^6GU7 
 
 A COMMENTARY 
 
 ^ 
 
 T": 
 
 ON 
 
 THE DECLARATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIGHTS OF NATIONS 
 
 ADOPTED BY 
 
 THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE 
 
 OF 
 
 IN 'ERNATIONAL LAW 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCISCO JOSE URRUTIA 
 
 FORMER :.iir ISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN COLOMBIA 
 
 WASHINGTON; D. C. 
 1916 
 
 \m L 
 
L^ 
 
A COMMENTARY 
 
 ON 
 
 THE DECLARATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF NATIONS 
 
 ADOPTED BY 
 
 THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE 
 
 OF 
 
 INTERNATIONAL LAW 
 
 OU^"^ BY 
 
 FRANCISCO JOSE URRUTIA 
 
 FORMER MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN COLOMBIA 
 
 WASHINGTON; D. C. 
 1916 
 
 
r^ 
 
 
'The small States of the world have 
 a right to enjoy the same respect for 
 their sovereignty and for their territo- 
 rial integrity that great and powerful 
 nations expect and insist upon." 
 
 "The world has a right to be free 
 from every disturbance of its peace that 
 has its origin in agresion and disregard 
 of the rights of peoples and nations." 
 
 President Wilson's declaration in his 
 address before the League to Enforce 
 Peace — May 27, 1916. 
 
 355127 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/commentaryondeclOOurrurich 
 
The American Institute of International Law, at 
 Its first session, held in Washington on January 6, 
 of this year, under the auspices of the Second Pan- 
 American Scientific Congress, unanimously adopted 
 the five following Articles to be known as The De- 
 claration of the Rights of Nations: 
 
 Declaration of the Rights of Nations 
 
 "Whereas, the municipal law of civilized na- 
 tions recognizes and protects the right to life, the 
 right to liberty, to which the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence of the United States adds the right to the 
 pursuit of happiness, the right to legal equality, the 
 right to property and the right to the enjoyment of 
 the aforesaid rights, creating a duty on the part of 
 the citizens or subjects of each nation to observe 
 them; and 
 
 "Whereas, these fundamental rights, thus univ- 
 ersally recognized, are familiar to the peoples of all 
 civilized countries, and 
 
 "Whereas, these fundamental rights can be stat- 
 ed in terms of international law and can be applied 
 to the relations of the members of the society of 
 nations, one with another, just as they have been ap- 
 plied in the relations of the citizens or subjects of the 
 states forming the Society of Nations ; and 
 
"Whereas, these fundamental rights of national 
 jurisprudence, namely, the right to life, the right to 
 liberty, the right to the pursuit of happiness, the right 
 to equality before the law, the right of the nation to 
 exist and to protect and to conserve its existence; the 
 right of independence and the freedom to develop 
 itself without interference or control from other na- 
 tions, the right of equality in law and before the law; 
 the right to territory within defined boundaries and 
 to exclusive jurisdiction therein; and the right to the 
 observance of those fundamental rights; 
 
 "Therefore, the American Institute of Internatio- 
 nal Law unanimously adopts at its first session, held 
 in the city of Washington, in the United States of 
 America, on the sixth day of January, 1916, in con- 
 nection with and under the auspices of the Second 
 Pan-American Scientific Congress, the following five 
 articles, together with the commentary thereon, to 
 be known as the Declaration of the Rigfhts of Na- 
 tions." 
 
 I. — Every Nation has the right to exist, to pro- 
 tect and conserve its existence, but this right neither 
 implies the right nor justifies the act of the State to 
 protect itself or to conserve its existence by the com- 
 mission of unlawful acts against innocent arid unof- 
 fending States. 
 
 2. — Every Nation has the right to independence 
 in the sense that it has a right to the pursuit of hap- 
 piness and is free to develop itself without interfe- 
 rence or control from other States, provided that in 
 so doing it does not interfere with or violate the just 
 rights of other States. 
 
3- — Every Nation is in law and before law the 
 equal of every other State composing the society of 
 Nations, and all States have the right to claim, and 
 according to the Declaration of Independence of the 
 United States, to assume, among the powers of the 
 earth, the separate and equal station to which the 
 laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. 
 
 4. — Every Nation has the right to territory with- 
 in defined boundaries and to exercise exclusive juris- 
 diction over this territory and all persons, whether 
 native or foreign, found therein. 
 
 5. — Every Nation entitled to a right by the law 
 of nations is entitled to have that right respected and 
 protected by all other Nations ; for right and duty are 
 correlative, and the right of one is the duty of all to 
 observe. 
 
 Although the above Declarations has not yet 
 been officially ratified by the American Republics, 
 there is no doubt that it embodies their views. The 
 American Institute of International Law is compos- 
 ed of one hundred and five members, among whom 
 
are the highest authorities on international law of 
 both Americas. The Declaration adopted by the Ins- 
 titute must unquestionably be looked upon as an 
 authorized, solemn, and timely recognition of certain 
 fundamental principles in the existence of Nations, 
 which by the common acceptance of all are to be 
 considered as "international laws." 
 
 The Declaration of the Rights of Nations adopt- 
 ed by the American Institute of International Law 
 differs, by the practical aims in view, from similar 
 Declarations, of mere academic importance, such as 
 those of the time of the French Revolution with their 
 metaphysical conceptions of nations and of interna- 
 tional life. Viewed from this standpoint of practical 
 and positive results which it is sought to attain, the 
 Declaration of the Institute is of great importance. 
 The object is to restore confidence in political decla- 
 rations at a time when such declarations have fallen 
 into discredit; it is to remove them from the 
 speculative field of the routine life of nations and to 
 surround them with effective gfuarantees. This was 
 the aim and object of those who, in the various Ame- 
 rican republics, have labored diligently to organize 
 the Institute; and these same aims and objects were 
 asserted by the members in the recent sessions when 
 the declarations was adopted- 
 
 10 
 
The spirit of justice and of practical internatio- 
 nal progress of which the initial work of the Institute 
 was the fruit, will logically bring the Institute to the 
 consideration of the following questions : 
 
 The Rights of Nations having been declared and 
 accepted, what remedies does the Institute agree 
 upon and declare in the case of their violation? In 
 what manner must these remedies be enforced in or- 
 der that the violated rights may be restored? 
 
 The common acceptance of principles, and to an 
 even greater extent, the common adoption of inter- 
 national laws, constitute a great moral progress; but 
 it will not be effective until such principles and laws 
 receive sanctions which guarantee them, and until 
 there is a practical method of enforcing them, of 
 preventing their violation, and of meting out pun- 
 ishment to those who transgress them. 
 
 In general it is not a knowledge of the Rights 
 of Nations that is lacking in international life; — what 
 is lacking is respect for the Rights of Nations. Few 
 will be found to dispute the Rights of Nations adop- 
 ted by the Institute, but there will be many who will 
 ask: 
 
 If the American Institute of International Law 
 seeks an immediate and practical result the re-esta- 
 blishment of the absolute reign of international law 
 between the American Nations, and there be one or 
 more matters, in which, in violation of the Rights 
 declared by the Institute, moral and material rights 
 have been subject to gross attack in the internatio- 
 nal life of America, will not the re-establishment of 
 law demand that there be undertaken a prior and in- 
 
 II 
 
itial work, that of bringing about the re-establish- 
 ment of the rights previously violated? 
 
 Is it possible to conceive that any one wishes to 
 found the Empire of great principles of justice upon 
 the moral bankruptcy of the same principles whose 
 violation is not only sanctioned but obstinately main- 
 tained? 
 
 The moral law of nations is the same as that of 
 individuals, and there cannot be varying standards 
 of morals according to how circumstances appear to 
 require them. 
 
 These considerations, which I now respectfully 
 submit to the eminent men who compose the Ame- 
 rican Institute of International Law, were outlined 
 by me in the New York World of January 26 of this 
 year when I was asked, as one of the Colombian mem- 
 bers of the Institute, for an expression of opinion on 
 the declaration of the Rights of Nations. I explain- 
 ed that all of those rights had been violated and con- 
 tinued to be violated in the case of Colombia by the 
 separation of Panama. Further I said that the faith 
 of Colombians, as well as of many other Americans, 
 in these Rights — so solemnly declared — would not be 
 quickened until the violation of which we are the vic- 
 tims had been properly atoned for, until there was 
 proof that really an era had dawned in America in 
 which the supremacy of Law was an actual fact. Un- 
 til then, when we hear harmonious utterances and 
 admirable phrases such as adorned the sessions of 
 the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress, we 
 shall continue to say: "words, words, nothing but 
 words !" 
 
 12 
 
I shall endeavour here more fully to set forth 
 what I so briefly touched upon in the New York 
 World, referring, in my statement of the facts on 
 which Colombia relies in her claims agfainst the 
 United States, to the official documents of the case 
 and the very complete presentations already publish- 
 ed, many of them by American citizens. 
 
