Construction Days in Culebra-Gailard CutCONSTRUCTION DAYS IN CULEBRA-GAILARD CUT
Culebra Cut looks like the Hudson palisades, and Gatun Lake is like any other beautiful inland sea in a rolling country. The famous Gatun Dam is merely a dyke at the end of the lake andthe marvelous spillway is only a picturesque waterfall in the middle of a dam. As for the locks, they are big concrete chambers looking very much like a paved street on top and revealing nothing of the complicated mechanism below; and the germ-proof towns are like any other spotlessly clean villages with screened houses, and show nothing to cause us astonishment.
Any superficial view of the Canal is disappointing. It is like trying to understand a deep mine by looking at the mouth of the shaft. The channel is full of water, the machinery is out of sight, the great achievements of sanitation have been largely removals of materials, microbes, and conditions that have left no trace behind to tell their tale. In one way it is a negative result.
The idea of the Canal across the Isthmus is nearly as old as the discovery of the Isthmus by white men, but it remained for the intrepid builder of the Suez Canal to really undertake in earnest the project of a waterway between the two oceans. DeLesseps was both engineer and promoter and never really understood the size of his project. He had succeeded at Suez, but that was a farmer's ditch beside the Culebra Cut and the Gatun Dam, and the famous engineer was a very old man when he began on the Panama project. The high prestige of his name brought him money on a stock investment basis, and when unprincipled schemers got control of the companythe crash and scandal were immense. DeLesseps himself became insane as the result of the worry and disgrace and died in a hospital.
The French attempt began on January 1, 1880, with a great deal of oratory and champagne, also the official blessing of the Bishop of Panama, which seems to have been something of a Jonah on the enterprise.
In striking contrast was the beginning of the American work when a few men climbed out of a boat into water waist-deep and began cutting down jungle brush.
The actual construction and excavation work begun on the Isthmus by the French was of a very high order, and much of it was used by the Americans. The two causes which defeated the French were reckless financing at home and tropical diseases on the Isthmus. So bad did the disease conditions become that in the fall months of 1884 fifty-five thousand people died, and in the single month of September, 1885, the total rate reached the high-water mark of one hundred and seventy-seven per thousand of population. The total of lives lost on the enterprise will never be known, but is far greater than that of many wars which have received a conspicuous notice on the historical page. The collapse of the DeLesseps undertaking was followed by the organization of the New Canal Company, upon which followed a chapter of bargainings and treatiesand negotiations and bickerings with the object of selling out the rights and holdings of the company to the highest bidder. In all of these the Panama Railroad figured very largely, and the Republic of Colombia kept a watchful eye on the main chance for herself.
The story of President Roosevelt's large part in the American undertaking of the independence of Panama and the organization of the American effort is one of the romances of American history. On November 18, 1903, Washington recognized the new Republic of Panama, and later paid $10,000,000 for the Canal Zone and entered into a treaty guaranteeing the peace and perpetuity of the Isthmian Republic. Thus ended a half-century of riot and revolution and rebellion which was stated to have included fifty-three revolutions in fifty-seven years. Relations between the early officials on the Canal Zone and the rulers of Panama were not ideal; some of the Americans seemed to have had a real genius for offending the finer sensibilities of the natives.
The beginning of the American attempt is not a chapter of which anybody is very proud. The effort to dig the Canal from Washington under a mass of red tape which tied the hands of the men on the Isthmus proved an impossible undertaking. The President succeeded in effecting a reorganization which helped some, but not until all red tape was cut and Army engineers were putin charge, was anything like real efficiency obtained. Three great engineers were connected with the work—Wallace, Stevens, and Goethals—and to each of these belongs credit for the very high order of work done. While the man who finished the job bears the outstanding name in connection with the Canal, without exception the engineers who worked under the first two men speak in the highest terms of the work that they accomplished.
No snapshot résumé of the building days, nor tourist instantaneous exposure of visits can reveal, nor appreciate, the big problems that confronted the engineers. It all looks easy enough now, but it was very different then.
