Vol. V

No. 1

ACCORDING to press dispatches from British Columbia, a large Japanese steamship company is to establish a line of steamers between the Pacific and New York Foreign and other Atlantic ports, on the completion Foresight of the Panama Canal. Twenty vessels of about 6000 tons register are to be built, and government assistance will be asked for, to carry out the project.

This dispatch is significant of the evident aim and intention of the Japanese shipping companies to be in a position, and ready, to take advantage of the Panama canal route as soon as that waterway is opened for use. Doubtless, the mercantile marine of every other maritime. power will have availed itself fully of the canal long before we have more than a scattering of vessels to show the American flag in trans-isthmian waters; and such a virtual certainty ought to be enough to make the people of this country open their eyes and wonder why we built the canal, whether for use, or just to demonstrate that we could.

An English View of the Canal

IN THE South American supplement of the London "Times," Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, in an article on "Naval Strategy and the Panama Canal," asserts that the effect of the construction of great canals on naval strategy is always apt to be overrated, and that the completion of the Panama canal will by no means prove so beneficial to the American Navy as was declared by former President Roosevelt, who said that it would double the efficiency of the American Navy. That the canal will prove very beneficial he admits, but he emphatically denies that it will permit the United States to concentrate its naval forces into one fleet adequate through the medium of the canal for the protection of both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The writer cites the Suez and the Kiel canals as instances of overrated military importance. The Suez, he says, never proved of great military importance; and the Kiel canal, from a military standpoint, was never worth the great cost it involved. It is to be noted, however, that the writer pays no regard to the commercial question in the construction of the canal.

John Paul Jones Crypt

A HEARING was had, on January 25, before a sub-committee of the House Committee on Naval Affairs, on the matter of the appropriation for a crypt for the remains of John Paul Jones. The members of this sub-committee were Messrs. Mudd, Butler, Bates, Englebright, Talbott, Hobson, and Kitchin. Congressman Loud, who has been very active in promoting the bill for this appropriation, appeared before the sub-committee and strongly urged the matter. Colonel Robert M. Thompson also appeared at the hearing, and set forth the necessity of the appropriation, and its patriotic side. The sub-committee unanimously recommended an appropriation of $135.000.