 13 
 
A STATEMENT OF FACTS 
 
A STATEMENT OF FACTS 
 
 On November 3, 1903, a group of persons in the 
 city of Panama, proclaimed the secession of the Co- 
 lombian Department of that name, which had been an 
 integral part of the Republic of Colombia ever since 
 the latter, on freeing itself from Spain, had establish- 
 ed itself as an independent and sovereign State. 
 
 This group which only represented a very small 
 proportion of the inhabitants of the city of Panama, 
 had secured in advance, by means assistance of the 
 Washington, the co-operation and assistance of the 
 military and naval forces of the United States, 
 against any action by the Government of Colombia. 
 This co-operation and assistance became effective 
 both before and after the seditious outbrealk of the 
 3rd. of November, as we shall see a little later. 
 
 A few hours after the proclamation of the indep- 
 endence of the alleged new State, and in violation of 
 all international principles and practices, the Govern- 
 ment of Washington recognized it, even before it 
 was possible to know the wishes of the inhabitants of 
 the remainder of the Department of Panama. Amer- 
 ican warships, acting under orders despatched in ad- 
 vance, gathered in Colombian waters on the Atlantic 
 and Pacific to prevent the exercise of Colombian 
 sovereignty and the action of Colombian forces sent 
 to repress the rebelion, which otherwise would have 
 been crushed in a few hours. Following this the Gov- 
 
 17 
 
ernment of the United States guaranteed to the reb- 
 el government of Panama the maintenance of its de- 
 facto jurisdiction over that part of Colombian terri- 
 tory within the Department of Panama, and this 
 guarantee v^^as embodied in an agreement entered in- 
 to with the rebels, made in form of a public Treaty, 
 which has continued to be opposed to the exercise 
 of Colombian sovereignty over the said territory. 
 Thus, by the action of the Government of the United 
 States of America, the Republic of Colombia was dis- 
 membered in violation, not only of the most elemen- 
 tary principles of international law, but further, of a 
 public treaty — the Treaty of 1846 — under the terms 
 of which the United States itself guaranteed the ter- 
 ritorial integrity of Colombia and the rights of sov- 
 ereignty and property which Colombia had and pos- 
 sessed over this very territory, torn from it by the 
 revolutionary outbreak of November 3, 1903. 
 
 We shall see below how the existence of this 
 Treaty gives even greater gravity to the spoliation of 
 which Colombia was victim. 
 
 18 
 
The facts stated — to the consideration of which 
 we shall return later — were of such g'ravity; the blow 
 struck at the rights of Colombia was so great, its 
 existence as a sovereign nation was so affected and 
 the acts committed were so outrageous, even in the 
 manner of their presentation to the world, that if Co- 
 lombia had had sufficient material strength, it could 
 not have done otherwise than declare war upon the 
 United States, as any other nation would have done 
 which did not find itself in such manifest conditions 
 of military and naval inferiority. Such a war would 
 have remained in the annals of contemporary interna- 
 tional relations as the prototype of a perfectly legiti- 
 mate war, justified alike by the magnitude of the 
 wrong done and by its attending circumstances. 
 
 The material weakness of Colombia placed it in 
 the very difficult position of being obliged to limit its 
 action to protest which it was not able to back up by 
 force. 
 
 In all the protests made to Washington since 
 the seditious outbreak was known in 1903, and 
 throughout the painful calvary which Colombia has 
 borne for more than twelve years, my country has had 
 the support of prominent men of the United States 
 who have earned the enduring gratitude of Colom- 
 bia. From the moment the deed was known in 
 Washington, influential voices were lifted in loud 
 condemnation of the spoliation. Protests were heard 
 in Congress and in the press, from the platform and 
 from the pulpit, and throughout the Universities. 
 
 These protests came from men of the standing 
 of S enator Bacon of Georgia, a democrat, and even 
 
 19 
 
from Republican Senators like Hoar__of_Massachus- 
 sets and Cullom of_Illinais, and all agreed that Co- 
 lombia was entitled to reparation for the damage 
 she had sustained. 
 
 From the speech of Senator Bacon in the Senate 
 of the United States on January 29, 1904, as reported 
 in the Congressional Record we take the following: 
 
 "I am content with anything which shall com- 
 mit the Government of the United States in the face 
 of the world, to the proposition that whatever there 
 may be of difference between the United States and 
 Colombia, the United States as a g:reat overshadow- 
 ing power which cannot be compelled by this feeble 
 power to do anything, will voluntarily agree with it 
 in the settlement of existing differences; and that if 
 it cannot come to an agreement by peaceful nego- 
 tiations it will not assert its great and resistless 
 power, but that it will endeavour to have a deter- 
 mination of such differences and the claims g:rowing 
 out thereof by some impartial tribunal" 
 
 A short time before his death Senator Cullom 
 published a solemn and deliberate statement of Se- 
 nator Hoar's view upon the subject in such a way as 
 to leave no reasonable doubt that they were also his 
 own. In his ''Fifty Years of Public Service", on Pages 
 212 and 213, Senator Cullom says. — 
 
 "Senator Hoar was disposed to be against the 
 recognition of the Republic of Panama, and it has 
 been intimated that he was of the opinion that the 
 Roosevelt Administration had something to do with 
 the bloodless revolution that resulted in the unit- 
 ing with the United States of that part of Colombia 
 
 ao 
 
which now forms the Canal Zone. . . The President 
 wanted the Senator to read a Message which he had 
 already prepared, in reference to Colombia's ac- 
 tion in rejecting the Treaty and the canal in general, 
 which Message showed very clearly that the Presid- 
 ent had never contemplated the secession of Panama, 
 and was considering different methods in order to 
 obtain the right of way across the Itshmus from Co- 
 lombia; fully expecting to deal only with the Colom- 
 bian Government on the subject. 
 
 "The President was sitting around the table, first 
 on one side of Senator Hoar and then on the other, 
 talking in his usual vigorous fashion, trying to get the 
 Senators's attention to the Message. Senator Hoar 
 seemed adverse to reading it, but finally sat down 
 and without seeming to pay any particular attention 
 to what he was perusing he remained for a minute or 
 two, then arose and said: "I hope I may never live to 
 see the day when the interest of my country are plac- 
 ed above its honor-" He at once retired from the 
 room without uttering another word, proceeding to 
 the capitol. Later in the morning he came to me 
 with a typewritten paper containing the conversa- 
 tion between the President and himself, and asked 
 me to certify to its correctness. I took the paper and 
 read it over, and as it seemed to be correct, as I rem- 
 embered the conversation, I wrote my name at the 
 pottom of it. I have never seen or heard of the paper 
 
 since." 
 
 21 
 
A substantial library could be formed from the 
 newspapers, magazines, reviews, lectures, pamphlets, 
 and books in which American writers, American pu- 
 blicists, American historians, American politicians 
 and American professors have laid bare the facts I 
 have stated, and have declared their conviction that 
 Colombia is entitled to satisfaction and reparation. 
 The truth has been slowly penetrating into the 
 conscience of the people of the United States, and no 
 one has been able to smother its appeals. Even in the 
 text books used in teaching contemporary history to 
 the youth of the country there is an authentic rela- 
 tion of the facts. 
 
 Furthermore all of the facts were minutely and 
 scrupulously placed on record before the Committee 
 on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representives 
 which was considering the resolution of Congress- 
 man Rainey, the illustrious friend of Colombia, 
 whose attitude on the floor of* the House recalled 
 the memorable ways when Henry Clay spoke there 
 in defence of the Republics of South America. 
 The verbatim account of the proceedings before the 
 House Committee on Foreign Affairs is published as 
 an official document under the title of ''The Story of 
 Panama. Hearings on the Rainey Resolution before 
 the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Repre- 
 sentatives, 1912." There has also recently been pu- 
 blished a work "America and the Canal Title" by 
 Joseph C. Treehoff in which a painstaking statement 
 of all the facts may be found. 
 
 22 
 
A discussion of the truthfulness of these facts is 
 quite superflous since they have been publicly and 
 solemnly admitted by the very man who was at the 
 head of the American Administration in 1903, and 
 who lent his aid to the secession of Panama. 
 
 Mr. Theodore Roosevelt himself, in a speech to 
 the students of the University of California which he 
 delivered at Berkeley, Cal. on March 2^^, 191 1, made 
 the following confession: — 
 
 "I am interested in the Panama Canal because I 
 started it. If I had followed traditional conservative 
 methods I should have submitted a dignified State 
 paper of probably two hundred pages to Congress an 
 the debate would have been going on yet. But I took 
 the Canal Zone, and let Congress debate and while 
 the debate goes on the Canal does also." 
 
 Mr. Albert B. Hart, Professor of the Science of 
 Government at Harvard Universitv, in his recently 
 published work "The Monroe Doctrine — An Inter- 
 pretation" thus refers to the taking of Panama: 
 
 "The dramatic turn by which Colombia was sud- 
 denly ousted from one of the most splendid points of 
 
 23 
 
vantage in the world, startled both the people of the 
 United States and of Latin America." 
 
