THE BOGOTA TREATY

The greatest achievement of the Roosevelt administration was undoubtedly the building of the Panama Canal. For over fifty years we had been guaranteed open transit across the Isthmus, but had been forced repeatedly to intervene, often at the request of Columbia, who owned Panama, in order to protect our interests there. After the failure of the French canal project, the United States undertook the task of the construction of the water route across the continent. As long as there was a possibility that the United States would locate operations in Nicaragua, the Colombian government favored the Panama plan. But after the decision in favor of its present site, the Colombians repudiated their attitude, an act which was followed by the revolution of 1903.

Theodore Roosevelt, who was then president, recorded his contempt of the Bogota Treaty which was made after this revolution. He expressed himself in these words: "I did not lift my finger to incite the revolutionists. Colombia was solely responsible for her own humiliation, and she had not then and has not now, one shadow of claim upon us moral or legal; all the wrong that was done, was done by her." And now certain interests are trying to "rail-road" this treaty--which has never been ratified--through the present Congress.

The Bogota Treaty promises the South American republic twenty-five million dollars, together with certain other concessions as an indemnity for any injury which Colombia might have suffered through the loss of Panama and the building of the Panama canal. The attempt of the present Administration to obtain its immediate ratification recently failed and the Roosevelt senators have served notice on President Harding that they would not allow the treaty to go to vote until the people had a chance to read and hear the question debated in the senate.

This small group of men are attacking the policy of secret diplomacy and are opposed to a treaty which has been rejected twice as a subject of national referendum before the people. They are confronted by the power of the oil interests, all of which are in favor of the treaty. Then also the power of patronage is never so great as at the beginning of an administration, when a new president asks that a treaty be ratified. Nevertheless the minority senators are fighting on the side of the American people in preventing the secret passage of a "blackmail" treaty which does meet with public approval.