SECRETARY OF WAR, JURIST, ADMINISTRATOR, DIPLOMAT,
AND, UNDER THE PRESIDENT, CHIEF BUILDER OF
THE PANAMA CANAL; IN SINCERE THOUGH IN-
ADEQUATE COMMEMORATION OF ESTEEMED
FRIENDSHIP AND INVALUABLE AID;

PREFACE

I SHALL try in this book to tell the story of the Panama Canal, and incidentally that of Panama itself so far as the latter is necessary to the completeness of the former. It will be impossible for me to do so with any great elaboration of detail. The vastness of the topic forbids it; unless indeed this single volume were to be multiplied into many. The story is more than four centuries long, and it implicates, literally, mankind from China to Peru. Any one of half a dozen of its phases might well monopolise a volume. But I shall hope to give in these pages some account of all the really salient and essential features of the story, and especially to make clear the relationships of cause and effect among them, and to show how, by virtue of a somewhat devious train of incidents and circumstances leading from Christopher Columbus to Theodore Roosevelt, this country, in opportunity and privilege, in authority and responsibility, has become at Panama the "heir of all the ages." It will also be impossible for me to give much detailed description of the Isthmian country, of its conditions of resources, soil, and climate, of its people, or of the technical features of the canal and its auxiliary works. To each of half a dozen such topics, also, a volume might well be given. If I touch upon these more lightly and briefly than upon historical matters, that will be because this is to be a history rather than a descriptive treatise.

It is now more than a quarter of a century since I became, as a student of affairs and as a writer upon them, interested in the chief proposals and problems of Isthmian transit. Ferdinand de Lesseps had then achieved his splendid success at Suez, and was beginning his grandiose but fatuous undertaking at Panama; an American company was

planning the final and fruitless essay at Nicaragua; and James B. Eads was elaborating for Tehuantepec the most ambitious scheme of his engineering genius. In those projects, applied to routes which had been selected by Cortez, I became absorbed, and in all the years since that time I have striven to keep myself in touch with them, as long as two of them lasted, and with the one triumphant survivor down to the present. It was also my privilege, through the courtesy of the Government of the United States, and especially of its Secretary of War, the Hon. William H. Taft, to spend some time at Panama and there to study historical data, political and social conditions, and the various problems of the canal enterprise, under exceptionally favourable conditions of authority and intimacy, at what was probably the most important formative period thus far in the career of the Isthmian Republic and of our relations to it. The result will be found in this volume, in which I shall embody information acquired through personal investigation at Panama as well as in Washington and New York, and through inquiry of authoritative sources at Paris and Bogotá-the five cities, in four lands and three continents, in which the modern history of Panama and the Panama Canal has been chiefly made.

Much more might be said, not only than I shall have space to say, but also than it would be fitting for me to say. Much has been imparted to me which is of indispensable value to me in preparing this work, in directing me to other data, and in enabling me to judge correctly among diverse opinions and reports, but which confidence forbids me to reveal. I am deeply indebted, for information, opportunity, and aid, to Dr. Amador, the President of Panama, and to his son, Dr. R. A. Amador, the Panaman Consul-General in New York; to Dr. Arosemena, then First Designate of Panama; to Señor Obaldia, the Panaman Minister, and to Señor C. C. Arosemena, the Secretary of Legation, at Washington; to Señors J. A. Arango, Tomas Arias, Ramon M. Valdes, and other gentlemen at Panama; to the lamented John Hay,

then Secretary of State; to Mr. William H. Taft, Secretary of War; to Mr. F. B. Loomis, then Assistant Secretary of State; to Mr. John Barrett, then American Minister, and to Mr. Joseph Lee, then Secretary of Legation, at Panama; to Mr. Charles E. Magoon, then counsel to the Canal Commission and since Governor of the Canal Zone; to Rear-Admiral John A. Walker, then Chairman of the Canal Commission; to Mr. John F. Wallace, then Chief Engineer of the Canal; to Colonel William C. Gorgas, Chief of the Sanitary Staff of the Canal Zone; to Mr. William Nelson Cromwell, Counsel to the French Panama Canal Company; and to many others. I desire also to make grateful acknowledgments to the Editors of The Forum magazine and of The Tribune newspaper, of New York, for permission to use in this volume portions of various articles contributed by me to the pages of those publications.

With all its shortcomings,-which I sincerely trust no reader will realise as keenly as the writer, this book will be offered to the public with a hope that it will in some measure, by suggesting inquiry and stimulating study as well as by imparting information, increase appreciation and right knowledge of an undertaking which is not only the greatest in our history but also the greatest of its kind in the history of the world, and which is to be completed not only for the immeasurable advantage of the American nation but also for the promotion of the welfare of all mankind. WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON.

NEW YORK, October, 1906.