Good health on the Canal Zone seems a very simple matter now, and such it is; but when the doctors and sanitary engineers began work it was an exceedingly serious situation that they undertook to cure, and without their work there could be no Canal to-day. The complete elimination of the last case of yellow fever has made entirely harmless the mosquito carriers where they occasionally appear on the Isthmus. The best test of the work of the Sanitary Department is the fact that the Zone and terminal cities have remained clean and that there is no indication of relapse. Before work could begin, a whole system of transportation had to be organized, a steamer line put into operation, and an immense purchasing departmentgotten into working order. Before men could be brought to the Isthmus to do the work some provision had to be made for housing and feeding, and the question of materials, supplies, food, fuel, recreation, and education was no small matter.
To dig the Canal required not only engineers and officials, but an army of common laborers, and the labor question was not easy. The Panamanian might have dug the Canal, but he did not do it; he did not want to do it, and the probability is that he never could have done it. Employers on the Zone refused to hire Panamanians for Canal work.
Chinese coolies might have been imported from Canton or Amoy, but Panama is a long way from southern China and still further from India, and no intelligent man ever seriously proposed importing Hindus. If enough Panamanian Indians could have been found, they might have done the work, but the native Indian is a very uncertain and fragmentary factor of life on the Isthmus.
At this juncture the West Indian filled the breach and supplied the labor for the job. Up to forty-five thousand of them were employed at one time, and with the ebb and flow of the human tide between the Isthmus and the Caribbean Islands several times that number came to the Isthmus. Somebody elsemighthave suppliedthe labor, but the fact is West Indiandiddo the work, and at least deserves proper recognition therefor.
The problems of suitable construction machinery were in a way simple. Given a definite task, it remained to devise mechanical means to meet the conditions. In practice, however, the case was not so simple as this sounds, and some very difficult knots were untangled before the work was well under way. Some of the old French machinery was used clear through the construction period, but the jungle was sown with scrap iron of the old French equipment that has only recently been removed.
The electrical and mechanical equipment for the operation of the locks is a marvel of adaptation and invention and nothing short of a technical description can do the subject justice. To see the locks in operation is to wonder at the mechanical contrivances which seem almost intelligent, and some of the design work is the result of real genius.
Of engineering problems, proper, it is better to let the engineer speak with intelligence, but any layman can stand on Gold Hill and by vigorous use of the imagination see something of the tremendous work that has been done since the first shovelful of earth was turned on that New Year's Day in 1880. Whether the French engineers anticipated landslides at Culebra is notclear, but the American engineers knew from the start that the porous soil would cave in more or less at that point. What it actually did do surpassed the expectations of those who surveyed the work. When the banks began to cave north of Gold Hill the surrounding country got the idea and followed suit so fast that it looked as though the ten-mile strip would all be needed.
Gatun Spillway, Key to the CanalGATUN SPILLWAY, KEY TO THE CANAL
I spent a day in the big cut in January, 1917, and noted the rapid crumble of the historic bank at this troubled point. The following night the channel filled up for a length of eight hundred feet and shipping was suspended. Then the dredgers went at it hammer and tongs, and in three days and nights they had cleared a channel through that enormous mass of material and on the fourth day ships were again passing in safety.
It was a fine illustration of the way dirt was made to fly in the old days.
Some otherwise intelligent people have utterly failed to comprehend the size of the task involved in the mere digging of the Canal. One high official advocated the cure of slides by digging back a mile on each side of the bank. Verily, he knew not what he said, and a member of Congress on visiting the Canal reported that he was still in favor of a sea-level route. Competent engineers assured him that to construct a sea-level canal from ocean to ocean would require at least fifty years of continuous labor. The wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt's ideas has been forever vindicated by experience. Some practical man has said that no man can know how great is the task of making the earth until he tries to move a little of it. The congressman needed a little pick-and-shovel experience.
Administrative problems are not especially acute on the Zone, but the completed task gives room for a world of appreciation of the general efficiency with which the whole work was carried out, and the smooth-running machinery of the executive to-day attests the thoroughness with which the departmental system was organized and initiated by the men whose names will always be associated with the work. The task of operating the Canal to-day would not be very great, nor would it require a very large army of employees,but without any preconceived plan various related industries to the number of six or seven have grown up about the Canal administration and operation, and the Canal Zone government to-day is doing a number of things never contemplated in the original plans. The routing of ships is directly connected with the coal supply, and a great coaling plant stands at Cristobal. A large cold storage plant makes possible the supplying of refrigerated goods to shipping countries. While the trans-shipping business at Colon is yet in its infancy, the docks there are already a very considerable factor in Canal activities. Sanitation and public health, of course, require a trained force of specialists. The Canal employees must eat, and the commissary hotel and restaurant are a very important branch of the service. The quartermaster looks after the housing problem, and where there are five thousand Americans, most of them living with families, the educational problem necessitates a department by itself. The Balboa Docks employ hundreds of men at high wages.