 Hiram Bingham, Professor of Latin-American 
 history at the University of Yale, who is well known 
 throughout the New World, in his book ''The Monroe 
 Doctrine — An Obselete Shibboleth", also quite re- 
 cently published, says: 
 
 "But one of the worst blows came in 1903 when 
 we assisted in the establishment of the Republic of 
 Panama and then took control of the Canal Zone. In 
 other words, we went through the form of preventing 
 a South American republic from subduing a revolut- 
 ion in one of her distant provinces and eventually 
 took a strip of that province because we believed we 
 owed it to the world to build the Panama Canal !" 
 
 We should never finish if we wished to reprodu- 
 ce all the recent testimony worth while from distin- 
 guished Americans, but we cannot forego, on ac- 
 count of its extreme importance the citation of the 
 article written by one of the greatest Secretaries of 
 State the United States ever had, the Hon. Richard 
 Olney, who, wrote in the North American Review in 
 January of this year on "Our American Policy" thus: 
 
 "Further the proceedings by which the United 
 States has felt constrained to compel some of the 
 smaller and less advanced American states to perform 
 their international duties have unquestionably excit- 
 ed uneasiness in all. They feel those proceedings, 
 however temporary or however beneficial in purpose 
 and result, to be distinctly menacing and to indicate 
 purposes and ambitions on our part quite inconsist- 
 ent with their dignity and safety as independent 
 
 24 
 
States. This feeling has been greatly intensified by 
 the lawless violence which robbed Colombia of its 
 territory for the purposes of the Panama Canal en- 
 terprise. It thus comes about that, in its relations to 
 Latin-America and Europe respectively, the United 
 States now figures as a self-appointed guarantor of 
 the rights of the other, both the guarantee and the 
 guardianship being submitted to rather than desired 
 and neither gaining for the United States any special 
 consideration or reward — while our glaring invasion 
 of Colombia's sovereignty makes us "suspect" in the 
 eyes of all Latin-America". 
 
 It would also be impossible to omit the speech 
 delivered In the United States Senate on the loth of 
 May of this year by Senator Ransdell of Louisiana 
 who said: 
 
 "It is unnecessary to go into detail as to the 
 events which led up to the secession of Panama and 
 our recognition of her sovereignty. Suffice it to say 
 that the Colombian Senate refused to ratify a propos- 
 ed Treaty with us in regard to the building of the 
 Panama Canal. A mock revolution was brewing in 
 Panama at the time, which, in the opinion of many 
 persons in this country and of most of the South- 
 American Nations, was fomented by the United 
 States." 
 
 "On November 3, 1903, the revolutionists, re- 
 presenting less than one tenth of the population of ^ 
 the State of Panama, arose and took possession of the 
 City of Panama, the total death roll being one china- 
 man. The report of the success of the revolution was 
 received at Washington at 9.50 p. m., that day, and 
 
 25 
 
at 11.18 the same evening orders were wired from 
 Washington directing the commander of the United 
 States Ship Nashville, which was conveniently in 
 the harbor of Colon, to make every effort to prevent 
 government troops at Colon from proceeding to Pa- 
 nama". 
 
 "Thus, Mr. President, while the solemn treaty, 
 by which we guaranteed the sovereignty of Colom- 
 bia over Panama was in full force and effect, the 
 United States issued a military order preventing Co- 
 lombia moving her own troops over her own railway 
 to her own Panama to put down an opera bouffe re- 
 volution. The following day, November 4 — i day, 17 
 hours and 41 minutes after the issuing of the insur- 
 gent proclamation of independendence in the City of 
 Panama — the United States recognized Panama as 
 a sovereign and independent nation, and shortly 
 thereafter practically threatened Colombia with war 
 if she dared to invade Panama in an attempt to regain 
 
 her lost sovereignty On November 18, 
 
 fifteen days after the revolution broke out, we signed 
 a treaty with the Republic of Panama giving us the 
 Canal Zone and the right to build the canal. The 
 deed was consummated." 
 
 Thus, as we have seen, there can be no discus- 
 sion of the facts to which we refer, and we pass to 
 a consideration of their meaning in connection with 
 the Rights of Nations so solemnly declared by the 
 American Institute of International Law. 
 
 Later on, we shall also have something to say, in 
 closing, about the influence of these facts — so long as 
 they continue unremedied — upon the development of 
 
 26 
 
the Pan-American ideal, and upon the future peace 
 and prosperity of this continent. 
 
 It way be added that this statement of facts is 
 foreign to any attempt to drag political parties of the 
 United States into the discussion. If names are ment- 
 ioned it is merely because some names are unavoidab- 
 ly linked to certain events. 
 
 27 
 
THE RIGHTS VIOLATED 
 
THE RIGHTS VIOLATED 
 
 The first of the rights of nations proclaimed by 
 the American Institute of International Law was 
 this : 
 
 "Every nation has the right to exist and to pro- 
 tect and conserve its existence; but this right neither 
 implies the right nor justifies the act of the State to 
 protect itself or to conserve its existence by the com- 
 mission of unlawful acts against innocent and unof- 
 fending States." 
 
 This is the cardinal right of nations, and every 
 other right really springs from it. In proclaiming it 
 in these terms the Institute of International Law laid 
 down the exact limits within which it can be exercis- 
 ed with due regard to the reciprocal rights of other 
 nations- 
 
 The right of a nation to exist is correlative to its 
 duty to respect the same right in other nations. Thus 
 among nations, as among individuals, the primordial 
 right is the right of existence ; but neither individuals 
 nor nations may carry that right — no matter how es- 
 sential it be — further than the deadline of the right 
 of others. 
 
 This right of existence was solemnly proclaim- 
 ed as a philosophical principle in the days of the 
 French revolution. In the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence by which the thirteen original States emancipat- 
 
 31 
 
ed themselves from England, and in the similar acts 
 whereby the remainder of this Continent freed itself 
 from Spain, this principle was proclaimed by the new 
 Nations as the very basis of their autonomous poli- 
 tical existence. Not as philosophical principle but as 
 a positive and fundamental public right; and as such 
 it was incorporated in the Declarations of Independ- 
 ence and the Constitutions of the new-born Repub- 
 lics in North as well as in South America. 
 
 As a matter of fact all that the Institute of In- 
 ternational Law did was merely to reiterate the en- 
 dorsement by all American nations of the rightful 
 meaning of the principle of nationality, for which 
 principle every one of them fought and the triumph 
 of which every one of them ultimately achieved. 
 
 As Mr. James Brown Scott said of the Declara- 
 tion of the Rights of Nations: 
 
 "This right is and is to be understood in 
 the sense in which the right to life is understo- 
 od in national law according to which it 
 is unlawful for a human being to take human 
 life unless it is necessary to do so in self-defen- 
 se against an unlawful attack threatening the 
 life of the party unlawfully attacked: 
 
 In the Chinese Exclusion Case (reported 
 in 130 United States Reports, pp. 581 — 606) 
 decided by the Supreme Court of the United 
 States it was said that: 
 
 To preserve its independence, and give 
 security against foreign agression and en- 
 croachment, is the highest duty of every 
 
 32 
 
nation, and to attain these ends nearly 
 all other considerations are to be subordinat- 
 ed. It matters not in what form such agres- 
 sion and encroachment come, whether from 
 the foreign nation acting in its national cha- 
 racter or from vast hordes of its people crowd- 
 ing in upon us. The Government, possessing 
 the powers which are to be exercised for pro- 
 tection and security, is clothed with authority 
 to determine the occasion on which the powers 
 shall be called forth; and its determinations, so 
 far as the subjects affected are concerned, are 
 necessarily conclusive upon all its departments 
 and officers." 
 
 *ihe right of a State to exist and to pro- 
 tect and conserve its existence is to be under- 
 stood in the sense in which the right of an in- 
 dividual to his life was defined, interpreted and 
 applied in terms applicable alike to nations and 
 to individuals in the well-known English case 
 of Regina vs. Dudley (reported in 15 Cox's 
 Criminal Cases, p. 624; 14 Queen's Bench Di- 
 vsion, p. 273) decided by the Queens Bench 
 Division of the High Court of Justice in 1884, 
 to the effect that it was unlawful for ship- 
 wrecked sailors to take the life of one of their 
 number in order to preserve their own lives, 
 because it was unlawful to the common law of 
 England for an English subject to take human 
 life unless to defend himself against an unlaw- 
 ful attack of the assaillant threatening the life 
 of the party unlawfully attacked." 
 
 33 
 
If we compare the official documents emanating 
 from the first Government organizations which form- 
 ed themselves in the various American countries in 
 the early years of the XIX Century, or the prin- 
 ciples subscribed to by the leaders of the revolutions 
 in them against the mother countries, we shall see 
 that this was the very right that was always invoked, 
 and which had already received practical application 
 from the Britsh Colonies in America. 
 
