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must be taken into account in determining the boiling point of a fluid.

To guard against error, therefore, the tests employed in verifying an hypothesis should be as many and as varied as possible. Moreover, wherever it is convenient, experiment should be used as an aid to observation. When we can control the conditions under which a phenomenon occurs, we can the more readily determine the cause of that phenomenon.

V

SPECIMENS OF ARGUMENTATION

Or the specimens of argumentation given below, the first three illustrate the deductive, the last the inductive, method of reasoning.

SHOULD THE PANAMA CANAL BE FORTIFIED? 1

It is announced-and we are authorized to say that the announcement correctly represents the President's viewsthat the President is in favor of fortifying the Panama Canal; that he has always been in favor of its fortification ever since his early connection with it as Secretary of War; that he believes that there is nothing in the HayPauncefote Treaty inconsistent with such fortification; that, on the contrary, that treaty both implicitly and explicitly recognizes the right of the United States to fortify it; that Colonel Goethals, who is in charge of the construction of the Canal, is in thorough sympathy with the President's views on this subject, and that in the construction of the Canal he has in mind facilities for its future fortification.

The Outlook agrees with the President's policy in this respect, which was the policy of his predecessor. The grounds for this policy will best appear from a brief historical statement. For neutralization and non-fortification are not the same. And non-fortification of the present Canal has at no time been entertained as a policy by our Government. It is one of the disadvantages of the com'From the Outlook, October 1, 1910.

plete separation between the executive and legislative branches of the Government that it gives encouragement to absolute Congressional non-continuity of thought and policy. The Executive, with the consent of the Senate, will negotiate a treaty, and that treaty will be carried out, and a few years later, not only newspapers and individual citizens, but even members of Congress, especially of the lower branch of Congress, will seem to forget everything connected with what has been assumed by the nation itself to be a well-settled and well-thought-out policy, and will start in to reverse it.

The first Hay-Pauncefote treaty provided that the Panama Canal should not be fortified, and that its neutrality should be guaranteed by various European powers. The Senate, by an overwhelming vote, and with the cordial approbation of practically the entire country, amended the treaty by striking out both these provisions. It was then argued, and, as we believe, convincingly, that to invite the European powers to gaurantee the neutrality of the Canal was to invite the official violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and definitely to establish on American shores European military powers with the right guaranteed to interfere in American affairs. Moreover, the complete failure of a similar effort to control Egypt and the Suez Canal in the interest of civilization, a scheme which broke down so absolutely as to render it necessary for England to herself assume the burden of managing Egypt and policing the Canal, was a sufficient warning against our repeating the experiment that had failed. Still further, the senators and public men who opposed the treaty in its unamended form pointed out that we had no right as a nation to leave in the hands of others the control in war time of the Canal, when such control might be vital to our own interests. It was argued that if we undertook the enormous expense of digging the Canal and managing it, it was not merely an

absurdity, but a criminal absurdity, to refrain from seeing that it was not managed against our own interests, and that of course we should fortify it; that while guaranteeing its absolute neutral use by all nations in times of peace, and while guaranteeing that it should not be used by one nation as against another in time of war, we should keep it under our own control, so that it should not only not be used against us, but also should enable us to have one fleet instead of two fleets for use in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at any and all times. This was indeed is one of the prime reasons for its existence. The argument was that the right to fortify the Canal and to use it in our own defense was an elemental right, like that of self-defense; that, of course, there was not the slightest need of putting this in any treaty; but there was imperative need of eliminating its denial from any treaty.

The Senate amendments were carried. After the lapse of some time Secretary Hay and Ambassador Pauncefote produced another draft of the treaty which practically embodied the Senate amendments, and struck out the provisos to which objection had been made. Before submitting this treaty to the Senate, the then President, Mr. Roosevelt, categorically inquired, both of Mr. Hay and the ambassador, if the striking out of the objectionable provisos was clearly understood to carry by implication the right of the United States to fortify the Canal and to control it for its own defense in time of war, or when war impended; and the President submitted the treaty only on the assurance that of course the abolition of the objecting paragraphs meant, and could only mean, the acceptance of the view upon which the President insisted. This bit of inside history happens to be within the personal ken of the editors of the Outlook, but it is mentioned merely as casting a sidelight on the event, and not as having any importance, because the facts speak for themselves. The treaty was,

in effect, rejected until the objectionable clauses were struck out, and was ratified on the ground, openly and repeatedly taken, that, with the clauses struck out, the United States obtained the right to fortify the Canal, the duty to police it, and the further right to control it for its own benefit if menaced by war. This right was further explicitly recognized by the clause that the United States shall be at liberty to maintain such military police along the Canal as may be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and disorder. To suppose that England, while holding Egypt, would permit the Suez Canal to be used by a hostile fleet against the interest of Egypt is an absurdity; but it is not quite so great an absurdity as to suppose that, after building with American money and by American enterprise the Panama Canal, and after having assumed the full monetary and other responsibility of repairing it, of policing it, of securing the health of the Canal Zone, and in every way taking care of it, the United States is then to turn over the real control of the Canal to foreign powers, to assume a secondary position, and to trust to what has in the past so often turned out to be the veriest broken reed, a general international agreement of amity, to protect its vital interest in time of war.

It ought always to be regarded as a matter of primary national obligation that the nation keep its promises; it is always wrong for the nation to make a promise which cannot be kept and ought not to be kept when the need for breaking it arises. As political candidates ought not to be asked to promise the impossible because to make such promises puts a premium upon intellectual dishonesty in the candidates, as the nation ought not to pass sweeping resolutions for unqualified and universal arbitration looking towards a hoped-for millennium of international peace, with the absolute certainty that the nation would instantly disregard its resolutions in case a concrete matter affecting

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