ard a permanent advantage.

The trend of criticism injured the party under whose administration
corporate abuse had grown up. The personal popularity of Roosevelt, and
his associates, Root, Taft, Knox, and Hughes, saved the party from
defeat. In 1906 the congressional campaign was fought on the basis of
holding on to prosperity, enforcing the law against all violators, and
strengthening the hands of government. Roosevelt wrote the substance of
the platform, and his party gained control of its sixth consecutive
Congress since 1896. The canvass over, Roosevelt departed from an old
precedent, left the territory of the United States, and visited the
Isthmus of Panama to inspect the work on the canal.

Six months after the signing of the Panama Treaty in 1903 the United
States took possession of the Canal Zone and began to dig. It had to
learn lessons of both management and tropical engineering. One by one
its chief engineers deserted the enterprise. The choice between a
sea-level and a lock canal divided the experts. The legislation by
Congress was inadequate. In the spring of 1906 Roosevelt, with the
approval of Taft, who had been recalled from the Philippines to be
Secretary of War, determined to build a lock canal. The President
tramped over the workings in November, 1906, and sent an illustrated
message about them to Congress on his return. In 1907 Major George W.
Goethals was detailed from the army to be benevolent despot and engineer
of the Canal Zone. Inspired and encouraged by repeated visits from Taft,
the work now made rapid progress toward completion. Sir Frederick
Treves, the great English surgeon, visited the canal in 1908, and found
there not only gigantic engineering works, but a triumph for the
preventive medicine of Colonel William C. Gorgas, chief of the sanitary
officers.

The attention of the world, directed toward the United States since
1898, was held by the canal and by a continuation of a vigorous and open
diplomacy. In February, 1904, Russia and Japan, unable to agree upon the
conduct of the former in Manchuria, had gone to war. Hostilities had
continued until Russian prestige was shattered and Japanese finance was
wavering. In June, 1905, the United States directed identical notes to
the belligerents, offering a friendly mediation. The invitation was
accepted, and during the summer of 1905 the envoys of Russia and Japan
met in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to conclude a treaty of peace. In 1906
the