without loss of prestige, nor make her hold on secure by reinforcements. The same would hold true with reference to an American Isthmian canal in a war between the United States and Great Britain. Perhaps Great Britain could not capture the canal. She might not wish to, but by blockading it she could destroy its usefulness to the United States. From a military standpoint the canal is valuable only as a shortened line of communication. It has no other value. It does not serve as a good base of operations in a war with a strong naval power. It occupies no threatening position in a war with Great Britain. No prudent naval commander would hold a fleet in Lake Nicaragua or Lake Bohia to spring out on the foe in either ocean, as has sometimes been suggested. If our enemy be weak it would not be necessary, if strong, the danger of being bottled up is too great. The canal is simply a link in the chain of communications. No chain is stronger than its weakest link. Forge it as you will, the weak link in a war with a stronger naval power than ourselves, is on either side. Munitions of war and troops would ordinarily be transported across the continent by rail, as that is a more expeditious route. As a line of communications it is badly located when considered in a war with a superior naval power. Instead of being in a protected position behind the main line of defense, it is out beyond the skirmish line. An adequate defense of a fortified Isthmian canal can be made in no other way than by providing a navy of sufficient power to control the seas at either terminus. With such a navy at our command, the canal needs no fortifications. What number of battleships, cruisers, etc., would be necessary to accomplish this end, we do not feel competent to estimate; that is a question for naval experts to determine. Suppose, on the other hand, the canal were neutral. It would not then become a prize of war. Neither the main tenance of an army to protect it nor of a fleet to keep open communications with it, would be necessary. Great Britain might possibly send ships through it, but even that is doubtful. The most that could be gained by doing so is a saving of time. Under some circumstances this might be an important matter. But the naval preponderance of Great Britain is such that time would be of less importance to her than to us. It is scarcely probable that it would ever be so important to her as to justify her in taking the risks of sending a fleet through a canal under American control. The canal is of more value to the United States than to any other nation. To keep it and the approaches open at all times would therefore be the aim of our government. But no amount of fortifications along the line of the canal will afford safe passage to a ship across the Caribbean Sea. It is believed, in consideration of the freedom of the canal extended by the United States to the ships of all nations, that those nations would agree to an arrangement by which the region of the canal and large areas of the sea at each terminus should be exempted from the operations of war. The larger these areas of neutrality the better. But in view of the benefits to mankind which the United States would confer by the construction of the canal, there ought to be no serious difficulty in securing areas of the sea bounded by arcs of circles described with radii of, say, 100 miles or Should such an agreement be violated by any nation that is a party to it, the United States could destroy the canal, if necessary, so as to render it impossible of being used against us. As no nation except Great Britain would wish to use the canal for any other than peaceful purposes of commerce, and as she probably would have no strong reason for using it in any other way, it is not seen why such an agreement might not be made. How such a status of the canal and adjacent waters can be effected are matters for more. statecraft to settle. The object of the foregoing remarks is to endeavor to show that a neutral canal with a large area of neutral waters at each terminus, is, in the existing status of the naval powers of the world, a more useful canal to the United States, from a military standpoint, than one that is controlled by military power. THE NEUTRALIZATION OF THE SUEZ CANAL. The Turkish Sultan, Mustapha III., is reported to have once remarked: "If a happy circumstance can dictate alterations in immutable laws, the canal from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean will one day become the basis of a new rule of international law." Mustapha's words were truly prophetic, for, to the student of international law and its history, the case of the Suez Canal presents an interesting and important example of the adaptation of the rules of international jurisprudence to altered conditions and changed circumstances. For, up to the third quarter of the last century, jurists were almost entirely silent regarding the legal status of artificial canals connecting two seas and utilized by the public and private vessels of several states. They have discussed alone the legal necessities of existing conditions, and consequently have had no occasion to deal with cases which, under then-existing conditions, could not arise. The Suez Canal was, at the time of its construction, a work so unique that it would be idle to consult the file of precedence in the hope of finding precept or rule such as would throw any light upon its legal position. But no small portion of the present body of international law has had its origin in the continual extension of simple principles to complex cases and in the detection of analogies between new and old sets of facts. The great but simple rules of Hugo Grotius respecting the freedom of the high seas have, in later centuries, received applications of which their author could have had no conception. The Congress of Vienna, for example, applied the principle to the chief rivers of Northeastern Europe, declaring that the Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt, Moselle and Elbe should be free to the vessels of all nations from the point at which they became navigable down to the sea, thus putting an end to the mass of vexatious regula tions and tolls which had hitherto rendered them practically useless as highways of trade. Similarly the principle of the immunity of non-combatant territory and of noncombatant persons has been extended to render immune certain works of international importance such as the artificial entrances at the mouths of the Danube, while the Geneva Convention applied the principle of immunity to surgeons, nurses and others whose intimate connection with combatants had hitherto deprived them of a neutral character. Political necessities, too, had at various times secured the perpetual immunity of whole states such as Luxemberg, Belgium and Switzerland. The step from an international agreement for the immunity from hostile attack of territories, works and persons, to an agreement for the guarantee of like immunity to an interoceanic waterway of the greatest political and commercial importance to many states, was not a long one, and the Suez Canal had not been many years in operation when a movement with this end in view began. But movements of this kind-owing to the number and variety of the interests concerned-progress very slowly, and it was not until nearly two decades had passed that international agreement finally secured for the great waterway a full guarantee of immunity from belligerent operations under all circumstances whatsoever. And in view of the frequency with which, during the recent discussions upon the Hay-Pauncefote negotiations, the action of the Powers in regard to the Suez Canal has been seized upon and advanced as a precedent, it may be well to examine the history both of the canal construction and of the subsequent international negotiations, with a view to discovering whether or not all the essentials of a valid precedent are present. The importance, commercially and strategically, of a navigable waterway across the Isthmus of Suez had long been recognized. As early as 1798 Bonaparte had caused the route to be surveyed, but his engineers reported the scheme |