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Prowling About Panama

<h3>PROWLING INTO THE FUTURE</h3> Many prophets have taken in hand to tell us what the Panama Canal is to bring forth in its commercial, social, political, geographical, and educational results for the world. Probably no world-event has ever had so much advance advertising as this much written-up achievement. Great as is the Canal, it came near being out-*shone in brilliancy by the publicity material sent out by journalists who found the subject to be profitable copy. In the main, the prophets were right. The world war postponed the arrival of some of the promised results, but it also enlarged the importance of the Canal and assured more extensive and far-reaching effects than could have been prophesied before the war began. It is now certain that we are to have a new and more closely united America than was formerly possible, and that the drawing together of the two Americas has been greatly accelerated by the world vindication of democracy. In this closer brotherhood of all Americans the Canal will play a large and important part. Just how far the stream of influences will flow [Pg 236] cannot be told, but it is within the moderate possibilities to say that every country in the world will be affected by the changes due to the new water-*way. The French originators of the first project saw an opportunity for commercial investment and hoped to make good dividends from the venture. They did not much concern themselves with by-products. The Americans who planned and pushed and persevered until the work was again begun were thinking of commercial and naval results, evident enough, but they could not have foreseen the far consequences to follow, nor could they have known that on the Canal Zone five or six related industries were to spring up under management of the Canal Commission. It is now about as difficult to predict the world-wide effects of the Canal factor as it would have been in 1903 to foresee the related industries of the present situation. Shortening of trade routes is the first and obvious consideration. Everything else grows out of the elimination of distances by the Canal cut-off. It requires no prophetic gift to take the figures from any good map and ascertain that from New York to San Francisco via Magellan is 13,135 miles, whereas via Panama it is 5,262—a saving of 7,873 miles, or a month of steady steaming. Between New York and Honolulu there is a saving of 6,610 miles; and Yokohama is 2,768 miles nearer New York via Panama than by the Suez [Pg 237] route. The list of distances saved may be indefinitely extended. <div class="imgright" style="width: 223px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-235.jpg" width-obs="223" height-obs="500" alt="Panama Public Water Works, Interior Country" title="" /> PANAMA PUBLIC WATER WORKS, INTERIOR COUNTRY</div> If there were no results other than the saving of a week or a month of steamer time, the Canal would be cheap at several times its price. But these changes in steamer schedules and prices introduce an entirely new set of reactions into the commercial and social world, and this is where the interesting problems arise. Left to herself, nature tends to establish a balance of flora or fauna in any locality. Introduce a new plant or animal or microbe and all sorts of readjustments begin at once, and before a new balance is established almost anything may happen. Commerce finds its level in much the same way and by the same law. Introduce a radical disturbance, like the Panama short-cut, and everything begins to happen. Add the direct and indirect results of the war with its weakening of German influence and strengthening of [Pg 238] inter-American interests, and we may have practically a new world before a new balance is established. Commercial interests naturally forge to the front in any discussion of canal results. So ably have these matters been discussed by experts that any repetition of figures and industries here would be beyond the scope of this work. It must be understood that the world war rendered obsolete our former ideas regarding trade between the United States and Spanish-America. Whether the extensive German political-commercial machine that covered all Latin-America can regain its prestige in fifty years to come remains to be seen, but it is certain that for a generation following the defeat of Germany by the free nations of the world North America will have a magnificent opportunity to enter South American trade on very advantageous terms. And the great bulk of the west-coast trade will pass through the Canal on its way to Gulf and Atlantic ports, as well as to Europe. The completion of the Panama Canal may be set down as the date of the discovery of Latin-America by the people of the United States. Previous to that date the North Americans were aware enough of the Monroe Doctrine, but almost unaware of the lives and interests of the nations living south of the Rio Grande River. With the opening of the Canal the North Americans [Pg 239] began thinking south, and so far as the process has gone it has been very informing. Once the war is out of the way, the process will be greatly accelerated. With uninterrupted commercial conditions, five years of the expanded life due to the Canal will be about equal to sending the whole people back to school for a year. The cultural and geographical values of this new zone of thinking have hardly been felt as yet, but now that the attention of the world is released from the battlefields of Europe and the enormous social and financial problems arising from the expense of making the world decent once for all, the tide of interest is again turning southward along the shores of our own great oceans to the mighty events that await us there. Spanish-America has twelve republics and eight thousand miles of coast line on the Pacific ocean. The United States has a Pacific Coast of about fifteen hundred miles. The eight thousand miles marks the western boundaries of lands enormously rich in things that the world needs, but exceedingly poor in finished products or adequate growth. Probably no country on earth shows a wider margin to-day between present raw resources and possible high developments than these same twelve Spanish-speaking countries. The only analogy that bears on the case is that of the rapid and extensive advancement of the Pacific States after the completion of the [Pg 240] transcontinental