The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

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THE PANAMA CANAL
been in European hands. It was also the sense of the commission that the total time
required for the construction of the canal by the Panama route would be ten years,
and eight years by the Nicaragua route, with a greater probability of exigencies
causing delays on the latter than on the former.
JOHN F. WALLACE APPOINTED CHIEF ENGINEER
On April 27, 1904, arrangements to pay the $40,000,000 to
the Panama Canal Company were made and the title of the
property transferred to the United States. On May 9th, Presi-
dent Roosevelt put the direction of the Panama Canal zone in
the hands of the War Department, and issued comprehensive
rules for building the canal. On May loth, John Findlay
Wallace, general manager of the Illinois Central Railroad, was
appointed chief engineer in charge of the construction of the
Panama Canal.
Thus was commenced one of the greatest engineering proj-
ects in the history of the world. For a time President Roose-
velt was criticised by his political opponents for undue haste
in recognizing the independence of Panama, notwithstanding
the protest on the part of the government of Colombia. He
was able, however, to prove that the position of the United
States government was absolutely unassailable from the stand-
point of international law, commercial advisability and national
honor. In his message to the P'ifty-Eighth Congress, Presi-
dent Roosevelt said:
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S MESSAGE
When the Congress directed that we should take the Panama route under treaty
with Colombia, the essence of the condition, of course, referred not to the govern-
ment which controlled that route, but to the route itself; to the territory across which
the route lay, not to the name which for the moment the territory bore on the map.
The purpose of the law was to authorize the president to make a treaty with the
power in actual control of the Isthmus of Panama. This purpose has been fulfilled.
In the year 1846 this government entered into a treaty with New Granada, the