In connection with the food problem come the large farming operations conducted on the Canal Zone. An army of laborers is employed, and the proceeds of the plantations and poultry yards is sold through the commissary's stores.
From the beginning much attention has been paid to the social life and recreation needs of theseexiles from home. A chain of government clubhouses runs across the Isthmus, one in each town, where reading rooms, games, gymnasiums, refreshment counters, discussion clubs, concerts, dances, cigar stores, and motion-picture programs are provided for young and old. During the dry season baseball is widely indulged in and plays an important part in the social and recreational life of the Zone.
Cristobal StreetsCRISTOBAL STREETS
Next to the "spotless town" features of the Zone the visitor is impressed by the smooth-running system through which everything is done. There may be officials who are grouchy and will not take time to answer questions, but I have never met one. The routine of operation and maintenance has succeeded the drive of construction days when Governor Goethals established the famous open house on Sunday morning and received anybodywho had anything to say to him. The last black laborer could see the governor if he wished, and many of them did so. The public-be-hanged attitude of occasional small executives in the States is delightfully absent. The machinery of administration outwardly works as smoothly as do the great gates of the locks. On the inner circle there are, of course, problems and sometimes personalities, but they rarely escape from the closets where ghosts are supposed to remain.
Fat Cattle of CocleFAT CATTLE OF COCLÉ
When the visitor begins to look about and beyond the Canal he becomes aware of the conquered wilderness. Where once was dense and impassable jungle now sweep smooth and verdant hills. One-time fever swamps are now drained meadows, and the never-failing drip from the sanitary oil barrel induces a very high mortality among the mosquitoes. Broad acres of richjungle lands have been cleared and are now model farms. Over the grassgrown hills wander thousands of fat cattle, increasing in number every year. The jungle of the Canal Zone is a very tame and conquered jungle. The real article lies beyond the line where there is plenty.
It was once thought that the best thing to do with the jungle was to let it run wild after its kind, as a barrier to invasion. A little experimenting proved that an army could cut its way through the jungle so fast that the brush was nothing more than a screen for the advance of the enemy.
If the visitor stays long enough and gets close enough, he will learn of things which might have been done differently on a second trial, but regulation and adjustment have pretty well cleared up the points in question, and, taking it all through, the Canal is as satisfactory and complete a job as the world has ever seen.
The Americans who live on the Zone are an interesting social experiment without knowing it. They form one of the unique communities of the world. Somebody has said that the Zone situation is described by the word "suburban," but that does not express it. Every man lives in a government-furnished house, rent free. Free also is his electric light and a ration of fuel for cooking. Ice is so cheap that it is practically free. He buys everything that he eats and wears in thecommissary's stores, where goods are sold to him at cost. So they are—at what they costhim. Prices now do not differ materially from retail figures in the States on the same goods. If housekeeping tires, there are the commissary restaurants, clean and wholesome, always available for good meals at reasonable prices. Good schools are furnished free, of course, for the children. There is a free dispensary where all minor ailments are treated and medicine furnished free. The government hospitals are among the best in the world, and employees' rates are less than the cost of living at home. The Zone man is under Civil Service rules, receives a generous vacation, with a steamer rate to New York so low that it covers little more than his meals en route. The scale of his wages is based on an increase of twenty per cent over the pay for the same class of service in the United States. Cheap household service abounds and is about as satisfactory as household service is anywhere. If he is lonesome, the government clubhouse, with its community life, good recreation, and well-stocked reading room, is always open to him practically without cost; and if he gets tired of the Zone, there is always Panama and the interior country with its never-failing places of interest and exploration.
Here are all the advantages of the socialized state and no workingmen or clerks in all the world are so well paid, or taken care of, as theseAmericans on the Zone. It is a fine, efficient piece of provision for the men who do the work. Therefore the Zone dweller should be a satisfied and happy man, dreading nothing but the day when he must return to the States.
