opponent, a means had to be found which would enable the Pacific and Atlantic squadrons to unite quickly in time of war. Formerly the Pacific coast could safely be left devoid of naval defence. The rise of Japan has made the Panama Canal a necessity. By enabling the Pacific and Atlantic squadrons to unite at short notice, the Panama Canal doubles America's naval strength.

The fact that the Panama Canal might become a point of friction in time of peace and a danger centre in time of war was foreseen by many of the best-informed Americans. Admiral Mahan, the greatest living writer on naval strategy, wrote in The Isthmus and Sea Power:

With the changes consequent upon the Canal ... we also shall be entangled in the affairs of the great family of nations, and shall have to accept the attendant burdens.

The same authority wrote in his recently published work Naval Strategy:

The general international importance to commerce of such a point as the Canal can scarcely fail to make the condition of its tenure and use a source of international difference and negotiation, which often are war under another form; that is, the solution depends upon military power, even though held in the background. . . .

...

One thing is sure: in the Caribbean Sea is the strategical key to the two great oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, our own chief maritime frontiers.

Admiral Mahan's assertion that the key to the two oceans lies in the Caribbean Sea is by no means exaggerated. A naval Power which is able to prevent America using the Canal is able to prevent the joining of her Pacific and Atlantic squadrons, whilst a naval Power which is actually occupying the Canal and its approaches can make the region of Panama its headquarters, and throw its troops at short notice on either coast of the United States. Thus the Canal, though it is situated at a distance of 1500 miles from the United States territory, will be the axis and keystone of America's defence in case of a great war. To defend it, the American coasts will have to be denuded of the ships and soldiers necessary for their defence. The Canal is forty and a half miles long. Its great length requires that there should not only be strongly fortified and garrisoned points at both openings of the Canal, but that there should also be strongly fortified intermediate positions along its course, in order to prevent troops, landed some distance away on the Isthmus, reaching any part of the waterway and destroying its navigability. A considerable permanent garrison, say 5000 men, will therefore be needed in time of peace, which should be brought up to at least 20,000 men at the first sign of foreign complications.

Thus the Canal will make disproportionately heavy claims upon the numerically weak and very costly United States army, both in time of peace and of war. It is bound to increase America's yearly military expenditure very greatly. Possibly the defence of the Panama Canal will in the end prove far more expensive than its construction.

He who wishes to dominate the Canal must not only dominate the Canal zone but also its approaches. A glance at the map shows that there are at a convenient distance from both Canal openings numerous island harbours and mainland ports which would furnish excellent bases for an attack upon the strategical key to the two great oceans,' as Admiral Mahan puts it. Between 1899 and 1901, before the construction of the Canal was begun, the problem was studied in all its aspects by an influential American Government Commission, presided over by Admiral Walker. With regard to its military position, the Commission reported:

The Canal is but one link in a chain of communications, of which adjacent links are the Caribbean Sea on the east and the waters of the Pacific, near the Canal's entrance, on the west. Unless the integrity of all the links can be maintained, the chain will be broken. The Power holding any one of the links can prevent the enemy from using the communication, but can itself use it only when it holds them all. . . .

Fortification is of the nature of insurance. In its practice there are several maxims which may here be noted. One is that the greater the value of the prize, the greater the temptation to the enterprise of the enemy, and the greater the amount of effort to be applied to the defences. Another is that the farther the place to be defended is from supplies and reinforcements, the stronger must be the fortifications. Still another is that the less the natural features of the ground are favourable to defence, the more must strength be supplied by works of construction. From all three of these points of view the Canal would require the maximum amount of fortifications. It would be a prize of extraordinary value; it would be beyond the reach of reinforcements if the enemy control the sea; and the low, flat shore on the Atlantic side, as well as the great length of the Canal, are unfavourable to defence. To defend it by fortifications on land would be a costly, difficult and uncertain undertaking, and by absorbing resources which could better be employed elsewhere would be a source of weakness.

If defended at all, the Canal should be defended at sea by the Navy. But that, again, would be a source of weakness, because it would hamper the movements of the Navy, which is essentially the arm of attack. If a large force of the Navy is to be employed in guarding the Canal, its power for offensive action, which is its normal employment, is diminished. If, from force of circumstances, the Navy be compelled to abandon the offensive, its services will be more valuable upon our coasts than in the Caribbean Sea.

A much more certain and easy method of securing the use of the Canal to ourselves, while closing it to our enemies, is to remove it from the operations of war by making it neutral. . . .

...

It is the opinion of the Commission that a neutral canal, operated and controlled by American citizens, would materially add to the military

strength of the United States; that a canal, whether neutral or not, controlled by foreigners would be a source of weakness to the United States rather than of strength; and that a canal not neutral, to be defended by the United States, whether by fortifications on land or by the Navy at sea, would be a source of weakness.

I have italicised some of the more important passages. The arguments advanced in the foregoing are faultless. They represent the best American military and naval opinion. The Canal is likely to become indeed a point of weakness and of danger to the United States in case of war.

