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Show PANAMA CANAL FORTIFICATION. The suggestion made by a bumptious American delegate at the interparliamentary peace conference in Brussels, that the Panama canal should not be defended by a single soldier, the recommendation recommenda-tion to fortify the canal by President Taft, and the strenuous pronouncement pro-nouncement by Colonel Roosevelt-at-large that the ditch would certainly cer-tainly have to be fortified, has caused a lively discussion of the matter mat-ter in this country and abroad. In Europe no official protests have been made, but all kinds of things have been said unofficially about the matter. There seems to be an impression there that Uncle Sam is so philanthropic, so altruistic al-truistic and so "easy" that he would spend half a billion dollars constructing con-structing a canal where Europeans had tried it and failed, and then would take no measures to prevent that canal from being used for his own undoing in case of war. Wherefore it is to laugh. Even some prominent Americans have come out declaring that the canal should not and cannot be fortified. General J. W. Keifer, one time speaker of the house of representatives, is quoted in the European papers as saying that we cannot fortify it "without breaking break-ing a formal, solemn compact with Great Britain. ' ' He says that in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty this country expressly agreed not to fortify. This is not the fact, as an examination of the said treaty will show to anyone. England contended strongly for such a provision, and it was in the original draft of the treaty, but the senate refused to ratify the treaty in that form. After a long diplomatic struggle the provision was taken out and the treaty was adopted that way. In all the legislation and treaties on the subject there are frequent fre-quent references to the "defenses" and "fortifications" of the canal, and it is plain that the intention of the government was to retain tho right to fortify if it saw fit. |