Enchanted Islands in Gatun LakeENCHANTED ISLANDS IN GATUN LAKE
In practice, however, the American on the Canal Zone is not so contented as the external features of his lot would lead one to suppose. There is an undercurrent of petty complaint, directed at everything in general, and indicative of a state of mind as much as of actual evils existent. These complaints are the results of too much community life without room for individual ownership or initiative. The followers of Bellamy should come to the Zone and stay long enough to get a few pointers.
The trouble is that there is necessarily much of uniformity of housing, commissary, social, and living conditions. The American people are, after all, strong individualists, and every manlikes to have something that is distinctively his own.
When people work all day together, play ball together till meal time, all eat the same things at the same price from the same store, on exactly similar tables, with identical dishes; when they go to the movies together and walk home down the same street together and sleep in houses and beds all alike, they sometimes develop cases of nerves.
On the testimony of one of the efficient medical men of the Zone a lot of nervousness disappeared when war work absorbed the attention and energies of the patriotic Americans, who enthusiastically devoted their spare time to various forms of win-the-war industry.
The problem of raising children on the Zone is admittedly beset with difficulties. Health conditions are good enough, but many people are prone to regard life on the Zone as a general vacation from the standards and disciplines of the homeland, and children are often allowed to do very much as they please. Many families employ a servant, and there is no economic need for children doing any useful act of work. An unusual degree of irresponsibility results. "It will be time enough to correct them when we get back to the States," is a common remark.
Of course there are many families where the highest ideals are earnestly maintained, and no more faithful fathers and mothers may be foundanywhere than here in this colony of voluntary exiles. But American life on the Canal Zone is at present apt to be regarded more as a vacation experience than as a serious attempt to face the whole problem of living.
Moral and religious safeguards are not absent. The early plan of providing government-paid chaplains ended with construction days, and under the leadership of a group of farsighted laymen the Union Church of the Canal Zone was organized in February, 1914. All Protestant denominations except two now cooperate with this piece of ecclesiastical statesmanship. A centralized organization maintains work in all the civilian "gold" towns along the Canal, employing four pastors, who must be ordained men of evangelical churches. This Union Church does not regard itself as a denomination but as a federation for Christian service. No attempt is made to establish a doctrinal position, and members are not asked to sever their relations with their home churches. The excellent results attained under this management speak volumes for the wisdom of the plan and the earnestness and ability of the men who have fostered the enterprise from the start. The Union Church has devoted its benevolent moneys to opening a mission station at David in Western Panama, in cooperation with the Panama Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Morally, the Canal Zone is as clean as any place on earth. The improvement of moral conditions in Colon and Panama has done much to make the lives of Americans wholesome and to decrease the dangers to childhood that have existed in the past. There will always be Americans on the Canal Zone, and a few of them will exercise the great American prerogative of speaking their minds, but most of them will be better off here than at any other time in their lives.
Many prophets have taken in hand to tell us what the Panama Canal is to bring forth in its commercial, social, political, geographical, and educational results for the world. Probably no world-event has ever had so much advance advertising as this much written-up achievement. Great as is the Canal, it came near being out-*shone in brilliancy by the publicity material sent out by journalists who found the subject to be profitable copy.
In the main, the prophets were right. The world war postponed the arrival of some of the promised results, but it also enlarged the importance of the Canal and assured more extensive and far-reaching effects than could have been prophesied before the war began. It is now certain that we are to have a new and more closely united America than was formerly possible, and that the drawing together of the two Americas has been greatly accelerated by the world vindication of democracy. In this closer brotherhood of all Americans the Canal will play a large and important part.
Just how far the stream of influences will flowcannot be told, but it is within the moderate possibilities to say that every country in the world will be affected by the changes due to the new water-*way. The French originators of the first project saw an opportunity for commercial investment and hoped to make good dividends from the venture. They did not much concern themselves with by-products. The Americans who planned and pushed and persevered until the work was again begun were thinking of commercial and naval results, evident enough, but they could not have foreseen the far consequences to follow, nor could they have known that on the Canal Zone five or six related industries were to spring up under management of the Canal Commission. It is now about as difficult to predict the world-wide effects of the Canal factor as it would have been in 1903 to foresee the related industries of the present situation.
