on the criminal negligence of Lord Lansdowne, and the criminal levity of Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour,

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We do not propose to pursue this pitiful story of incompetence through all its dismal chapters. It is all summed up in the one quality which was predominant in the nation. three years ago, the refusal to see facts that it did not wish to see. The two chief dramatis persone in South Africa 5 were Sir Alfred Milner and Sir William Butler. Sir Alfred Milner told the nation what it wanted to hear Sir William Butler told it what it did not want to hear. The result was inevitable. Sir Alfred Milner became a hero, a peer, an autocrat as complete as General Bobrikoff. Sir William 10 Butler was slandered in the Daily Mail, publicly attacked by a Cabinet Minister, recalled from South Africa, and the authorities decided that, though he commanded the Western District, it would not be safe to allow him to command the troops when Queen Victoria paid her visit to Bristol. Sir 15 Alfred Milner, as Mr. Chamberlain told Sir William Butler in a despatch censuring that officer for expressing the opinion, as Acting High Commissioner, that the Raid party was not to be trusted, that a policy of provocation would mean war, and that war would be a far more serious matter than 20 the Government supposed, represented the Government's own policy. Sir William Butler was accordingly ignored or censured whenever he said anything that did not suit exactly the Government's book. If his strategical recommendations had been followed, it is almost everywhere admitted that we 25 should have escaped those big disasters which befell us just as he predicted. But that strategy did not take the fancy of the Government, so they ignored his recommendations and actually discussed with Sir Alfred Milner by telegram on August 3, 1899, the occupation of Laing's Nek without even com- 30 municating with the commanding officer about a movement that would have meant immediate war. The Government had no ears for what Sir William Butler told them, so they decided, as General Buller shows, that "the Orange Free State was to be left out of account." Sir William Butler, 35 whose evidence is so damaging that the Times has decided