of any
tolls, or on payment of lower tolls than those levied upon foreign
vessels, and that she may remit to her own vessels any tolls which may
have been levied upon them for the use of the Canal. The President
denies that Article III, No. 1, of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty can be
invoked against such power of the United States, and he contends that
this Article III was adopted by the United States for a specific
purpose, namely, as a basis of the neutralisation of the Canal, and for
no other purpose. This article, the President says, is a declaration of
policy by the United States that the Canal shall be neutral; that the
attitude of the Government of the United States is that all nations
will be treated alike and no discrimination is to be made against any
one of them observing the five conditions enumerated in Article III,
Nos. 2-6. The right to the use of the Canal and to equality of
treatment in the use depends upon the observance of the conditions by
the nations to whom the United States has extended that privilege. The
privileges of all nations to which the use of the Canal has been
granted subject to the observance of the conditions for its use, are to
be equal to the privileges granted to any one of them which observes
those conditions. In other words--so the President continues--the
privilege to use the Canal is a conditional most-favoured-nation
treatment, the measure of which, in the absence of an express
stipulation to that effect, is not what the United States gives to her
own subjects, but the treatment to which she submits other nations.

From these arguments of the President it becomes apparent that the
United States interprets Article III, No. 1, of the Hay-Pauncefote
Treaty as stipulating no discrimination against _foreign_ nations, but
as leaving it open to her to grant any privilege she likes to her own
vessels. According to this interpretation, the rules for the use of the
Canal are merely a basis of the neutrality which the United States was
willing should be characteristic of the Canal, and are not intended to
limit or hamper the United States in the exercise of her sovereign
power in dealing with her own commerce or in using her own Canal in
whatever manner she sees fit. The President specifically claims the
right of the United States eventually to allow her own vessels to use
the Canal without the payment of any tolls whatever, for the reason
that foreign States could not be prevented from refun