Shortening of trade routes is the first and obvious consideration. Everything else grows out of the elimination of distances by the Canal cut-off. It requires no prophetic gift to take the figures from any good map and ascertain that from New York to San Francisco via Magellan is 13,135 miles, whereas via Panama it is 5,262—a saving of 7,873 miles, or a month of steady steaming. Between New York and Honolulu there is a saving of 6,610 miles; and Yokohama is 2,768 miles nearer New York via Panama than by the Suezroute. The list of distances saved may be indefinitely extended.
Panama Public Water Works, Interior CountryPANAMA PUBLIC WATER WORKS, INTERIOR COUNTRY
If there were no results other than the saving of a week or a month of steamer time, the Canal would be cheap at several times its price. But these changes in steamer schedules and prices introduce an entirely new set of reactions into the commercial and social world, and this is where the interesting problems arise. Left to herself, nature tends to establish a balance of flora or fauna in any locality. Introduce a new plant or animal or microbe and all sorts of readjustments begin at once, and before a new balance is established almost anything may happen. Commerce finds its level in much the same way and by the same law. Introduce a radical disturbance, like the Panama short-cut, and everything begins to happen. Add the direct and indirect results of the war with its weakening of German influence and strengthening ofinter-American interests, and we may have practically a new world before a new balance is established.
Commercial interests naturally forge to the front in any discussion of canal results. So ably have these matters been discussed by experts that any repetition of figures and industries here would be beyond the scope of this work.
It must be understood that the world war rendered obsolete our former ideas regarding trade between the United States and Spanish-America. Whether the extensive German political-commercial machine that covered all Latin-America can regain its prestige in fifty years to come remains to be seen, but it is certain that for a generation following the defeat of Germany by the free nations of the world North America will have a magnificent opportunity to enter South American trade on very advantageous terms. And the great bulk of the west-coast trade will pass through the Canal on its way to Gulf and Atlantic ports, as well as to Europe.
The completion of the Panama Canal may be set down as the date of the discovery of Latin-America by the people of the United States. Previous to that date the North Americans were aware enough of the Monroe Doctrine, but almost unaware of the lives and interests of the nations living south of the Rio Grande River. With the opening of the Canal the North Americansbegan thinking south, and so far as the process has gone it has been very informing. Once the war is out of the way, the process will be greatly accelerated. With uninterrupted commercial conditions, five years of the expanded life due to the Canal will be about equal to sending the whole people back to school for a year. The cultural and geographical values of this new zone of thinking have hardly been felt as yet, but now that the attention of the world is released from the battlefields of Europe and the enormous social and financial problems arising from the expense of making the world decent once for all, the tide of interest is again turning southward along the shores of our own great oceans to the mighty events that await us there.
Spanish-America has twelve republics and eight thousand miles of coast line on the Pacific ocean. The United States has a Pacific Coast of about fifteen hundred miles. The eight thousand miles marks the western boundaries of lands enormously rich in things that the world needs, but exceedingly poor in finished products or adequate growth. Probably no country on earth shows a wider margin to-day between present raw resources and possible high developments than these same twelve Spanish-speaking countries. The only analogy that bears on the case is that of the rapid and extensive advancement of the Pacific States after the completion of thetranscontinental railroads. There is reason to believe that a similar record of progress awaits the west coast of South America.
The combined foreign trade of the west-coast republics before the war reached the very respectable total of nearly one billion of gold dollars in a single year. There are commercial prophets who believe that within ten years from the completion of demobilization this volume of trade may be doubled. This means new markets, new industries, new development of mines, markets, manufactures, and agriculture, new colonization projects and a score of other unpredictable results. No less an authority than Mr. John L. Barrett says, "I believe that the Panama Canal will initiate in all South American countries a genuine movement which will have a most important bearing on the commerce and civilization of the world."
An immense amount of iron lies buried in the mountains of the west coast. Not much has ever been done about it. But enormous quantities of ore have been destroyed by the processes of war, and South American iron may come to high values sooner than its owners have supposed.
It is only recently that consideration has been given to the idea of establishing in connection with the Canal a great commercial trans-shipping point. Colon is yet a little town, mostly West Indian to-day, but already the Cristobaldocks are piled high with South American products awaiting reshipment. The proposed establishment of a free port at Colon may yet result in a western Hongkong where the commerce of the seven seas comes together to be distributed to the five continents. Whatever might have been the results had there been no war, it is now sure that everything that happens in South America has henceforth a very definite significance for the United States. Whether we like it or not, we are out of our exclusive dooryard and will have to take our place on the great national street named America and play the game with our neighbors.
