Senate May Put Off Canal Bill Debate.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 13, 1912:
Great Britain's Protest Has Made a Prolonged Discussion Certain Now.
CONGRESS WANTS TO QUIT
Root Against Free Passage for Our  Ships—Knox Outlines British Protest.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, July 12.—In Congress to-day a wide difference of opinion exists as to the course to pursue in the face of Great Britain's representations about the tolls on the Panama Canal. The measure has already passed the House and is before the Senate, and leaders of the upper chamber are in favor of rushing it through at once, according to the original programme. But the raising of the treaty phase of the subject promises prolonged debate, and in many quarters there is a feeling that the whole subject should go over until next session.
    Judge Adamson. Chairman of the House Committee on Inter-State and Foreign Commerce, is preparing a joint resolution embodying the routine provisions of the bill, but expressly reserving the debatable points for the Winter session. But it is not certain yet that he will present it. At any rate, the next move rests with the Senate, and Senator Brandegee, Chairman of the committee in charge of the bill, is inclined to proceed at once, though in committee he voted against the free toll provision, on the ground that it would be in violation of the treaty.
    That is also the position of Senator Root, who will speak in explanation of his position at an early date. An international question— like all questions involving the Constitution— always brings on interminable discussion in the Senate, and it is the fear of an indefinitely prolonged session, and not the fear of difficulties with Great Britain, that actuates most of the Congressmen who favor delay. Members of the House, even more than the Senate, have set their hearts on getting away in the next few weeks, and they want no continuous matter to interfere.
    Though the vote in the Senate Committee was overwhelmingly in favor of free tolls, showing that members of both parties supported the provision, it gets its most important support from the regular Republicans. That makes the position of Mr. Root and Mr. Brandegee the more unusual. The question of geography counts, however, and the position of Mr. Lodge, Mr. Crane, and others favoring the free passage of American ships through the canal is explained in part by the number of their constituents who are interested in shipping.
    Secretary Knox sent the following letter to Senator Brandegee:

    Department of State, Washington.
            July 12, 1912.
The Honorable Frank B. Brandegee,
      Chairman Committee on Interoceanic
          Canals of the United States Senate.
    Sir: I have the honor to bring to the knowledge of your committee the fact that a communication, dated the 8th inst., just received from the British Charge d'Affaires, indicates that the attention of the British Government having been called to various proposals from time to time made for the relieving of American shipping from the payment of tolls on vessels passing through the Panama Canal, that Government has studied carefully those proposals and the arguments in support of them, with a view to the bearing thereon of the provisions of the treaty between the United States and Great Britain of Nov. 18, 1901.
    The communication sums up the proposals mentioned as (1) To exempt all American shipping from tolls. (2) One to refund to all American ships tolls which, they may have paid. (3) One to exempt from the payment of tolls American ships engaged in the coastwise trade, and (4) One to repay to the last-named class of American ships tolls which they might pay.
    The communication indicates it to be the opinion of his Britannic Majesty's Government that to exempt all American shipping from tolls would involve an infraction of the treaty, and expresses the opinion that there would be no difference in principle in charging tolls only thereafter to refund them and remitting such tolls, altogether. The opinion is expressed that the method of charging but refunding tolls, while perhaps complying with the letter of the treaty, would contravene its
spirit.
    The communication admits that there is nothing in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty to prevent the United States from subsidizing its shipping, but claims that there is a great distinction between a general subsidy, either to shipping at large or to shipping engaged in any given trade, and a subsidy calculated particularly with reference to the amount of use of the canal, by the subsidised lines or vessels. Such a subsidy, if granted, would not, in the opinion of his Britannic Majesty's Government, be in accordance with the obligations of the treaty.
    With respect to the proposal that exemptions shall be given to vessels engaged in the coastwise trade, the communication states that it may be that no objection could be taken if the trade should be so regulated as to make it certain that only bona fide, coastwise traffic, which is reserved for American vessels, would be benefited by this exemption, but that it appears to his Britannic Majesty's Government that it would be impossible to frame regulations which would prevent the exemption from resulting in a preference to American shipping and consequently in an infraction of the treaty.
    I have the honor to be. Sir, your obedient servant,
            P. C. KNOX.

    A strange feature of the present tangle is that the people who are now fighting for the free passage of American bottoms are those who in great part were responsible for the treaty. A member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, who was serving at the time the treaty was ratified, said he had no idea it meant the prevention of free passage to American chips, consequently he thinks no violation of the treaty is involved in the proposed legislation.
    Senators point out that the Suez Canal, though, neutralized to an extent that makes its fortification unnecessary, levies no tolls on English bottoms. In the same way Austria-Hungary pays as a subsidy to Austrian ships their Suez Canal tolls, and many other nations do the same. The exemption of American ships is in effect simply a subsidy, and it is on that ground that it is justified.

LONDON, July 12.—Commenting on the protest of the British Government in connection with the regulations of the Panama Canal, The Pall Mall Gazette to-day contends that Great Britain is in the responsible position of having to uphold not only her own rights, but those of the whole world, which depend on the Hay-Pauncefote treaty. 
    At the same time, The Pall Mall Gazette recognizes the entire reasonableness of the American Convention that, having supplied the capital and the skill to build the canal, Americans have the right to every consideration not conflicting with the treaty obligations of the United States.