COLOMBIA AND CANAL TOLLS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1290, 29 August 1914, Page 4

COLOMBIA AND CANAL TOLLS.

In 1909, the South American Republic of Colombia was offered by the United States a treaty under which Colombian warships and army and navy supply ships were to have use of the Panama Canal free of charge. Although Colombia, resenting what she considers to be greater wrongs, refused to accept the treaty, Britain, it was stated in a cablegram recently, approved the principle of it. An attempt is now being made by a United States Senator to construe Britain’s accepting of the exemption of Colombia into a general endorsement of acts of discrimination that are forbidden by the Hay-Paunceforte Treaty. It is argued that if Britain approved the free passage of Colombian warcraft, she therefore cannot oppose the exemption of United States mercantile ships. This analogy is faulty not merely because it attempts to place on a par merchantmen and ships of warlike service. There is another factor, and that is the special position occupied by Colombia, whose territorial grievances in connection with the Panama Canal partition, as carried out by the United States, are admitted by some of the best American Papers to have an equitable foundation. The treatment of Colombia is one of the causes for the suspicion entertained towards the United States by most of the South American Republics, which, while willing to use the Monroe Doctrine against European Powers, are much more unwilling to incur domination from Washington. Any partial exemption offered to a small country that has suffered territorially through the canal scheme can surely not be held to, be a warrant for wholesale discrimination in the charging of tolls, a thing forbidden by treaty in respect of “all nations” observing the rules of the canal. Colombia’s larger demand for preference to her merchant shipping was described in a recent cablegram as “abandoned.”