Says Our Nation's Credit Is Impugned.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 27, 1912:
London Paper Sees in Canal Act and Police Revelations Signs of a "Generic Evil."
RIGHTS BRITAIN GAVE UP
Seem to Have Been Forgotten Here, Another Paper Reminds Us, in Dealing, with Panama.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Aug. 26.— The London papers continue to discuss the signature of the Panama Canal bill by President Taft, the majority referring to The New York Times's characterization of the bill as "disgraceful and flagitious."
    The Pall Mall Gazette says:
    "It was declared last week in so unemotional an organ as the Journal des Débats that in certain contingencies connected with the Panama Canal bill the world would have a right to think that the probity of the United States Government was on a par with that of the New York police.
    "Nothing has yet occurred to provoke a verdict of such sweeping condemnation. We are confident that, in spite of the sinister manipulations in which Mr. Taft and Congress have alike involved themselves, the Panama question will yet be solved in such a fashion as to preserve the honor of the American people.
    "But it is noteworthy that the credit of the United States Government and of the New York police are both very seriously impugned by incidents that figure prominently in to-day's news, and the conjunction must impel serious Americans to a searching of heart upon certain features of their public life."
    After referring to the mysterious death of Miss Curran, the paper goes on:
    "It is one of the most ghastly ironies attendant on progress and democracy that in the greatest city of the New World crime can thus claim a veto upon the administration of order and that the guardians of life and property can be universally credited with connivance at the most villainous outrages and charged even with the actual assassination of those who obstruct their infamous proceedings. No honest-minded American looking at the parallel columns in to-day's newspapers which record these two reproachful histories can avoid a feeling that contempt for National honor in high places, coupled with such grave infamies in the details of administration, point to generic evil in public life that calls for most strenuous and united efforts at reform."
    In a leading article headed "Our Panama. What Great Britain Gave Up to America," The Evening News says:
    " 'We built our canal and can do with it as we like' is the clamor of the American Jingoes. They forget that the British public could reply: 'We allowed you to build the canal by giving up ours, and have the right that the treaty shall be observed, for without British consent, bought at the price of the abandonment of some of our rights on a Nicaragua canal, the Panama Canal could never have been.'
    "There are two parties to every agreement, and in the nature of things both parties give up no more than they are obliged to. If the Americans gave up by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty the right, which .they now claim, to favor American shipping, it was because Great Britain gave up what was equally valuable — her right to finance a rival enterprise."
    The Westminster Gazette, after paying a tribute to the magnificent enterprise in the building of the canal and stating that it would be a thousand pities if the rejoicings of the civilized world at its completion were to be blighted by a difference about the terms on which it was to be used, says:
    "Surely the right thing for the American Congress to do under the circumstances is to submit the question of treaty interpretation to The Hague Tribunal.
    "We admit that if the proposed discrimination were really confined to American coastwise shipping, and the definition 'coastwise shipping' were precisely maintained, the grievance of other countries would be theoretical rather than substantial, as they are equally excluded from this branch of trade by the American navigation laws; but the ground which the President takes clearly applies to all American shipping, and that seriously alters what were supposed to be the substantial gains in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty."
    The Evening Standard says in part:
    "In spite of the spirited warnings of a majority of his fellow-countrymen, Mr. Taft has signed the bill, and the eyes of the United States are turned to this country. Great Britain can, if she chooses, allow the treaty, which expires next April, to lapse, and in this event it is not unlikely that other nations will follow suit.
    "What will happen between now and April it is impossible to say. Mr. Taft resents the fact of his country, having had all the labor and expense of the constructing of the canal, not being allowed to deal with its own commerce in its own way, but he forgets that in exchange for this vanished freedom the United States secured other advantages. When the Hay-Pauncefote treaty was concluded, Great Britain was not the only satisfied party. The United States was satisfied also.
    "Mr. Taft must not attempt the difficult feat of eating cake and having it, too, or the canal constructed at the cost of many lives and so much money will be a curse and not a blessing to mankind."