railroads. There is reason to believe that a similar record of progress awaits the west coast of South America. The combined foreign trade of the west-coast republics before the war reached the very respectable total of nearly one billion of gold dollars in a single year. There are commercial prophets who believe that within ten years from the completion of demobilization this volume of trade may be doubled. This means new markets, new industries, new development of mines, markets, manufactures, and agriculture, new colonization projects and a score of other unpredictable results. No less an authority than Mr. John L. Barrett says, "I believe that the Panama Canal will initiate in all South American countries a genuine movement which will have a most important bearing on the commerce and civilization of the world." An immense amount of iron lies buried in the mountains of the west coast. Not much has ever been done about it. But enormous quantities of ore have been destroyed by the processes of war, and South American iron may come to high values sooner than its owners have supposed. It is only recently that consideration has been given to the idea of establishing in connection with the Canal a great commercial trans-shipping point. Colon is yet a little town, mostly West Indian to-day, but already the Cristobal [Pg 241] docks are piled high with South American products awaiting reshipment. The proposed establishment of a free port at Colon may yet result in a western Hongkong where the commerce of the seven seas comes together to be distributed to the five continents. Whatever might have been the results had there been no war, it is now sure that everything that happens in South America has henceforth a very definite significance for the United States. Whether we like it or not, we are out of our exclusive dooryard and will have to take our place on the great national street named America and play the game with our neighbors. For decades past Central America has been an unknown land to the United States. We have contentedly supposed that the only crop was that of revolutions and the only resources a few jungle fruits. But at last we are discovering Central America, and some of us are astonished to there find vast areas, fertile soils, varied and valuable products, intelligent peoples, a volume of commerce and climate fit for Eden. We knew little and cared less about Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama; and since the bulk of trade of these lands was with Europe, they paid little attention to us. Why should they do otherwise? The presence of the United States on the Isthmus of Panama introduces a new factor into the American tropics. It looks very small and [Pg 242] insignificant, that little ten-mile strip with the influence in Panamanian affairs, but how far the North American influence is going to reach out beyond the Zone limits cannot be known. Everybody is watching the results for revolution-proof, permanently peaceful Panama, and there are other countries not far away where there are people who are praying for something like it, or just-as-good, for themselves. Doubtless their prayers will not be answered directly but the influence of this leaven may work out into a wide circle and instigate movements that we have not counted upon. <div class="imgleft" style="width: 276px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-240.jpg" width-obs="276" height-obs="450" alt="A Jungle Cathedral" title="" /> A JUNGLE CATHEDRAL</div> But the largest factor in the new American situation grows out of the new world-emphasis on the Golden Rule. At last the world understands as never before how finally determinative is the moral and spiritual factor in all human progress. We may never know just how much the world had paid to clear away the rubbish of autocracy and found the new age on the principle [Pg 243] of a square deal for great and small; but the deed is done, and henceforth the one compelling sanction in all life must be the essential principle for which the Allies have spent their treasure and spilled their blood. The new internationalism will underlie all further development of relations between the two Americas, which opens a new world of social discovery and growth as fascinating as that which Columbus found in the physical surface of the globe. The greater results of the closer fellowship of North and South America will be registered in the realms of mind and spirit. Trade balances and stock dividends there will be, but back of and beyond these will rise the new American spirit, uniting the finest courtesy and artistic temperament of the Latin with the practical initiative and efficient vigor of the blend of blood in the United States. There is no gulf, great or small, fixed between the two races. Each has something that the other needs, and close fellowship will result in new race sympathy and mutual advantage. To ignore this basis of development is to forget that cold commercialism will in time chill the fervor of friendships and alienate the growing sympathy of nations. If we are to have no interest in our neighbors other than the profits we may make from their trade, we will soon cease to be friends and become bitter rivals at the big game of getting all we can. [Pg 244] It takes two to play the game of reciprocal commercial success. If we succeed on the great international chess board, it will be not by shrewd defeat of our friends but by the coming to maturity of a high sense of honor and fair play on both sides. It is not one of us against the other, but both of us together against the normal difficulties of growth and production. One of the native leaders of Latin-American life has explained that South America was unfortunate in the character of the founders of her national institutions. Adventurers, explorers for gain, greedy conquistadores made the beginnings here, and the moral foundations were laid by religious leaders who traveled with pirates and plunderers and officially blessed their every act of crime. And from the beginning until now the type of religion that has prevailed in Latin-America has not assisted in the building up of free institutions, nor has it produced a high morality among the people. The South American struggle for self-government and free ideals has been a long, bloody, and heroic grapple with the reactionary and despotic forces brought over from mediæval Europe. Men like San Martin and Bolivar deserve high honor for their work in breaking