The Semi Weekly Messenger

THE SITUATION IN THE ISTHMUS.

If there be any truth in the report from Central America, published a day or so ago that the war there was prolonged by aid from Nicaragua with the view of delaying the building of the Panama canal by our government, then it is time we were taking steps to put a stop to that war in so far as it has or will have any evil effect on the accomplishment of this enterprise. It demonstrates more fully the necessity for the United States owning the territory through which the canal shall run and not simply having control over it for police regulations and protection of the canal property. That we will build the canal is a certainty. Its construction may be delayed by the scheming of those opposed to it. but it is bound to be constructed. With the rapid opening up of the east the commercial interests of the world demand this new waterway, and our government cannot afford to allow any other nation to construct and control it. So we may take it as a settled fact that in a few years there will be a ship canal across the Central American isthmus. and it is going to be under the jurisdiction of this country. We see already the contending factions are throwing serious obstacles in the way of that location. If they have undertaken this now, the Nicaraguan authorities. going so far as to give valuable aid to the Colombian revolutionists for the purpose of keeping up the civil war as an obstacle to the construction of the canal on the Panama route, which is in Colombia. what may we not expect from these Central Americans. who are in an almost continual state of warfare-either civil war or the states fighting each other. The construction of the canal. no matter which route is finally settled upon, will cause jealousy and bitter feeling and we may expect constant worry and interference unless we make the adjacent country territory of the United States and exercise absolute control over it and the people who live upon it. The state of affairs along the Panama railroad is a fair sample of what we may expect. But for the guard of United States bluejackets and marines with their rapid-fire guns who accompany each train between Colon and Panama inter-oceanic traffic over this railroad would be stopped. We are now put to this trouble and expense to make good the guarantee of open traffic across the isthmus; and it will be the same way with the canal constructed on foreign soil. We have got to own that land. submit to the failure of the canal as an American enterprise or back down from our position on the Monroe doctrine in one of its most important features and let an European power have control of the most important point in the western hemisphere.