and drainage in vicinity of camps, posts and defensive works on the Canal Zone, as follows:

"Margarita Island: For filling swamp in rear defensive works, $180,000; for clearing and improving permanent post site and drill ground at Miraflores, $30,000.

"ARMAMENT OF FORTIFICATIONS. For the purchase, manufacture, and test of seacoast cannon for coast defence, including their carriages, sights, implements, equipments and the machinery necessary for their manufacture at the arsenals (to cost ultimately not to exceed $2,506,000), $1,000,000; Provided, that the Chief of Ordinance is authorized to transfer to and use in the fortifications of the Panama Canal one sixteen inch gun and carriage, procured, or to be procured, out of appropriations heretofore made under armament of fortifications for Continental United States:

"For the purchase, manufacture and test of ammunition for seacoast cannon, including the necessary experiments in connection therewith, and the machinery necessary for its manufacture at the arsenals, $575,000.

"FIRE CONTROL. For the construction of fire control stations and the purchase and installation of accessories therefor, $200,000.

"In all specifically for fortifications and armaments thereof for the Panama Canal, $4,870,000.

"The Secretary of War is authorized and directed to cause to be prepared and submit to Congress on or before December 15, 1913, complete plans for, and drafted estimates of, barracks and quarters for the mobile army and sea coast artillery on the Canal Zone."

CHAPTER X.

Obsessed by the internal dollar politics of political patronage in the gift of members of the United States Senate and even of the President himself; ambassadorial appointments to foreign nations, down to postmasterships to favorites, irrespective of qualification; the same system extending to each Governor of each State, State Senators and members of the State Legislatures, which include appointments to the judiciary, the whole country is at loggerheads every four years in attempts to obtain lucrative office, resulting in political upheaval and unrest. This covers the entire political area with intrusions of greed and discontent, culminating in scandalous accusations in the public press against the existing political power for the following four years, when the tirade of party abuse and the juggle of new appointments to Federal and State offices is re-enacted. New office holders equally as inefficient as their predecessors are then appointed by political preference and the internal struggle is again renewed, until the better element of the population eschew politics almost entirely and are at one in the thought, with Europeans, that constitutional monarchy of a democratic form is a more economical and preferable form of government.

In 1857 Macauley predicted the condition now existing. He said in respect to the United States:

"On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should

be permitted to drink champagne, and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. When society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of the government with a strong hand or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman empire was in the fifth; with this difference that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions."

As a consequence of this internal chaos, few politicians are interested in foreign affairs, at least very few specialize or are educated in a school of diplomacy, or are familiar with the complexities attending the negotiation of foreign relations, or the importance of them. Upon appointment, the new incumbent of departmental office takes up the burden of unfinished treaties and negotiations left by his predecessor; often he is an opponent of the political party retired from power and so without specific training or sound knowledge of the subject, he and the committees (also politically appointed) wallow along in a quagmire of international errors, trusting to their natural acumen to adjust an issue.*

In the United States the voice of the press is not always the voice of the people, but the acts of the people are generally dictated by the voice of the press, and it is feared and pandered to by Federal and State office hold

*As in the case of the Titanic inquiry for instance, the chairman's (Mr. Smith) knowledge of ships and navigation was so limited as to elicit international criticism.

ers alike, because it influences their destruction or creation individually and collectively.

How is it to be expected, under this system of political patronage, to maintain an efficient Department of State? One able to cope with the trained diplomats of Europe or Japan? United States ambassadors and ministers are appointed from the untrained masses; editors, attorneys, merchants, politicians and relatives of politicians; men whose families aspire to social heights out of the United States, whose desire it is to wander in the purlieus of royalty for a brief period. Diplomats! To the manner born and trained by early environments? No! At the termination of the short rule of the political party in power, they are recalled and substituted and the chrysalid diplomats having once fluttered, pass out of both official and public life. Foreign courts endure this and are in most cases relatively inappreciative. These embryo diplomatists, with few exceptions, comprise the representatives of the United States in Europe, Asia and South America, and mistakes follow. In other civilized countries young men are selected from great universities for diplomatic service, and carefully trained for the position; made proficient in modern languages; compelled to graduate from a College of Diplomacy to a third or fourth secretaryship of an inferior nation, and by efficiency, inviolate integrity and marked ability, after serving years in a like position in many minor embassies and legations, they ascend to first secretaryships of the embassies of more prominent countries before becoming ministers of legations to even third class powers. How can untrained men under the United States system, compete with such experience? They cannot and their efforts in many instances are smiled at indulgently.

CHAPTER XI.

As a result of appointing untrained ambassadors and ministers, President Wilson delivered himself of the following remarkable speech before Congress at Washington on March 5, 1914, relative to the Panama Canal Treaty with England. Briefly the issue was: Should coastwise American ships have an advantage over British ships in canal tolls in the face of a treaty existing between the two countries to the effect that all vessels of all nations should pass through the Canal on terms of equality. The Panama Canal Act, passed by the United States Government in August, 1912, provided for an advantage, viz: exemption from the payment of tolls by American coastwise vessels in contravention of the then existing treaty made between Great Britain and the United States of America by Sir Julian Pauncefote, the British ambassador and John Hay, Secretary of State for the United States, in November, 1901.

President Wilson asked for the repeal of the Panama Canal Act of 1912 and upheld the treaty. The bill for the repeal is known as the Sims Bill. The text of the President's speech was as follows:

"I have come to you on an errand which can be briefly performed, but I beg you will not measure its importance by the number of sentences in which I state it. No communication that I have addressed to Congress has carried with it a more grave or far reaching implication to the interests of the country, and I come now to speak upon a matter with regard to which I am charged, to a peculiar degree, by the Constitution itself, with personal responsibility.