while Colombia recently celebrated her centennial of constitutional self-government? The Panamanian Peter would be divested of the form but not the substance of the material benefits for which he consented to make a perfectly safe revolution, under the prearranged protection of the United States. American administration and development of the terminal cities would be to his advantage. He would still have to the north of the Canal Zone the richest part-more than half—of his present domain, where he could exercise his genius for selfgovernment with much more freedom than Uncle Sam can ever allow him in the midst of the Canal Zone. So far as it affects the terminal cities and watershed, or any other portion of the Panama Republic which the United States may require, such a programme of readjustment is easy to arrange under the following clause of the HayBunau-Varilla Treaty: The Republic of Panama further grants to the United States in perpetuity the use, occupation, and control of any other lands and waters outside of the zone above described which may be necessary and convenient for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of the said canal. In substance we agreed to maintain Panama's independence, but not necessarily the integrity of her then, and still, undefined territory, the boundary at each end of the Republic being in question. Ten years of administrative experience, fraught with friction and petty annoyances, show not only the convenience but the ultimate necessity for a single administration to insure the most advantageous development of the canal as a commercial enterprise; the military reasons for controlling the watershed are also obvious. Whether legally we could impose upon Panama the alternative of restoring the San Blas region to Colombia or incurring the displeasure of the United States, I leave to the Internationalists as a question not likely to call for their answer, since a suggestion from Washington would doubtless be sufficient to secure Panama's cheerful acquiescence. The editorials that followed the publication of this sug gested plan of settlement must have been a revelation to those who have no faith in the ultimate awakening of public opinion in this country. Only two papers out of some thirty or more whose editorial comment has been called to my attention, presumed to deny contemptuously that Colombia has a just claim. One of them is the Kansas City Star, the organ of the Progressive party in that part of the country. The Star repeats the charge of blackmail as the final answer to Colombia, and declares that the taking of Panama under the circumstances "is held by the American people as one of the most noteworthy achievements of a noteworthy career." The other publication that does not concede that we have anything to settle with Colombia is the Outlook which in its issue of October 11 says in part: The people of Panama were unanimous in their revolt against Colombia, and the authority of Colombia collapsed in a night because she had neither moral nor physical power to enforce her authority. The people of this country will never concede that Colombia has a shadow of a claim against the United States for its prompt recognition of an oppressed people struggling for their rights. A queer idea of justice to Colombia is this proposal to attempt to satisfy her national pride and reconcile her warring factions with one another and with the United States by a Polandlike division of the territory of a people who have shown their right to liberty by daring to fight for it. I wonder how the editor of The Outlook could write such a statement, with the picture before him of that bloody revolution in which the total casualties and those accidentalwere one jackass and one Chinaman! The speaker preceding me has urged us to remember that the Canal cannot be a blessing to us while its title is clouded by an unrighteous act. I believe we must go farther, and realize that its material advantages cannot be ours until we shall have made a just settlement with the nation from whom we took the right to build it. Recent editorial expressions indicate that a considerable number of people are more impressed with the idea of providing for our own ultimate necessities at Panama than with the doing of abstract justice to Colombia for Justice's sake. If we can get their support in no other way, then let us reconcile Justice with Expediency, and while doing no injustice to Panama, readjust our relations in a way to do full justice to Colombia, and to secure to the people of the United States the full benefits of the Canal. THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF THE ARGENTINE NATION By Bailey Willis, Ph.D., Consulting Geologist to the Minister of Public Works, Argentina, 1911-1913: Member of the United States Geological Survey The point of view which is accepted in this paper is that of a study in evolution, involving the well established principle that any organism on migrating into a new region becomes modified by adjustment to its environment, and develops activities suited to the conditions of life by which it is surrounded. As applied to all the lower ranks of animals, the bearing of this principle of adaptation is not questioned, nor does its validity need to be argued in applying it to races of men, or even to nations. Let me illustrate the point by referring to the migrations of Asiatic tribes into Europe, where several thousand years ago new nations were born and civilization began that evolution from which we are developing. It was in the new environment that the human race made progress. Once more, and for the last time, when Columbus led the Europeans to the American continent a similar great opportunity offered itself to humanity. Under the tremendous stimulus of modern forces we already see progress toward the evolution of a higher type of man, the Pan-American. In all parts of the Americas the American type is becoming distinct in physical and mental characteristics from the European stocks from which it originated. Everywhere evolutions are going on, in each region according to the racial factors of the colonizing peoples and the physical factors of the environment into which they have migrated. From the snowy north lands of Canada, through the fertile savannahs of the United States, in the tropics of the Isthmus and the Amazon, on southward across the vast |