Canal Neutrality Urged By M'Cumber.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 30, 1912:
North Dakota Senator Argues Against Granting of Free Passage to American Ships.
SAYS IT OPPOSES TREATY
Surprises Senate by Declaring He Believes England Is Willing to Amend Agreement.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, July 29.— Less than a dozen Senators attended the reopening of the debate on the Panama Canal tolls question in the Senate this morning, but the speech by Mr. McCumber or North Dakota, who resumed his thoroughgoing argument against the free passage of American ships, was important in several particulars, and he soon stirred up his opponents to a lively colloquy.
    Mr. McCumber insisted that the granting of free passage to American ships would violate not only every obligation arising through Great Britain out of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, but would also violate the American treaty with Panama under which the canal was made possible. He greatly surprised his colleagues with his argument regarding the rights of ships-of-war of nations through the canal.
    From the beginning Mr. McCumber has taken the position that the neutralization of the canal must be strictly and literally preserved. To-day, in response to a question from Senator Cummins, he declared that such observance in connection with our treaty with Panama would commit this country absolutely to permitting the ships of all the nations in the world to go through free. This point he bases on a provision in the Panama treaty in which the ships of war of Panama are guaranteed free passage through the canal as a part of our payment for the Zone.
    Some of the lawyers contend that the fact that this free passage is part payment really keeps this favor to America within the terms of our treaty with Great Britain, declaring for equality of treatment to all nations, but Mr. Cummins and Mr. McCumber apparently agreed that if all nations are to be treated alike and the Panamans are to go through free, then obviously all nations must be similarly treated.
    Much has been made by the supporters of American exemption from tolls of the fact that the treaty with Great Britain puts warships and merchant vessels in the same class. They argue that since it is manifestly absurd for the United States to levy tolls on her own warships, since those tolls would be at once paid into the American Treasury, it is also not expected that American merchant ships should be subject to tolls. That argument Mr. McCumber answered to-day by explaining that when the Hay-Pauncefote treaty was negotiated it was quite possible that the canal would be built by private capital. In that case, he said, a real levy would have been collected from American battleships and merchant ships alike.
    The fact, he said, that finally the Government built the canal herself, makes payment of battleship tolls impossible, does not relieve us of the obligation to levy on American merchant ships.
    "We cannot salve our conscience," said Mr. McCumber, "by saying that if our position in this matter is wrong we will refer it for arbitration at The Hague. The same loose consciences that would send this "matter to arbitration, when the time comes will refuse to arbitrate; we will violate the Hay-Pauncefote treaty; will also violate the treaty of arbitration when that question is raised. And when we have violated both treaties, what then — war? No, for a single minute. No nation can afford to go to war with us. Least of all, Great Britain. But the very fact that we are immune from war should appeal to our high sense to maintain our contractual obligations."
    Mr. McCumber surprised the Senate again by saying that he believed Great Britain would be willing so to amend the Hay-Pauncefote treaty as to permit the exemption of American coastwise ships from the payment of tolls. Only the Canadian provinces he said, "and the British possessions in the Caribbean, are now interested in anything like coastwise trade.
    Mr. Cummins retorted, however, and he has the support of local diplomatists, that every nation in the world is interested in our coastwise trade to the extent that they would send anything from their own shores through the canal to the American Coast on the other side. Mr. McCumber said that American investments in the canal would he paid for by equal levies on the shippings of the world and our responsibilities would be repaid by the work of the canal in shortening our coast-to-coast steamship routes by 4,000 miles.