ification, however, not upon these technical
pleas but upon the broad grounds of equity. America has learned in the
last few years how important it is for its safety that "scraps of
paper" be held sacred and how dangerous is the doctrine of necessity.
Nevertheless it is well to observe that if the United States did, in
the case of Panama, depart somewhat from that strict observance of
obligations which it has been accustomed to maintain, it did not seek
any object which was not just as useful to the world at large as
to itself, that the situation had been created not by a conflict of
opposing interests but by what the Government had good reason to believe
was the bad faith of Colombia, and that the separation of Panama was
the act of its own people, justly incensed at the disregard of their
interests by their compatriots. This revolution created no tyrannized
subject population but rather liberated from a galling bond a people who
had, in fact, long desired separation.

With the new republic negotiation went on pleasantly and rapidly, and
as early as November 18, 1903, a convention was drawn up, in which
the United States guaranteed the independence of Panama and in return
received in perpetuity a grant of a zone ten miles wide within which to
construct a canal from ocean to ocean.

CHAPTER XVI. Problems Of The Caribbean

As the acquisition of the Philippines made all Far Eastern questions of
importance to the United States, so the investment of American millions
in a canal across the Isthmus of Panama increased popular interest in
the problems of the Caribbean. That fascinating sheet of water, about
six hundred miles from north to south by about fifteen hundred from east
to west, is ringed around by the possessions of many powers. In 1898 its
mainland shores were occupied by Mexico, British Honduras, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela; its islands
were possessed by the negro states of Hayti and the Dominican Republic,
and by Spain, France, Great Britain, Holland, and Denmark. In the
Caribbean had been fought some of the greatest and most significant
naval battles of the eighteenth century and, when the canal was opened,
across its waters would plough a great share of the commerce of the
world. As owner of the canal and professed guardian of its use, the
United States was bound to consider its own strategic relation to this
sea into which the canal opened.

Gradually the situatio