hich Roosevelt foresaw is now more than a third
over, and the discussion shows no sign of lagging. But the Panama Canal
is in use.

Was the President of the United States justified in preventing the
Colombian Government from fighting on the Isthmus to put down the
unanimous revolution of the people of Panama? That is precisely all that
he did. He merely gave orders to the American admiral on the spot to
"prevent the disembarkation of Colombian troops with hostile intent
within the limits of the state of Panama." But that action was enough,
for the Isthmus is separated from Colombia on the one hand by three
hundred miles of sea, and on the other by leagues of pathless jungle.

Roosevelt himself has summed up the action of the United States in this
way:

"From the beginning to the end our course was straightforward and
in absolute accord with the highest of standards of international
morality.... To have acted otherwise than I did would have been on my
part betrayal of the interests of the United States, indifference to
the interests of Panama, and recreancy to the interests of the world at
large. Colombia had forfeited every claim to consideration; indeed, this
is not stating the case strongly enough: she had so acted that yielding
to her would have meant on our part that culpable form of weakness which
stands on a level with wickedness.... We gave to the people of Panama,
self-government, and freed them from subjection to alien oppressors. We
did our best to get Colombia to let us treat her with more than
generous justice; we exercised patience to beyond the verge of proper
forbearance.... I deeply regretted, and now deeply regret, the fact
that the Colombian Government rendered it imperative for me to take
the action I took; but I had no alternative, consistent with the full
performance of my duty to my own people, and to the nations of mankind."

The final verdict will be given only in another generation by the
historian and by the world at large. But no portrait of Theodore
Roosevelt, and no picture of his times, can be complete without the
bold, firm outlines of his Panama policy set as near as may be in their
proper perspective.

CHAPTER XIII. THE TAFT ADMINISTRATION

In the evening of that election day in 1904 which saw Roosevelt made
President in his own right, after three years of the Presidency given
him by fate, he issued a brief statement, in which he said: "The wise
custom which limits the Preside