For decades past Central America has been an unknown land to the United States. We have contentedly supposed that the only crop was that of revolutions and the only resources a few jungle fruits. But at last we are discovering Central America, and some of us are astonished to there find vast areas, fertile soils, varied and valuable products, intelligent peoples, a volume of commerce and climate fit for Eden. We knew little and cared less about Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama; and since the bulk of trade of these lands was with Europe, they paid little attention to us. Why should they do otherwise?
The presence of the United States on the Isthmus of Panama introduces a new factor into the American tropics. It looks very small andinsignificant, that little ten-mile strip with the influence in Panamanian affairs, but how far the North American influence is going to reach out beyond the Zone limits cannot be known. Everybody is watching the results for revolution-proof, permanently peaceful Panama, and there are other countries not far away where there are people who are praying for something like it, or just-as-good, for themselves. Doubtless their prayers will not be answered directly but the influence of this leaven may work out into a wide circle and instigate movements that we have not counted upon.
A Jungle CathedralA JUNGLE CATHEDRAL
But the largest factor in the new American situation grows out of the new world-emphasis on the Golden Rule. At last the world understands as never before how finally determinative is the moral and spiritual factor in all human progress. We may never know just how much the world had paid to clear away the rubbish of autocracy and found the new age on the principleof a square deal for great and small; but the deed is done, and henceforth the one compelling sanction in all life must be the essential principle for which the Allies have spent their treasure and spilled their blood. The new internationalism will underlie all further development of relations between the two Americas, which opens a new world of social discovery and growth as fascinating as that which Columbus found in the physical surface of the globe.
The greater results of the closer fellowship of North and South America will be registered in the realms of mind and spirit. Trade balances and stock dividends there will be, but back of and beyond these will rise the new American spirit, uniting the finest courtesy and artistic temperament of the Latin with the practical initiative and efficient vigor of the blend of blood in the United States. There is no gulf, great or small, fixed between the two races. Each has something that the other needs, and close fellowship will result in new race sympathy and mutual advantage.
To ignore this basis of development is to forget that cold commercialism will in time chill the fervor of friendships and alienate the growing sympathy of nations. If we are to have no interest in our neighbors other than the profits we may make from their trade, we will soon cease to be friends and become bitter rivals at the big game of getting all we can.
It takes two to play the game of reciprocal commercial success. If we succeed on the great international chess board, it will be not by shrewd defeat of our friends but by the coming to maturity of a high sense of honor and fair play on both sides. It is not one of us against the other, but both of us together against the normal difficulties of growth and production.
One of the native leaders of Latin-American life has explained that South America was unfortunate in the character of the founders of her national institutions. Adventurers, explorers for gain, greedy conquistadores made the beginnings here, and the moral foundations were laid by religious leaders who traveled with pirates and plunderers and officially blessed their every act of crime. And from the beginning until now the type of religion that has prevailed in Latin-America has not assisted in the building up of free institutions, nor has it produced a high morality among the people.
The South American struggle for self-government and free ideals has been a long, bloody, and heroic grapple with the reactionary and despotic forces brought over from mediæval Europe. Men like San Martin and Bolivar deserve high honor for their work in breaking the bondage that held all life helpless. One by one the colonies threw off their political yokes and became republics, every one of them, in theory, modeled afterthe United States. The passion of the South American patriot has been home-rule, but, unfortunately, home-rule has not always meant self-government. That is quite a different matter. The overthrow of European despotisms was followed by innumerable internal revolutions. Panama had no monopoly on internal dissensions, and makes no claim that her fifty-three revolutions in fifty-seven years is the high-water mark of insurrections for South or Central America.
In short, the mere overthrow of a despotic government does not assure stable political institutions nor efficient administration of public affairs. Good government by popular sovereignty is something far more fundamental than a matter of printed constitutions or shouting "Viva independencia!" in the plazas. Without moral responsibility and free consciences there can never be a successful democracy on earth.