 It was the principle maintained by Bolivar be- 
 fore the Foreign Office in 1810 when he was sent to 
 London after the Revolution of Caracas, and he made 
 of it the oriflame which others after him carried from 
 one end of Latin-America to the other, O'Higgins, 
 San Martin, Puyrredon and all the other early admi- 
 nistrators of the American nations emancipated from 
 Spain pledged themselves absolutely to the same 
 principle. On it they founded their demands for re- 
 cognition of the independence of their various coun- 
 tries by the United States, which was finally grant- 
 ed. 
 
 Throughout the communications addressed by 
 Senor Manuel Torres, the Agent of Colombia to the 
 Government of Washington, and the first official re- 
 presentative of the South-American countries accre- 
 dited to the United States, the principle of nationali- 
 ty — which had already been the basis of the Ame- 
 rican Declaration of Independence — was firmly 
 maintained. 
 
 The first communication from Torres to the Sta- 
 te Department in which he urges the recognition by 
 the United States of the Independence of Colombia is 
 
 34 
 
dated December 15, 1820. It was the first of its kind 
 received by the American government.. The commu- 
 nication of the Agent of Colombia had a decisive in- 
 fluence of the attitude adopted by President Monroe 
 and on the recognition accorded to the Latin-Ameri- 
 can States. 
 
 This right to existence, this principle of nationa- 
 lity, in its rightful meaning so forcefully urged by the 
 Agent of Colombia in his communications to the Se- 
 cretary of State not only as the spokesman of Colom- 
 bia but of all the Latin-American countries, was re- 
 cognized as far as they were concerned by President 
 Monroe in his Message to Congress of March 8, 1822, 
 on the entry into the family of nations of the new 
 American States. John Ouincy Adams, with unswerv- 
 ing purpose upheld the same rights and same princi- 
 ple in his communications to Don Joaquin de Andua- 
 ga. Minister of Spain in Washington, when the latter 
 protested against the recognition. Henry Clay had 
 already lent all the power of his eloquence to the same 
 propositions, in his memorable speeches in Con- 
 gress of May 1820 and February 1821. The Commit- 
 tee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representati- 
 ves, referring to the Message of President Monroe 
 also espoused and corroborated the right of existence 
 of the new-born republics. 
 
 We have referred to these historical precedents 
 to show to what extent the right now solemnly pro- 
 claimed by the Institute of International Law is weld- 
 ed to the very origin of all American nations. It is the 
 cardinal axiom ,as well of international law as of their 
 international existence. 
 
 35 
 
These precedents also show that when this fun- 
 damental right — this principle — has been ignored 
 and violated, as it was ignored and violated in regard 
 to Colombia in the matter of the secession of Pana- 
 ma, the violation has been really a violation of the 
 sacred principles which all the nations of America 
 won by sacrifice and sealed with their blood, and 
 which for more than a century they all believed to be 
 unassailable: the principle of nationality. 
 
 By a pityful irony of fate, it fell to Colombia — 
 the Nation which with greatest energy and most 
 constant purpose had defended this principle, and to 
 whose initiative on her own behalf and on behalf of 
 all her sister — nations we have already referred — it 
 fell to Colombia to suffer the brutal blow which 
 dismembered her, and at the same time struck at the 
 very roots of international life on this continent. 
 
 A Nation's right to exist, is the right to maintain 
 the moral and material integrity of its being as a na- 
 tion. Therefore the right to maintain and protect the 
 fulness of its sovereignty, and in consequence of its 
 independence, the fullness of its sovereignty over a 
 
 36 
 
given territory and of its jurisdiction over the inhabi- 
 tants of that territory. 
 
 The dismemberment of Colombia was an attack 
 against her very existence as a sovereing and indep- 
 endent nation. Her jurisdiction over the most valua- 
 ble part of her territory was ignored and she was prev- 
 ented from exercising it ; the exercise of her sovereign- 
 ty over her own territory was impeded ; she was placed 
 de facto outside of the equal station which by right 
 belonged to her in her relations with other countries, 
 and de facto the independence with which she was to 
 exercise her sovereign righits was trampled upon. 
 Not one right of Colombia, but every right of Colom- 
 bia was violated, and thus her very existence as a Na- 
 tion was attacked. 
 
 The Republic of Colombia was formed when 
 with the territories which composed the Vice-Royalty 
 of New Granada and the Captaincy General of Ve- 
 nezuela, it seceded from Spain. After 1830, by a com- 
 mon accord, Ecuador and Venezuela were establish- 
 ed as independent States, and Nueva-Granada, now 
 Colombia, remained with the territory of the Vice- 
 Royalty of New Granada less those of the Presiden- 
 cia of Quito and of the Captaincy General of Vene- 
 zuela. 
 
 The Isthmus of Panama was a part of the Vice- 
 Royalty of New Granada ever since the latter was es- 
 tablished by Royal Letters-Patent of the King of 
 Spain in 1739. When the Independence of the Vice- 
 Royalty and therefore that of the Isthmus, by the ef- 
 fort of the Granadian forces, the Isthmus of Panama 
 continued to belong to Colombia and it spontaneous- 
 
 37 
 
ly declared its intention so to do. Only by disregard 
 of historical truth can it be maintained that Panama 
 at any time prior to 1903 was an independent State, 
 or that it won its independence from Spain apart from 
 Colombia or by its own efforts. 
 
 The Act of Independence subscribed to in the 
 City of Panama, when it, along with the other cities 
 of the Vice-Royalty of New Granada, declared its 
 emancipation from the rule of Spain reads in part : 
 
 "Panama spontaneously and in accordance- 
 with the general desires of the people within 
 its borders hereby declares itself free and ind- 
 ependent from the Spanish Government; and 
 the territory of the Provinces of the Isthmus 
 belongs to the Republic of Colombia in whose 
 Congress Panama will be represented by De- 
 puties." 
 This document clearly shows that when Pana- 
 me threw off the Spanish yoke its purpose in doing 
 so was not to form a seperate State but to be incor- 
 porated into Colombia, that is to say, to continue to 
 be after emancipation a portion of New Granada as 
 it had been in the Colonial times inmmediately prece- 
 eding the emancipation. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence of Panama was 
 communicated by Seiior Torres, the Colombian 
 agent, to Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, in 
 the following terms: 
 
 Philadelphia, 
 April 6, 1822. 
 Your Excellency, 
 
 In your despatch of the i8th of Janua- 
 ry last past. Your Excellency was pleased to 
 
 38 
 
say to me that as soon as advices were receiv- 
 ed of the occupation of the Isthmus and Place 
 of Panama by the troops of Colombia they 
 should be communicated to this Department. 
 Complying with the desires of Your Excellen- 
 cy, I have the honor to inform you, that the 
 inhabitants of Panama spontaneously and of 
 common accord declared their independence 
 on November 28th of last year and by the sa- 
 me Act incorporated themselves in the Repub- 
 lic of Colombia whose troops then occupied 
 and do now occupy the said important points. 
 
 I reiterate to Your Excellency the senti- 
 ments of esteem and deep respect with which 
 I have the honor to remain 
 
 Your Excellency's 
 . Most Obedient and faithful servant, 
 
 Manuel Torres. 
 To His Excellency 
 
 John Quincy Adams, 
 
 Secretary of State of the United States. 
 
 Thus the Isthmus of Panama was always up to 
 1903, an integral part of the territory of Colombia 
 and anything that has been said to the contrary is 
 without the slightest foundation. Panama never was 
 a separate or independent entity, neither during the 
 Spanish domination nor after our independence had 
 been declared. Whatever revolutionary movements 
 there were on the Isthmus prior to 1903 were in the 
 
 39 
 
nature of internal political disorders, similar to those 
 in other parts of the Republic. 
 
 Therefore the separation of the Isthmus of Pa- 
 nama from Colombia in the manner in which it was 
 effected was simply a dismemberment of the territo- 
 ry with which Colombia had been constituted as a 
 sovereign nation, which territory belonged to her 
 under the general principle of law Uti possidetis juris 
 of 1810, adopted by all American nations on their 
 emancipation. Colombia was recognized as a sovere- 
 ign State with the Isthmus as an integral part of her 
 territory. To tear away this strip of land, as was 
 done in 1903, was to attack Colombia in her very right 
 to existence, in the essential element of her sovere- 
 ignty as understood and accepted in the law and co- 
 mity of Nations- 
 
 In the memorable message of President Monroe 
 of March 8, 1822, referring to the manner in which 
 the Spanish Colonies had won their independence, he 
 said: 
 
 ''The provinces composing the Republic 
 of Colombia, after having separately declared 
 their independence, were united by a funda- 
 mental law of the 17th of December, 1819." 
 
 One of these provinces was Panama. Monroe 
 recognized Panama as an integral part of Colombia. 
 His historic Message tells better than any other do- 
 cument just how the Republic of Colombia was form- 
 ed. 
 