The Government Report from which the foregoing passages are taken contemplates only three possibilities: that the Canal be neutral and controlled by Americans; that it be controlled by foreigners; that it be not neutral and to be defended by the United States. There is, however, a fourth possibility: that the Canal be neutral, controlled and policed by Americans and defended by the United States and another Power. Under the present arrangement the Panama Canal is bound to be to the United States a source of great expense and anxiety. Its control or capture by a third Power strong on the sea, such as Germany or Japan, or by a combination of Powers-Germany and Japan might conceivably combine-might be fatal to the United States. However, Great Britain has no interest in seeing the Canal controlled or seized by a third Power. If Great Britain should guarantee the position of the United States at Panama, the United States need no longer fear the Canal being attacked, and the enormous risk involved in its possession might be avoided. Perhaps the authors of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty had such joint Anglo-American action in their mind. Their treaty begins with the significant words: The United States and Her Britannic Majesty, being desirous of consolidating the relations of amity which so happily subsist between them. . .'

Nothing would more strongly tend to consolidate the relations of amity which so happily subsist between the United States and Great Britain than a great and valuable service done by one Power to the other. But this should evidently be a matter of give and take, and the United States should reciprocate Great Britain's service with a similar one. The Panama question requires to be solved not by international lawyers but by statesmen. It calls for statesmanship of the highest kind, and the considerations which should guide the statesmen of both countries are the following:

It is not in Great Britain's interest to see the great Republic humiliated and despoiled by a great military Power.

It is not in the interest of the United States to see Great Britain's place taken by a military State.

It is not in the interest of the United States and Great Britain that the great military States should overwhelm their peaceful neighbours and eventually endanger the peace of the Anglo-Saxon nations.

After all, it is only natural that the two great democratic and individualist Anglo-Saxon communities, which are one in everything except in the outer form of their political organisation, and which live in a world of warlike States, should support one another in time of danger, and should co-operate with one another in the promotion of Anglo-Saxon liberty and civilisation in time of peace. Such mutual support and co-operation should make for world-wide peace and gradual disarmament.

If the United States carry out their contemplated Panama policy, charging tolls to other nations and giving the free use of the Canal to their own ships, the Canal may become a point of more or less dangerous international friction. Besides, the collection of the dues in the ordinary way is costly and troublesome. In view of the fact that the Canal is not likely ever to become a paying investment to the United States it will perhaps be wisest and cheapest to make it free to all nations. It cannot, of course, be expected that the United States will make a free gift of the Canal to the nations of the world. The most sensible course for all parties concerned seems to be to free the Panama Canal from dues in the same way in which in the last century, through America's initiative, the Danish Sound dues were abolished to call an International Conference and arrange for the extinction of the Panama tolls by the payment of a lump sum, capitalising the average income to be derived from the Canal. In this Great Britain might take the initiative. The cost of working and maintaining the Canal might perhaps be shared by the United States and the British Empire, which are most interested in the undertaking.

If Great Britain and the United States should share the cost of working the Canal and the responsibility of defending it, acting as the trustees of the world, the Canal could become neither a source of weakness to the United States nor a source of strife among Anglo-Saxon nations, as those hope who are not friendly to the Anglo-Saxons; instead it would become a gage of friendship of two great nations, a connecting-link between the British Empire and the United States, and a monument of Anglo-Saxon unity. The proposed transaction might prove an important step towards that Anglo-Saxon reunion which will be the best guarantee for the peace and progress of the world.

J. ELLIS BARKER.

A VISIT TO LONDON IN THE

YEAR 1651

Whither, O traveller, hasten you?

Tell me your name, your aim:

Time and his troubles will chasten you,

Known or unknown to fame.

THE days and ways of our ancestors! There is a certain fascination in trying to bring back to life when one can (and for a short time only) the people who lived before us, the men and women who walked through the same street, who looked at the same hill, or river, or house that we see every day now, as we hurry to the City, or as we stroll in Hyde Park, attired in the latest fashions of Paquin or Poole. Did Old Londoners see things as we do?dressed and fed so differently, and educated so little as they were. Objects which they used acquire a new interest when we handle them. A ring from the rosy fingers of Nell Gwyn or la Pompadour seems to me like a mirror in which we may see the favoured friend who paid for the ring, and the crowd of admirers gazing at the beauty, as she idly plays with her jewels and listens to the wit or the sighs of her lovers.

We may go to Kensington Palace now1 and see, even if we may not touch, the dresses and ornaments which our old ancestors (who were not always old) used to admire on each other. Splendour was the ideal of the seventeenth century, as comfort seems to be the ideal of to-day. Wigs powdered with gold and silver, and clothes of embroidered silk were worn every day, but the wearers had no hot-water pipes laid on to their bedrooms. Silver candelabra chased with marvellous skill, and filled with bad tapers, lighted their rooms, but no electric lamps, of which hundreds are now illuminated by a touch of the thumb.

A short time ago a document of considerable human interest came into my possession. It contains the carefully kept record of the expenses incurred by a gentleman who paid a visit to London in the month of June 1651; and in the following pages I have tried to bring back the writer to life (for a short time only), and to show the conditions of London at that period.

1 The London Museum is the commencement of a collection which will no doubt in course of time become representative of all periods of London life, and will be an interesting rival to the Musée Carnavalet of Paris.