Free institutions and free consciences are winning out in South America, but it is in spite of the established church and not because of it. It is not politically a question of religion that we are discussing; it is a matter of organized, crafty, and unscrupulous opposition to every movement that makes for the development of democracy in South America. And since the establishment of a better understanding and closer fellowship between the two continents depends upon this very basis of free and morally responsible social andpolitical leaders, the question is most vital. Everywhere there are a few intelligent, earnest men working away patiently and steadily at the problem of making South America democratic by making her people free to adopt with intelligence democratic institutions. One by one the nations have declared for freedom of worship and conscience, and, last of all, Peru, robbed and despoiled Peru of the conquest, priest-ridden and fanatical Peru, threw off the galling yoke of spiritual bondage and divorced church and state. It seems simple enough to read about it here, but at every step of the way the old church left unturned no stone of bigotry and intrigue and prejudice that could oppose the coming of the modern age to Peru.
The supreme tragedy of South American life has been that the light that has been in her has been darkness. The spiritual leaders of the people have themselves opposed all progress toward the light. Until a spiritual leadership arises that will at least support aggressive and progressive movements toward freedom and democracy and moral uplift, slow progress will be made. And this matter concerns the whole American world. These are now our next-door neighbors, and their children will yet be playing in our yard.
The surprising thing is that so much has already been accomplished with a millstone tiedabout the neck of all progressive movements. No finer tribute could be paid to the high ideals and large possibilities of South American character than a recital of the results accomplished by her intellectual and moral leaders in the face of enormous handicaps.
The thinking minds of these southern republics are almost without a religion to-day. Long since have they ceased to give even passive assent to the demands of the commercial hierarchy that claims spiritual monopoly over the souls of man. Technical outward conformity to the requirements of the church may be a political advantage or a domestic convenience, but as a principle of life and foundation for thought the intellectuals are frankly agnostic. Man after man, when once confidence is gained, will state that they do not believe in the claims of the church, and usually have ceased to believe in anything at all—and these are the leaders of the intellectual life of the nations with which we are to deal. And what are they to do? No adequate substitute do they know, and until an open Bible and a living Christ take the place of the mummery and the crucifix we cannot denounce their course. Their intellectual nonconformity is to their credit.
The final problem is that of developing people fit to live with, not mental and moral slaves under the dominance of superstition and intolerance. Back of the cry for wider and richer trade routesis the need of responsible men with whom we may transact business. More than shorter shipping line, we need better shippers, north and south. Underneath vast projects of material advancement lie all the social and industrial problems of labor and wages and exchange and credits and fidelity to contracts and personal honor. And above all this is the need of honesty and efficiency and a personal faith in a living God who knows and cares and takes account of what we do, of what we are, and is not to be bought off by a check or an incantation.
Shoe-Bills Are SmallSHOE-BILLS ARE SMALL
What the bigger American world needs is bigger and better Americans, Latin and Saxon. If the influences released by the Panama Canal help to produce these citizens of the larger horizon, one of the greatest services possible will be rendered to humanity. But the larger horizon is conditioned upon a larger hope that flows from the mountain of the more abundant life. And the Americans of the northland needthe broader basis and vision and character as much as their southern neighbors.
What really has the Panama Canal to do with all this? Much every way, but chiefly as a key for the unlocking of the long-closed doors and the releasing of long-latent forces of international relations in trade and in social and spiritual life. Should a great working example of educational and social and spiritual life be established at Panama by some concerted action of united Protestantism, the influence of the principles there promulgated by progressive and devout men would extend over a very wide range of Latin life. The procession that now passes through Panama will be doubled and trebled in the coming decades, and what is planted here will spread everywhere. "I saw it so done in Panama," may become the precedent for almost anything new, whether good or bad.
The influence of such institutions in the City of Panama will be more far-reaching than if located on the Canal Zone. The Zone is wholly North American; Panama is thoroughly Latin. The institutions of the Zone are those of the United States and are looked on somewhat askance by Latin visitors. It is all very great and imposing, but it is so radically different in spirit and method, that points of close contact are hard to establish. Panama is a different matter. Whatever is done there by Spanish-speaking peoplewill be visited and viewed with sympathetic interest and appreciation.