 40 
 
Colombia had the right, and will always have the 
 right to have her territorial integrity respected, but 
 in the case of the United States of America this right 
 was of an especially solemn nature for in addition to 
 its being founded in the general principles of interna- 
 tional law, it was consecrated by a public Treaty by 
 which the United States guaranteed to Colombia the 
 rights of sovereignty and of property which it had 
 and possessed over the Isthmus of Panama. 
 
 Let us examine the historical antecedents and 
 the stipulations of this Treaty pertinent thereto. 
 When the time arrived to develop the priceless yet 
 remote American territory on the Pacific Coast 
 it became necessary for the United States to appeal 
 to Colombia, then New Granada, for a free passage 
 through her territory to California, which otherwise 
 could only be reached by a nine months voyage round 
 the Horn, or by the even more dangerous wagon-trail 
 across the Rocky Mountains and the Western Desert. 
 The United States secured the all important advanta- 
 ges of a shorter route through "A Treaty of Peace, 
 Amity, Navigation and Commerce" negotiated in 
 1846 in which it was proclaimed as follows: 
 
 "The Government of New Granada gua- 
 rantees to the Government of the United Sta- 
 tes that the right of way or transit across the 
 Isthmus of Panama upon any modes of trans- 
 portation which now exist, or may hereafter be 
 constructed, shall be open and free to the Gov- 
 ernment and Citizens of the United States, and 
 for the transportatoin of any articles of lawful 
 
 41 
 
commerce belonging to the citizens of the 
 United States." 
 
 As compensation for that privilege — priceless at 
 that time — the United States promised and covenant- 
 ed "as an especial compensation for the said advan- 
 tages'' and for the favors it acquired by the 4th, 5th 
 and 6th articles of the Treaty (which secured to the 
 United States reciprocal privileges of importation 
 and tonnage dues and equal customs duties) as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "The United States guarantee positively 
 and efficaciously, to New Granada, by the pre- 
 sent stipulation, the perfect neutrality of the 
 beforementioned Isthmus, with the view that 
 the free transit from one to the other sea may 
 not be interrupted or embarrased in any futu- 
 re time while this treaty exists; and in conse- 
 quence the United States also guarantee in the 
 same manner the rights of sovereignty and 
 property which New Granada has and posses- 
 ses over the said territory." 
 
 In the Message in which President Polk submit- 
 ted the Treaty to the Senate of the United States for 
 its approval, he said in regard to the right of transit 
 thus acquired: 
 
 "The importance of this concession to the 
 commercial and political interest of the United 
 States cannot be over-rated." 
 Even more important in view of the events und- 
 er consideration is President Polk's special Message 
 
 4a 
 
of February lo, 1847 i^ which referring to the initia- 
 tion of the Treaty he said: 
 
 "There does not appear any other effec- 
 tual means of securing to all nations the ad- 
 vantages of this important passage but the 
 guarantee of great commercial powers that 
 the Isthmus shall be neutral territory. . . The 
 guarantee of the sovereignty of New Granada 
 is a natural consequence of this. . . New Gra- 
 nada would not yield this province that it 
 might become a neutral State; and if she 
 should it is not sufficiently populous or weal- 
 thy to establish or maintain an independent 
 sovereignty." 
 Thus by the most solemn guarantee known to 
 the family of nations the United States pledged itself 
 by express contract to respect and uphold the sov- 
 ereignty of New Granada over the Isthmus of Pa- 
 nama, a plain duty already due to New Granada und- 
 er the general principles of international law. 
 
 In emergencies other than the disturbance of in- 
 teroceanic transit, or peril to the persons and posses- 
 sions of American citizens, there might be no inter- 
 vention in the affairs of New Granada, re-established 
 as the United States of Colombia in 1863. By the 
 terms of the treaty and by the principles of interna- 
 tional law Colombia, as the sucessor of New Grana- 
 da, was the sovereign peer of the United States 
 which, save for the purpose of protecting free transit, 
 might no more land forces on Colombian soil, or even 
 threaten such landing, than she might land such for- 
 ces on the shores of France or England. 
 
 43 
 
After a careful examination of the subject I can 
 only find that during the 40 years that elapsed bet- 
 ween the establishment of Colombia in 1863 and the 
 Panama imbroglio in 1903, United States forces were 
 employed on seven occasions and for a total of 164 
 days. In every case they were employed with the ex- 
 press approval of Colombia and in maintenance of her 
 sovereignty. In no case was there any fighting, the 
 mere precautionary measures being sufficient to keep 
 open the transit. 
 
 Any violation of the territorial integrity of Co- 
 lombia would have been an attack upon its right of 
 existence under the common law of nations, but this 
 violation on the part of the United States of America 
 was not only a violation of the fundamental principles 
 of international law, but also of a positive right sti- 
 pulated by contract in a solemn treaty. 
 
 The very existence of Colombia was attacked by 
 the very power which had guaranteed her sovereign- 
 ty and property over the very territory taken. Now, 
 the right of a nation to exist, and consequently to 
 protect conserve and develop its existence, is limited. 
 
as we have seen, by the reciprocal rights of other na- 
 tions. 
 
 Therefore, as expressed by the Declaration of 
 the Rights of Nations proclaimed by the American 
 Institute of International Law, this right "neither 
 implies the right nor justifies the act of the State to 
 protect itself or to conserve its existence by the com- 
 mission of unlawful acts against innocent and unof- 
 fending States." 
 
 If a Nation may not injure the rights of another 
 on the grounds of necessity to its own existence, 
 how much less may it do so by virtue of an alleged 
 mandate of the community of nations or by invok- 
 ing in error the interests of the civilized world — 
 which above all consist in the supremacy of law and 
 of justice and are not subject to the arbitrary determi- 
 nation of any one power. 
 
 In order to despoil Colombia there was put for- 
 ward a supposed interest of universal civilization in 
 the Panama Canal, the overwhelming importance of 
 the opening of which nobody denied and above all 
 Colombia who had furthered it in every possible way. 
 But in order to build the canal it was not necessary 
 to despoil Colombia of the Isthmus, or of anything 
 else. 
 
 It has been said that Colombia showed herself 
 unyielding in the conditions which she placed upon 
 the granting of the concession. But from the very in- 
 itiation of the negotiations in Washington for the 
 opening of the Canal, Colombia, in order to avoid the 
 allegations which it has since been sought to bring 
 
 45 
 
forward, proposed that the price of the concessions 
 should be fixed by arbitration. 
 
 This statement is corroborated by the following 
 important cable sent to the Consul General of Co- 
 lombia in New York by Dr. Jose Vicente Concha who 
 was Colombian Minister in Washington in 1901 and 
 1902 and is now the President of Colombia: 
 
 Bogota, August 10, 1916. 
 
 Francisco Escobar. — New York. 
 
 By Article XXV of the Memorandum 
 presented to the Department of State on April 
 18, 1902 the Colombian Legation proposed to 
 fix by means of arbitration the ammount of the 
 annuity to be paid to Colombia. On April 21, 
 Secretary Hay accepted this proposal and 
 promised to sign a covenant in accordance there 
 with but on July 18, having changed his mind, 
 proposed as an option $7,000,000 on final agre- 
 ement and an annuity of $100,000, or $10,000,- 
 000 and an annuity of $10,000 instead of arbi- 
 tration. The Memorandum was published with 
 other State papers by said Department. 
 
 Concha. 
 
 But even supposing that the conditions had real- 
 ly been onerous in the opinion of the Government of 
 Washington; Could this opinion, in a matter in which 
 it was an interested party, give it the right to despoil 
 its weaker sister-republic? 
 
 Professor Albert Hart in his work "The Monroe 
 Doctrine and its Interpretaion", commenting upon 
 
 46 
 
that curious mandate of civilization which is urged in 
 
 justification of the dismemberment of Colombia says 
 
 among other things: 
 
 "The situation its that of a real estate owner 
 who needs a right of way and finds that his 
 neighbor demands an exhorbitant figure. In 
 private relations the wealthy purchaser must 
 pay the price or go without. In contests bet- 
 ween nations the stronger has often ousted the 
 weaker out of an advantage which the agres- 
 sor would not itself give up except as the pen- 
 alty of an unsuccessful war." 
 
 "The United States was rather hampered 
 in her insistence on her own greater need as 
 against the smaller advantage of a neighbor, 
 for just at this time we refused to transfer a 
 few posts on the Alaskan coast to Canada that 
 would have been of great advantage to the 
 Canadians and would have little interfered 
 with our interests-'' 
 Another American writer, Mr. Scott, speaking 
 
 of the same matter in his book "The Americans in 
 
 Panama'' says: 
 
 "The rightful owner of the territory we 
 desired for a canal was Colombia. The way we 
 took it was to participate in a bogus revolu- 
 tion, engineered by a junta of wealthy Pana- 
 mian business and professional men. It turn- 
 ed out that the part they played in making the 
 revolution a success was farcical, while the 
 part the United States marines played was 
 vital." 
 
