Kills Protectorate Plan For Nicaragua.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 3, 1913:
Senate Committee Rejects Bryan Scheme — Favors Only Canal and Naval Deals.
PLAN TOO IMPERIALISTIC
Administration Agreeable to Change — Alarmed by Latin-American Interpretation Put on Treaty.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, Aug. 2.— A definite check to the policy of establishing protectorates over the Central American countries was given to-day when the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations instructed Chairman Bacon to inform Secretary of State Bryan that the Nicaraguan treaty in its present form was unacceptable, and that the committee would only consider the treaty after all its protective features had been eliminated. The vote in committee was 8 to 4, and some Senators even in this small minority sided against the resolution instructing the Chairman, not because they favored a policy of protectorates, but because they opposed anything like the treaty under consideration.
    There is reason to believe that the action of the committee, though an open rebuff to the policies of Secretary Bryan, coincides with an important modification in the plans of the Administration. The committee had before it, when it voted, intimation that a treaty of the sort acceptable to it would be speedily submitted by the Department of State. This intimation is construed partly as indicating that the Administration has been alarmed by the interpretation put upon the treaty in Latin America — that it was the first step toward the establishment of the hegemony of the United States from the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal.
    In voting against anything like an American protectorate over Nicaragua, members of the Committee on Foreign Relations made it plain that they thought the treaty gave force to the imperialistic idea in its worst form. All that they left of the proposed treaty as likely to receive favorable consideration at their hands was the proposal to pay $3,000,000 for a permanent canal right of way from ocean to ocean, with a naval station site on Fonseca Bay, and the acquisition of Great and Little Corn Islands. The committee members want that proposal to be made a business transaction pure and simple.
    Republican Senators who have supported the plan proposed by Secretary Bryan explained that they felt the establishment of a protectorate was merely a long step forward along the line mapped out by Republican Administrations, which Democrats in the past had opposed vigorously as bordering too closely on imperialism. It was somewhat in answer to statements of that kind that most of the Democrats voted to-day against the protectorate features of the treaty.
    A curious kink in the tangled history of the proposed treaty is that in rejecting the most important part of Mr. Bryan's proposal the Democrats sought to soothe the Secretary of State by offering to accept a treaty practically identical with the one negotiated by the last Republican Administration for the purchase of the canal right of way.
    That treaty was denounced at the time by Republicans and Democrats alike as an indirect effort to gain control of Nicaraguan finances, and never received any consideration by the committee. The suggestion that the Department of State was ready at a moment's notice to abandon the plan for a protectorate caused amazement in certain quarters to-day. It was recalled that a Republican Senator said, when the protectorate was first proposed, that Secretary Bryan seemed to have advocated it without any thought that it meant a radical extension of American international policy. The suggestion was made to-day that the policy seemed to have been dropped as casually as it had been proposed, and that the whole affair, which threatened to shake the relations of the United States with all Latin America, had been dismissed by the Secretary of State as a trifling incident. The Senators who voted for the resolution suggesting that the treaty be emasculated were Mr. Bacon of Georgia, Mr. Shively of Indiana, Mr. Clark of Arkansas, Mr. Williams of Mississippi, Mr. Swanson of Virginia, Mr. Pomerene of Ohio, and Mr. Smith of Arizona, all Democrats, and Mr. Borah of Idaho, Republican.
    Those opposing were Mr. Stone of Missouri and Mr. Hitchcock of Nebraska, Democrats, and Mr. Burton of Ohio and Mr. Smith of Michigan, Republicans. Mr. Smith's opposition to the resolution was that he opposed the treaty in its entirety, and thought the purchase of right of way and naval sites would be nothing less than a constant threat to intervene in Central American affairs.
    Enough Senators favoring the protectorate idea were absent this morning to have caused the defeat of the resolution, had they been present. But it is doubtful if they would have taken such a course. They realized that a treaty embodying the protectorate idea would have no chance in the Senate just now, and that the emasculated treaty, or nothing, must be accepted. The absentees were Mr. Lodge of Massachusetts, Mr. Root and Mr. O'Gorman of New York, Mr. Sutherland of Utah, and Mr. McCumber of North Dakota. All these Senators are understood to favor the protectorate idea.