The heart of living faith that is to impress its throb on this blood stream of Latin life must not be an imported made-in-the-States institution, or it will be but an ineffectual flutter. Likewise it must be something more comprehensive than the traditional schedule of occasional gatherings of the faithful, important as these will be. To do this work there needs be an interpretation of the Christian message that will relate itself to a very wide circle of human life and interests. Through native leadership and examples must be spoken a message that will compel attention and challenge the minds as well as the hearts of men. A living interpretation of a spiritual passion, a social service program with a heart in it, an educational work that will not only teach the curriculum but develop moral character, and intellectual propaganda of good literature, a physical gospel of health and exercise, a recreational life clean and wholesome, a personal moral standard of the New Testament grade—these are what are needed in Panama and, broadly speaking, everywhere else in Latin-America. Once established here they will be felt over a wide reach of the southern world.
There is a lot of cheap and easy optimism that maintains that all will yet be well in some indefinite way. Some hopeful tourists have visitedPanama and taken the trip about South America, apparently seeing nothing but the rainbow of promise everywhere. And these happy pilgrims have written books, assuring us with a maximum of glittering generalities that right is everywhere driving out wrong and that all will soon be well. Other writers assume this attitude consciously, out of regard for the interests that pay their expenses on the trip. Some people write in glowing terms from motives of consideration for the feelings of their South American friends. Would that we might tell only the bright sight of the story! It would be far more pleasant.
But, after all, the facts are the irreducible minimum upon which to build all successful programs of reconstruction. Only when we reach the inner and deeper springs of life and character can we hope to open fountains of living waters for the desert of the human heart in bondage. Really to know Latin-America is to believe in its high and fine possibilities. What Latin-America needs is a fair chance.
The end of the last great despotism of earth has left democracy a triumphant political principle in human government. Henceforth no nation may hope to keep step with the advance of mankind unless its political procedures are essentially democratic. And while South America has long had the form of democracy, it now becomes essential that her republics develop theworking reality of effective self-government. To do this two things are indispensable. The successful democracy must be intelligent and must find a moral foundation in the free consciences and minds of self-disciplined citizens. Spiritual despotisms and religious superstitions never did and never will eventuate in a capacity for democracy. Only men who are intelligently free can exercise the functions of free governments.
The only working basis of democracy, in short, is that system of religious ideals which has uniformly supported popular education, championed the rights of the oppressed, advocated self-government, welcomed investigation, and maintained freedom of conscience as of higher value than iron-bound uniformity to prescribed standards. It requires but a cursory glance at the record of history to know that no working democracy has ever survived the opposition of an ecclesiastical hierarchy that has remained the bitter foe of progress for a thousand years.
There is more hope for Panama in the little Protestant chapel down by the Malecon and the efficient and modern school maintained there by the force of missionaries with their progressive ideals than in all the pageantry and glitter of a system of repression and despotism that the world is rapidly outgrowing. The religious Hun will take his place with the deposed political despot who proposed to destroy the liberties of mankind.The most urgent need of the mission work in Panama just now is that of trained and efficient Latin leadership. No people can be effectively lifted from without.
A century ago nearly the whole of the southern world was in the throes of political readjustment. Self-government and political freedom were the watchwords and everywhere strong men arose and devoted their lives to the task of breaking from the necks of the people the political yokes under which they had staggered for two and one half centuries.
To-day in Latin-America the second great struggle for freedom is under way. Bound minds and consciences, superstitions and moral despotisms—these are the stumbling-stones across the pathway of progress. All over Latin-America men are rising and enlisting their hearts and minds in the struggle for free consciences and independent judgment in the things of the Spirit. Nearly all these countries achieved political independence within a few years. When the climax came it was comparatively sudden, and it may be that the breaking of the chains of moral and spiritual despotisms will likewise be a shorter struggle than now seems possible. Once again the clock is striking, and who knows but the end of political despotism in all the earth may mark the rapid approach of spiritual democracy and highest liberty in all America!
Heroic has been the long struggle in Latin-America for self-government. Splendid is the fight being made to-day for larger liberty. If Pan-Americanism means anything at all, it means a social foundation in honor and intelligence and brotherhood. It is time to address ourselves to the great unfinished task begun by those intrepid pioneers. The Canal is finished and the task of construction is done, but the end of construction is the beginning of empire-building for the larger task yet incomplete.
Transcriber's Note: All apparent printer's errors retained.
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