 47 
 
"If any American railroad should desire 
 property for a right of way and instead of con- 
 demning it by due process of law, should con- 
 nive with a neighbor to falsely claim posses- 
 sion of the property and then buy the property 
 from the illegal owner, the action not only 
 would not stand in law but it would outrage 
 public opinion. That precisely is the course we 
 pursued at Panama. 
 
 The second and third rights of nations proclaim- 
 ed by the American Institute of International Law 
 are the following: 
 
 Every nation has the right to independ- 
 ence in the sense that it has a right to the pur- 
 suit of happiness and is free to develop itself 
 without interference or control from other 
 States, provided that in so doing it does not in- 
 terfere with or violate the just rights of other 
 States. 
 
 Every Nation is in law and before law the 
 equal of every other State composing the so- 
 ciety of nations, and all States have the right 
 
 48 
 
to claim and, according to the Declaration of 
 Independence of the United States, to assume, 
 among the powers of the earth, the separate 
 and equal station to which the laws of nature 
 and of natures God entitle them. 
 
 Mr. J. B. Scott, in his Comments on the Declara- 
 tion of the Rights of Nations, says: 
 
 ''The third Article, asserting the equality of na- 
 tions is followed by these citations : 
 
 'The right to equality is to be understood 
 in the sense in which it was defined in the fol- 
 lowing passage quoted from the decision of 
 the great English Admiralty Judge, Sir Wil- 
 liam Scott, later Lord Stowell, in the case of 
 the Louis (reported in 2 Dodson's Reports, pp. 
 212, 243-44) decided in 1817: 
 
 *'Two principles of public law are general- 
 ly recognized as fundamental. One is the per- 
 fect equality and entire independence of all 
 distinct States. Relative magnitude creates 
 no distinction of right; relative imbecility, 
 whether permanent or casual, gives no addi- 
 tional right to the more powerful neighbor; 
 and any advantage seized upon that ground 
 is mere usurpation. This is the great founda- 
 tion of public law, which it mainly concerns 
 the peace of mankind, both in their politic and 
 private capacities, to preserve inviolate. 
 
 'The second is that all nations being equal- 
 all have an equal right to the uninterupted 
 use of the unappropriated parts of the ocean 
 
 49 
 
for their navigation. In places where no local 
 authority exists, where the subjects of all Sta- 
 tes meet upon a footing of entire equality and 
 independence, no one State, or any of its sub- 
 jects, has a right to assume or exercise autho- 
 rity over the subjects of another/ 
 ''The right of equality is also to be understood in 
 the sense in which it was stated and illustrated by 
 John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States who said in deciding the case of 
 the Antelope in 1825 (reported in 10 Wheaton's Re- 
 ports, pp. 66, 122.) 
 
 'In this commerce, thus sanctioned by uni- 
 versal assent, every nation has an equal right 
 to engage. How is this right to be lost? Each 
 may renounce it for its own people, but can this 
 renunciation affect others?" 
 
 'No principle of general law is more univ" 
 ersally acknowledged than the perfect equali- 
 ty of nations. Russia and Geneva have equal 
 rights. It results from this equality that no 
 one can rightfully impose a rule on another. 
 Each legislates for itself, but its legislation can 
 operate on itself alone. A right then which is 
 vested in all, by the consent of all, can be di- 
 vested only by consent, and this (slave) trade 
 in which all have participated, must remain 
 lawful to those who cannot be induced to relin- 
 quish it. As no nation can prescribe a rule for 
 others, none can make a law of nations, and 
 this traffic remains lawful to those whose gov- 
 ernments have not forbidden it.' 
 
 50 
 
The rights of independence and equality, which 
 as we have pointed out are but a corollary of the right 
 to exist and to conserve and protect its existence, 
 which every nation has, are co-relative to the duty of 
 the other nations not to interfere in its internal af- 
 fairs or in its interiiational relations, and to respect 
 in their dealings with it the universally accepted prin- 
 ciples of international law. 
 
 These two rights were plainly violated by the 
 government of the United States in its dealings with 
 the Government of Colombia when the secession of 
 Panama was being prepared and carried out, in this 
 wise: 
 
 Let us consider the pressure exerted upon the 
 Government and Congress of Colombia in order to 
 force the approval of the Treaty for the construction 
 of the canal, signed in Washington in 1903, and 
 known as the Herran-Hay Treaty. 
 
 The Memorandum of the 13th of June, 1903, 
 handed by the Minister of the United States in Bo- 
 gota, Mr. Beaupre, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs 
 of Colombia was an insult to the sovereignty of 
 Colombia and a virtual negation of her independ- 
 ence and equality. This Memorandum placed the Co- 
 lombian Senate in a position where it could not do less 
 than to reject absolutely the attempted dictation. 
 This is the text of the Memorandum: 
 
 ''I have received instructions from my 
 Government by cable in the sense that the 
 Government of Colombia to all appearances 
 does not appreciate the gravtiy of the situa- 
 tion. The Panama Canal negotiations were 
 
 51 
 
initiated by Colombia and were earnestly so- 
 licited of my Government for several years. 
 Propositions presented by Colombia with 
 slight alterations were finally accepted by us. 
 By virtue of this agreement our Congress re- 
 considered its previous decision and decided 
 in favor of the Panama route. If Colombia 
 now rejects the Treaty or unduly delays its ra- 
 tification the friendly relations between the 
 two countries would be so seriously compro- 
 mised that our Congress might next winter 
 take steps that every friend of Colombia 
 would regret with sorrow. 
 The refusal to recognize the constitutional right 
 or the Colombian Senate to ratify or to reject a pub- 
 lic treaty as the Senate of the United States, and in 
 general of any country having a democratic and 
 representative from of government, might do, was 
 equivalent to a refusal to recognize the independ- 
 ence of Colombia and its equality with the United 
 States and other nations. 
 
 It is most noteworthy that the very people who 
 have most bitterly attacked Colombia for the rejec- 
 tion of the Hay-Herran Treaty and who have most 
 freely criticized the Colombian Senate for its ac- 
 tion are those who are showing the greatest activity 
 to prevent the Senate of the United States from 
 ratifying the Urrutia-Thompson treaty signed in 
 Bogota on April 6, 1914. 
 
 Promoting the work of separation on the Isth- 
 mus, giving to it material and moral aid, and gua- 
 ranteeing its results, was to do to Colombia what 
 
Colombia could not have done in its relations with 
 any other country without provoking in reprisal a 
 state of war. It was reducing the equality of nations 
 to a bitter irony. 
 
 Supporting the secession after its initial procla- 
 mation, with all the national power of the United 
 States, and recognizing a new State which did not 
 have any real existence, was to strike a blow at the 
 fundamental principles of International Law and to 
 introduce into the history of diplomacy new prin- 
 ciples and practices which could not even have been 
 hinted at, much less enunciated, between equal na- 
 tions. Not only was Colombia not dealt with as a na- 
 tion having equal rights with other nations, but a 
 special proceeding was taken against her, she was 
 dealt v/ith in an exceptional manner, the very form 
 of which was insulting. 
 
 Even supposing that there had been a real re- 
 volution and that the uprising had extended to the 
 remainder of the Isthmus — which certainly was not 
 the case — it would be difficult to deny that the pre- 
 mature recognition by the United States of the ind- 
 ependence of the alleged new State would have been 
 contrary not only to the best recognized principles 
 and practices of international law, but contrary to 
 the established precedents and inviolable rules fol- 
 lowed by the United States itself in its dealings with 
 other nations. In the case of Colombia, there was the 
 further specific contract by which her rights of 
 sovereignty and property over the Isthmus were 
 guaranteed for all time by the United States itself. 
 
 53 
 
The new States which were formed in the Span- 
 ish American colonies could not obtain recognition 
 as such by the United States until more than two 
 decades after the initiation of the revolution against 
 the mother-country and only after the revolution 
 had finally triumphed after a legendary and heroic 
 struggle such as there had rarely been in the history 
 of the world, in no wise to be compared even with 
 the farcical secession of Panama. 
 
 From 1810 to 1822, various agents of the new 
 nations which had been formed in the emancipated 
 Spanish colonies went to Washington to endeavor 
 to obtain the recognition of their independence by 
 the United States; but the American government, 
 despite the genuine sympathy with which it looked 
 # upon the cause of liberty represented by the indep- 
 endence movement in South America , invariably abs- 
 tained from receiving its agents officially. In 1818 
 Henry Clay endeavoured in his memorable speeches 
 in the House of Representatives to accelerate the 
 recognition of the new States, but President Mon- 
 roe, his cabinet, and specially Secretary of State 
 John Quincy Adams, remained inflexible in their 
 strict regard for the sovereignty of Spain. In his 
 celebrated letter of August 24, 1818, to President 
 Monroe, referring to this matter Secretary of State 
 Adams very clearly and forcefully expressed the 
 true international doctrine bearing upon the recogn- 
 ition of a new State, the very crux of which is that 
 recognition can only be lawfully accorded when 
 without foreign intervention virtually every prob- 
 
 54 
 
ability of the former sovereign being able to restore 
 his authority has disappeared. 
 