the bondage that held all life helpless. One by one the colonies threw off their political yokes and became republics, every one of them, in theory, modeled after [Pg 245] the United States. The passion of the South American patriot has been home-rule, but, unfortunately, home-rule has not always meant self-government. That is quite a different matter. The overthrow of European despotisms was followed by innumerable internal revolutions. Panama had no monopoly on internal dissensions, and makes no claim that her fifty-three revolutions in fifty-seven years is the high-water mark of insurrections for South or Central America. In short, the mere overthrow of a despotic government does not assure stable political institutions nor efficient administration of public affairs. Good government by popular sovereignty is something far more fundamental than a matter of printed constitutions or shouting "Viva independencia!" in the plazas. Without moral responsibility and free consciences there can never be a successful democracy on earth. Free institutions and free consciences are winning out in South America, but it is in spite of the established church and not because of it. It is not politically a question of religion that we are discussing; it is a matter of organized, crafty, and unscrupulous opposition to every movement that makes for the development of democracy in South America. And since the establishment of a better understanding and closer fellowship between the two continents depends upon this very basis of free and morally responsible social and [Pg 246] political leaders, the question is most vital. Everywhere there are a few intelligent, earnest men working away patiently and steadily at the problem of making South America democratic by making her people free to adopt with intelligence democratic institutions. One by one the nations have declared for freedom of worship and conscience, and, last of all, Peru, robbed and despoiled Peru of the conquest, priest-ridden and fanatical Peru, threw off the galling yoke of spiritual bondage and divorced church and state. It seems simple enough to read about it here, but at every step of the way the old church left unturned no stone of bigotry and intrigue and prejudice that could oppose the coming of the modern age to Peru. The supreme tragedy of South American life has been that the light that has been in her has been darkness. The spiritual leaders of the people have themselves opposed all progress toward the light. Until a spiritual leadership arises that will at least support aggressive and progressive movements toward freedom and democracy and moral uplift, slow progress will be made. And this matter concerns the whole American world. These are now our next-door neighbors, and their children will yet be playing in our yard. The surprising thing is that so much has already been accomplished with a millstone tied [Pg 247] about the neck of all progressive movements. No finer tribute could be paid to the high ideals and large possibilities of South American character than a recital of the results accomplished by her intellectual and moral leaders in the face of enormous handicaps. The thinking minds of these southern republics are almost without a religion to-day. Long since have they ceased to give even passive assent to the demands of the commercial hierarchy that claims spiritual monopoly over the souls of man. Technical outward conformity to the requirements of the church may be a political advantage or a domestic convenience, but as a principle of life and foundation for thought the intellectuals are frankly agnostic. Man after man, when once confidence is gained, will state that they do not believe in the claims of the church, and usually have ceased to believe in anything at all—and these are the leaders of the intellectual life of the nations with which we are to deal. And what are they to do? No adequate substitute do they know, and until an open Bible and a living Christ take the place of the mummery and the crucifix we cannot denounce their course. Their intellectual nonconformity is to their credit. The final problem is that of developing people fit to live with, not mental and moral slaves under the dominance of superstition and intolerance. Back of the cry for wider and richer trade routes [Pg 248] is the need of responsible men with whom we may transact business. More than shorter shipping line, we need better shippers, north and south. Underneath vast projects of material advancement lie all the social and industrial problems of labor and wages and exchange and credits and fidelity to contracts and personal honor. And above all this is the need of honesty and efficiency and a personal faith in a living God who knows and cares and takes account of what we do, of what we are, and is not to be bought off by a check or an incantation. <div class="imgleft" style="width: 223px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-246.jpg" width-obs="223" height-obs="600" alt="Shoe-Bills Are Small" title="" /> SHOE-BILLS ARE SMALL</div> What the bigger American world needs is bigger and better Americans, Latin and Saxon. If the influences released by the Panama Canal help to produce these citizens of the larger horizon, one of the greatest services possible will be rendered to humanity. But the larger horizon is conditioned upon a larger hope that flows from the mountain of the more abundant life. And the Americans of the northland need [Pg 249] the broader basis and vision and character as much as their southern neighbors. What really has the Panama Canal to do with all this? Much every way, but chiefly as a key for the unlocking of the long-closed doors and the releasing of long-latent forces of international relations in trade and in social and spiritual life. Should a great working example of educational and social and spiritual life be established at Panama by some concerted action of united Protestantism, the influence of the principles there promulgated by progressive and devout men would extend over a very wide range of Latin life. The procession that now passes through Panama will be doubled and trebled in the coming decades, and what is planted here will spread everywhere. "I saw it so done in Panama," may become the precedent for almost anything new, whether good or bad. The influence of such institutions in the City of Panama will be more far-reaching than if located on the Canal Zone. The Zone is wholly North American; Panama