There seems to be an impression that the contention respecting the right of the United States to remit toll charges on its own vessels is an academic question, and that such contention is simply a battle of wits. As a fact it is the most serious determination that has been asked of our people for half a century. Our foreign trade is in the hands of our commercial rivals and if the Panama Canal policy is not determined aright it will remain there with ever strengthening control. Some of our people upon hearsay, others upon blind acceptance of the opinions of others, owing to the fact that treaties were not available, have developed a state of mind in which an insistence upon secure, moral and legal rights is viewed as a breach of treaty faith. New York, 7 April, 1914. LEWIS NIXON. |