 It was only in 1822 that President Monroe de- 
 cided to recognize the independence of the new Sta- 
 tes and that in his Message of March 8, 1822, he 
 stated the position of the United States as follows: 
 '';This contest has now reached such a 
 stage and been attended with such decisive 
 success on the part of the provinces that it 
 merits the most profound consideration whe- 
 ther their right to the rank of independent na- 
 tions with all the advantages incident to it in 
 their intercourse with the United States is not 
 complete. Buenos Ayres assumed that rank by 
 a formal declaration in 1816 and has enjoyed 
 it since 1810 free from invasion by the parent 
 country. The provinces composing the Repub- 
 lic of Colombia after having separately declar- 
 ed their independence were united by a funda- 
 mental law of the 17th of December 1819- A 
 strong Spanish force occupied at that time 
 certain parts of the territory within their li- 
 mits and waged a destructive war; that force 
 has since been repeatedly defeated and the 
 whole of it either made prisoners or destroyed 
 or expelled from the country with the excep- 
 tion of an inconsiderable portion only which 
 is blocaded in two fortresses. The provinces 
 of the Pacific have likewise been very succes- 
 sful. Chile declared independence in 1818 and 
 has since enjoyed it undisturbed, and of late 
 by the assistance of Chile and Buenos Ayres 
 
 55 
 
the revolution has extended to Peru. Of the 
 movement in Mexico our information is less 
 authentic but it is nevertheless distinctly un- 
 derstood that the new Government has de- 
 clared its independence and that there is now 
 no opposition to it there nor a force to make 
 any. For the last there years the Government 
 of Spain has not sent a single corps of troops 
 to any part of that country, nor is there any 
 reason to believe it will send any in the future. 
 Thus it is manifest that all those provinces are 
 not only in the full enjoyment of their indep- 
 endence but, considering the state of the war 
 and other circumstances, that there is not the 
 most remote prospect of their being deprived 
 
 of it." 
 After the independence of the Spanish colonies 
 had been recognized Secretary of State Adams, ans- 
 wering the protest of the Spanish Minister, said in 
 his Note of April 6, 1822: 
 
 "In every question relating to the indep- 
 endence of a nation two principles are involv- 
 ed: one of right and the other of fact; the 
 former exclusively depending upon the deter- 
 mination of the nation itself, and the other 
 resulting from the successful execution of 
 that determination. This right has recently 
 been exercised as well by the Spanish nation 
 in Europe as by several of those countries in 
 the Western Hemisphere which had for two 
 or three centuries been connected as colonies 
 with Spain. In the conflicts which have at- 
 
 56 
 
tended these revolutions, the United States 
 have carefuly abstained from taking any 
 part respecting the right of the nations con- 
 cerned in them to maintain or newly organize 
 their own political constitutions and observ- 
 ing, wherever it was a contest by arms, the 
 most impartial neutrality. But the civil war 
 in which Spain was for some years involved 
 with the inhabitants of her colonies in Ame- 
 rica has, in substance, ceased to exist. Treaties 
 equivalent to an acknowledgment of indep- 
 endence have been concluded by the com- 
 manders and vice-roys of Spain with the Rep- 
 ublic of Colombia, with Mexico and with Pe- 
 ru; while in the province of La Plata and in 
 Chile no Spanish force has for several years 
 existed to dispute the independence which the 
 inhabitants of those countries had declared.'' 
 An examination of the many noteworthy cases 
 in which the Government of Washington has main- 
 tained with inflexible determination laws, principles 
 and practices in absolute contradiction to the acts it 
 was guilty of in 1903 against the rights of Colombia 
 and by which the United States ignored the indep- 
 endence and equal station of my country. But for 
 their historical importance reference must be made 
 to a few documents of great value. 
 
 In the course of the Civil War in the United Sta- 
 tes, Secretary of State Seward, anxious to prevent 
 any foreign government from recognizing not only 
 the independence but even the existence as belliger- 
 ents of the States which had seceded from the 
 
 57 
 
Union, instructed the diplomatic representatives of 
 the United States abroad to oppose any such action. 
 In his circular instructions he wrote: 
 
 "To recognize the independence of a new 
 State and so favor and possibly determine its 
 admission into the family of nations is the 
 highest possible exercise of sovereign power 
 because it affects in any case the welfare of 
 two nations and often the peace of the world. 
 In the Europan system this power is now 
 seldom attempted to be exercised without in- 
 voking a consultation or Congress of nations. 
 That system has not been extended to this 
 continent- But there is an even greater neces- 
 sity for prudence in such cases in regard to 
 American States than in regard to the nations 
 of Europe. A revolutionary change of dynas- 
 ty, or even a disorganization or recombina- 
 tion of one or many states, therefore do not 
 long or deeply affect the general interest of 
 society because the ways of trade and habits 
 of society remain the same. But a radical 
 change effected in the political combinations 
 existing on the continent, followed as probab- 
 ly would be by moral convulsions of incalcu- 
 lable magnitude, would threaten the stability 
 of society throughout the world. 
 
 ''Humanity has indeed little to hope for if 
 it shall, in the age of high improvement, be 
 decided without a trial that the principles of 
 moral persons, bound so to act as to do each 
 other the least injury and the most good is 
 
 58 
 
merely an abstraction too refined to be reduc- 
 ed into practice by the englihtened nations of 
 Western Europe. Seen in the light of this 
 principle the several nations of the earth cons- 
 titute one great Federal Republic. When one 
 of them casts its suffrages for the admission 
 of a new member into the Republic, it ought 
 to act under a profound sense of moral obli- 
 gation and be governed by considerations as 
 pure, disinterested and elevated as the gen- 
 eral interest of society and the advancement 
 of human nature." 
 In his Message of December, 1875, President 
 Grant sustained the same principles in his reference 
 to the possible recognition of Cuba as an independ- 
 ent nation. 
 
 What would the United States have thought of 
 the act of a friendly nation — a friendly and an allied 
 nation — which in violation of the principles asserted 
 in the foregoing documents would have recognized 
 any of the States which seceded from the Union as 
 an independent and sovereign nation. 
 
 The traditional principles of American diploma-* 
 cy are fixed and lasting — they were only departed 
 from on the day when it was desired to despoil Co- 
 lombia, the friendly nation and sister Republic, 
 which had been the first of the Latin American na- 
 tions recognized by the United States and was bound 
 by a solemn Treaty. 
 
 Colombia was thrust beyond the pale of inter- 
 national law. Nothing counted except the bolster- 
 ing up of the fake secession, with the support before 
 
 55 
 
the act of the naval forces of the United States, and 
 so a few hours after the declaration of independence 
 by a handful of men in the city of Panama, the Co- 
 lombian Department of the Isthmus was raised in 
 Washington to the status of a sovereign Nation; and 
 a foreigner^who had held a position in the canal com- 
 pany — was invested with diplomatic dignity by cable 
 and received by the Presdient of the United States 
 as the Minister of the unfledged state. 
 
 The fourth and fifth Rights of Nations proclaim- 
 ed by the American Institute of International Law 
 were the following: 
 
 4. Every Nation has the right to territory 
 within defined boundaries and to exercise ex- 
 clusive jurisdiction over this territory and all 
 persons whether native or foreign found there- 
 in. 
 
 5' Every nation entitled to a right by the 
 law of nations is entitled to have that right 
 respected by all other nations, for right and 
 duty are corelative, and the right of one is the 
 duty of all to observe. 
 
 60 
 
The jurisdiction of the nation within its own ter- 
 ritory, is necessarily exclusive and absolute; it is sus- 
 ceptible of no limitations not imposed by itself. Any 
 restriction upon it deriving validity from an external 
 source, would imply a diminution of its sovereignty, 
 to the extent of the restriction, and an investment 
 of that sovereignty, to the same extent, in that pow- 
 er which could impose such restriction. All excep- 
 tion, therefore, to the full and complete power of a 
 nation, within its own territories must be traced up 
 to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow 
 from no other legitimate source. 
 
 Under the right of exclusive jurisdiction over all 
 the inhabitants of its territory, the State has supre- 
 me authority to subdue and punish, by force of arms, 
 any seditious movement occuring within its territo- 
 ry. 
 
 Under the right of territorial ownership, the 
 State has supreme authority to maintain, by force of 
 arms, its territorial integrity. Nevertheless, on Nov- 
 ember 2, 1903, the day before the so-called independ- 
 ence of Panama was "proclaimed". President Roo- 
 sevelt ordered the commander of the U. S. S. Nash- 
 ville to "prevent the landing of any armed force with 
 hostile intent, either Government or insurgent, either 
 at Colon, Porto Bello or other port. . ." 
 
