There was one notable exception, his break
with the Republicans while he was in the Senate on the question of
discriminating in favor of American shipping through the Panama
Canal. A clever lawyer's argument can be made that when the United
States said "all nations" in its treaty with Great Britain
regarding the Canal it meant all nations except itself. But Mr.
Root declined to make it, holding that plain morality and a greater
respect for the obligations of a treaty than Bethman Hollweg
expressed when he called them scraps of paper required this country
to charge just the same tolls for American ships using the canal as
for British ships or any other ships using it.
The general Republican argument is that thus interpreted, the Hay-
Pauncefote treaty is so foolish and so inconvenient a treaty that
Mr. Hay must not have meant what he said when he wrote it, and
really did mean something that he wholly failed to say. The reasons
for contending that Mr. Hay meant no tolls for the United States
and tolls for England, when he wrote the same tolls for everybody
are highly ingenious and as it was a Democratic President who was
asserting that Mr. Hay used language in its ordinary sense, Mr.
Root as a Republican might have been expected to declare that Mr.
Hay used it in quite the reverse of its ordinary sense. But he did
not.
Pages:
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154