CHAPTER XIX CONTROVERSY WITH COLOMBIA ELDOM in the history of international relations has a controversy afforded more grounds for honest difference of opinion than the issue between the United States and Colombia, growing out of the revolution and formation of the new Republic of Panama. The most careful and unprejudiced study still may leave room for doubt as to the real merits of the case. In 1903, after the United States had decided to build an Isthmian Canal, preferably at Panama, but if that route were not available at Nicaragua, a treaty was entered into at Washington between the Governments of the United States and Colombia. This Hay-Herran treaty, as it was known, in simple terms provided that the United States would pay Colombia $10,000,000 in cash, and $250,000 a year after the completion of the canal, if the Republic of Colombia would agree to permit the New Panama Canal Company to sell its concession and property to the United States. This treaty, according to President Roosevelt, was entered into under negotiations initiated by the Republic of Colombia. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate, and was then sent to Colombia for its ratification. At the time the treaty was pending in the Colombian Congress, the President of the Republic was a man who had been elected Vice President, but who had kidnapped the President with a troop of cavalry and shut him up in an insanitary dungeon where he soon died. The Vice President thus became the head of the Government. Anyone who knows conditions in such countries as Colombia, understands that a President has no use for a Congress except to have it register his own will. The President of Colombia at first advocated the negotiation of the treaty, but he repudiated it after it had been signed, and then declared that if the Colombian minister to Washington were to return to Colombia he would be hanged for signing it. The result of this change of front was that the treaty was rejected by the Colombian Congress. All sorts of stories were put abroad in Colombia to arouse opposition to it. One was that the United States would make $180,000,000 out of the canal deal the minute the treaty was ratified by Colombia. It was claimed by the Colombian Government that the constitutional prohibition of the cession of territory to a foreign state would have to be changed by amending the Constitution before the Congress could legally ratify the treaty. How little the President of Colombia respected the laws of his country is shown by a dispatch received by the Government at Washington after the secession of Panama, in which it was promised that if the United States would assist Colombia in putting down the Panama revolution, the next Colombian Congress would ratify the rejected reaty. Or, failing that, the President would declare martial law, by virtue of vested constitutional authority when public order is disturbed, and ratify the canal treaty by presidential decree. If the Washington Government did not like such a proposal, the President of Colombia would call an extra session of Congress and immediately ratify the treaty. The real cause of the failure of the Hay-Herran treaty is not difficult to discover. The concession of the New Panama Canal Company under one of its renewals expired October 31, 1893. It was then extended for a year, and, in 1894, was extended again for a period of 10 years. Still another extension was granted, which carried the date of expiration to October 31, 1910. This last extension was granted by the President without the consent of the Colombian Congress. In 1903, when the Hay-Herran treaty was pending, the validity of this last extension was denied, and the assertion made that on October 31, 1904, all of the rights and property of the New Panama Canal Company would revert to the Colombian Government. The United States had agreed to pay to the New Panama Canal Company $40,000,000 for its concession and property. According to Representative Henry T. Rainey, of Illinois, who for years led the attack in the United States Congress on the acts of President Roosevelt in connection with the Panaman revolution, the purpose of Colombia in defeating the treaty was to wait until the expiration of the concession, when all of the property of the canal company would revert to |