is thoroughly Latin. The institutions of the Zone are those of the United States and are looked on somewhat askance by Latin visitors. It is all very great and imposing, but it is so radically different in spirit and method, that points of close contact are hard to establish. Panama is a different matter. Whatever is done there by Spanish-speaking people [Pg 250] will be visited and viewed with sympathetic interest and appreciation. The heart of living faith that is to impress its throb on this blood stream of Latin life must not be an imported made-in-the-States institution, or it will be but an ineffectual flutter. Likewise it must be something more comprehensive than the traditional schedule of occasional gatherings of the faithful, important as these will be. To do this work there needs be an interpretation of the Christian message that will relate itself to a very wide circle of human life and interests. Through native leadership and examples must be spoken a message that will compel attention and challenge the minds as well as the hearts of men. A living interpretation of a spiritual passion, a social service program with a heart in it, an educational work that will not only teach the curriculum but develop moral character, and intellectual propaganda of good literature, a physical gospel of health and exercise, a recreational life clean and wholesome, a personal moral standard of the New Testament grade—these are what are needed in Panama and, broadly speaking, everywhere else in Latin-America. Once established here they will be felt over a wide reach of the southern world. There is a lot of cheap and easy optimism that maintains that all will yet be well in some indefinite way. Some hopeful tourists have visited [Pg 251] Panama and taken the trip about South America, apparently seeing nothing but the rainbow of promise everywhere. And these happy pilgrims have written books, assuring us with a maximum of glittering generalities that right is everywhere driving out wrong and that all will soon be well. Other writers assume this attitude consciously, out of regard for the interests that pay their expenses on the trip. Some people write in glowing terms from motives of consideration for the feelings of their South American friends. Would that we might tell only the bright sight of the story! It would be far more pleasant. But, after all, the facts are the irreducible minimum upon which to build all successful programs of reconstruction. Only when we reach the inner and deeper springs of life and character can we hope to open fountains of living waters for the desert of the human heart in bondage. Really to know Latin-America is to believe in its high and fine possibilities. What Latin-America needs is a fair chance. The end of the last great despotism of earth has left democracy a triumphant political principle in human government. Henceforth no nation may hope to keep step with the advance of mankind unless its political procedures are essentially democratic. And while South America has long had the form of democracy, it now becomes essential that her republics develop the [Pg 252] working reality of effective self-government. To do this two things are indispensable. The successful democracy must be intelligent and must find a moral foundation in the free consciences and minds of self-disciplined citizens. Spiritual despotisms and religious superstitions never did and never will eventuate in a capacity for democracy. Only men who are intelligently free can exercise the functions of free governments. The only working basis of democracy, in short, is that system of religious ideals which has uniformly supported popular education, championed the rights of the oppressed, advocated self-government, welcomed investigation, and maintained freedom of conscience as of higher value than iron-bound uniformity to prescribed standards. It requires but a cursory glance at the record of history to know that no working democracy has ever survived the opposition of an ecclesiastical hierarchy that has remained the bitter foe of progress for a thousand years. There is more hope for Panama in the little Protestant chapel down by the Malecon and the efficient and modern school maintained there by the force of missionaries with their progressive ideals than in all the pageantry and glitter of a system of repression and despotism that the world is rapidly outgrowing. The religious Hun will take his place with the deposed political despot who proposed to destroy the liberties of mankind. [Pg 253] The most urgent need of the mission work in Panama just now is that of trained and efficient Latin leadership. No people can be effectively lifted from without. A century ago nearly the whole of the southern world was in the throes of political readjustment. Self-government and political freedom were the watchwords and everywhere strong men arose and devoted their lives to the task of breaking from the necks of the people the political yokes under which they had staggered for two and one half centuries. To-day in Latin-America the second great struggle for freedom is under way. Bound minds and consciences, superstitions and moral despotisms—these are the stumbling-stones across the pathway of progress. All over Latin-America men are rising and enlisting their hearts and minds in the struggle for free consciences and independent judgment in the things of the Spirit. Nearly all these countries achieved political independence within a few years. When the climax came it was comparatively sudden, and it may be that the breaking of the chains of moral and spiritual despotisms will likewise be a shorter struggle than now seems possible. Once again the clock is striking, and who knows but the end of political despotism in all the earth may mark the rapid approach of spiritual democracy and highest liberty in all America! [Pg 254] Heroic has been the long struggle in Latin-America for self-government. Splendid is the fight being made to-day for larger liberty. If Pan-Americanism means anything at all, it means a social foundation in honor and intelligence and brotherhood. It is time to address ourselves to the great unfinished task begun by those intrepid pioneers. The Canal is finished and the task of construction is done, but the end of construction is the beginning of empire-building for the larger task yet incomplete. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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