 On the same day, November 2, 1903, the prin- 
 ciple of international law above stated which forbids 
 a State arbitrarily to intervene in the acts of sovere- 
 ignty, sent her military forces to Panama for the 
 purpose of crushing, by force of arms, the rumored 
 
 61 
 
uprising which, as a matter of fact, did break out on 
 the following day, November 3, 1903. 
 
 By the orders of President Roosevelt the regular 
 naval forces of the United States prevented the for- 
 ces of the Republic of Colombia from landing and 
 acting within the legitimate territorial jurisdiction 
 of Colombia. By so doing President Roosevelt inter- 
 vened in the internal affairs of Colombia and violat- 
 ed her sovereignty. Such an act of armed interven- 
 tion is an act of war, tantamout in every way to a 
 declaration of war, under the accepted provisions of 
 international law. 
 
 Judged by the principles of the Constitution of 
 the United States, — a declaration of war being a po- 
 litical act the exercise of which is vested exclusively 
 in Congress and not in the President (Article i, Sec- 
 tion 8 of the Constitution of the United States), — 
 the act of President Roosevelt was an arbitary act 
 without any lawful authority nor based on any legal 
 reason, and a clear violation of the Constitution. 
 
 The last Right of Nations enunciated by the 
 American Institute of International Law is self- 
 explanatory, as there can be no rights without cor- 
 responding duties- Aplied to the case of Colombia 
 it means that all of Colombia's rights as a sovere- 
 ing nation imposed corresponding duties upon the 
 other nations. 
 
 62 
 
THE REPARATION DUE 
 TO COLOMBIA 
 
THE REPARATION DUE TO COLOMBIA 
 
 The violation of the rights of Colombia and the 
 consequent dismemberment of her territory caused 
 moral and material damages which are really incal- 
 culable. 
 
 The possession of the Isthmus of Panama gave 
 to Colombia exceptional geographical, economic and 
 political advantages. The standing of Colombia as a 
 Nation is no longer the same since the loss of the 
 Isthmus. 
 
 This privileged strip of land was considered the 
 most valuable on the American continent and one 
 of the most valuable in the world, ever since the 
 Kings of Spain exercised sovereignty over it. The ter- 
 ritory of the Audiencia of Panama was the most 
 precious jewel if the dominions of Spain in America. 
 
 When the possible purchase of Lower Califor- 
 nia from Mexico has been considered in the United 
 States the land has generally been valued at Two 
 Hundred Million Dollars. The territory of the Co- 
 lombian Department of Panama is worth a great deal 
 more than Lower California on account of its excep" 
 tional situation. 
 
 The damages suffered by Colombia can be 
 measured neither morally nor materially. For many 
 excellent reasons, and in order to obviate the pos- 
 
 «5 
 
sibility of charges similar to those brought when the 
 Hay-Herran treaty was negotiated, Colombia pro- 
 posed, from the very moment of the secession of Pa- 
 nama, that the question of damages should be fixed 
 by the Hague Tribunal or any other court of arbitra- 
 tion. 
 
 It was only because of the anxious persistency 
 of the Government of the United States, and of the 
 desire to do justice to Colombia which animated its 
 present Chief Magistrate and Secretary of State 
 Bryan ,that Colombia consented to suspend her ef- 
 forts to obtain arbitration and entered into direct 
 negotiations which culminated in the Treaty signed 
 on April 6, 1914 in Bogota. 
 
 By this treaty an indemnity of Twenty Five Mil- 
 lion Dollars was agreed upon, and it is a very small 
 sum compared to the damage inflicted. It is true that 
 the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United 
 States Senate, in reporting out the Treaty, proposed 
 to reduce the indemnity by Ten Millions. The Gov- 
 ernment and the people of Colombia only accepted 
 the Twenty Five Millions from an honest desire to 
 put an end to the vexatious and prejudicial contro- 
 versy and to shovr its goodwill towards the Wilson 
 administration. The Urrutia-Thompson Treaty was 
 bitterly attacked in Colombia from the day it was 
 signed. It is impossible to express the painful sur- 
 prise which the action of the Committee on Foreign 
 Relations must have caused among a people as proud 
 as the> are patriotic. 
 
 66 
 
The claims of Colombia have been described as 
 blackmail, but truly it is an usual case of blackmail 
 when the party accused of this crime has continually 
 begged, without however being able to obtain, that 
 the issue be decided by arbitration- 
 
 In order that some idea may be formed of the 
 material damages inflicted upon Colombia merely by 
 the taking of the Panama Railroad, and the annui- 
 ties due under its contract and under the canal con- 
 tract we submit the following facts taken from the 
 Memorandum which the United States Minister in 
 Bogota, Mr. James T. DuBois, the eminent diploma- 
 tist sent by the Taft Administration to effect a set' 
 tlement of the existing controversy, presented to the 
 Government of Colombia in February, 1913. This 
 Memorandum, in part referring to the Panama Rail- 
 road, reads as follows: 
 
 REVERSIONARY RIGHTS IN THE PANAMA RAILROAD 
 
 "Notwihstanding the fact that the United Sta- 
 tes believes that these rights passed to Panama at 
 the time of its secession, and notwithstanding the 
 fact that the United States has already paid Pa- 
 nama for these rights, nevertheless animated by a 
 sincere desire to renew an old friendship, the alter- 
 ation of which it deeply regrets, the United States 
 is ready to submit to arbitration the controversy 
 with Colombia referring to the legal claim wich 
 she maintains she possesses to the reversionary 
 rights in the Panama Railroad. Colombia has al- 
 
 67 
 
" ways asked, with the greatest insistence, ever since 
 " the moment of the secession of Panama, that the 
 " whole matter be taken to the Hague Tribunal, but 
 " as the United States, in accordance with the line of 
 " conduct followed by all the Great Powers, positiv- 
 " ely refuses to submit any of its political acts to arbi- 
 " tration, for this reason it has been impossible to * 
 " comply with Colombia's desires in this matter. The 
 " Government of the United States however, taking 
 " into acount the justiciable character of the differen- 
 " ces of opinion as to the material claims of Colom- 
 '' bia is disposed to submit these claims to a tribunal 
 '^ of arbitration to be appointed for this purpose in 
 " accordance with a convention which will clearly 
 '' specify the points to be passed upon. This decision 
 " will without doubt be received with favor by the 
 " Government and people of Colombia all the more 
 " so as it is generally believed that the claim refer- 
 '' ring to the rights of Colombia in the Panama Rail- 
 '' road is perfectly legal and just. Under the contract 
 " of 1867 Colombia ceded the transisthmian railroad 
 " to the Panama Railroad Company for a period of 
 " 99 years for an annual payment of $250,000. When 
 " these payments were stopped on account of the 
 " secession, the contract still had 64 years to run, 
 " that is to say, there were still pending 64 annuities 
 " of $250,000 the total value of which amounted to 
 "$16,000,000. This claim might be submitted, with 
 " the previous consent of both parties, to arbitration. 
 " As Senator Bristow reported officially in 1906 that 
 " the Panama Railroad was worth $16,446,000 the to- 
 
 66 
 
" tal amount of the claim which might be submitted 
 " to arbitration would rise to $32,446-000. In addition 
 " to this sum there is the amount entailed by the Sal- 
 " gar-Wyse Concession which expires in 1984 and 
 " under it Colombia was to receive $250,000 a year 
 " counting from the date of the opening of the canal. 
 " If the canal be opened to service in the coming year 
 " we should have owing to Colombia seventy annui" 
 " ties, that is to say, $17,500,000. If the tribunal of 
 " arbitration considers this further claim the total 
 " sum would amount to $49,946,000." 
 
 Moreover, Minister Dubois suggested that the 
 United States was disposed to offer ten millions 
 " without insisting on the option for the opening of 
 " the Atrato Canal but allowing the other proposals 
 '' to stand." 
 
 "All of which means the possibility for Colombia 
 to obtain Sixty Millions as a compesation for the 
 losses she suffered through the secession of Panama." 
 
 It is also well to point out that even under the 
 Hay-Herran Treaty of January 1903 which was re- 
 jected by the Colombian Senate, Colombia retained 
 her full rights of sovereignty and property over the 
 Isthmus of Panama, and that for the sole right which 
 the Treaty conferred to the United States to con- 
 struct the canal and occupy the canal zone, Colom- 
 bia was to receive a sum much in excess of Twenty 
 Five Million Dollars." 
 
 ''By Article XV of the Hay-Herran Treaty the 
 Government of the United States bound itself to pay 
 to Colombia the sum of $10,000,000 and an annual 
 
 69 
 
payment during the life of the convention, which 
 was fixed at lOO years, of $250,000 a year. This meant 
 a cash payment of $10,000,000 and $25,000,000 more 
 in annual payments. In all $35,000,000- 
 
 "Besides in Article XVII it was further stipulat- 
 ed that Colombia should have the right to transport 
 over the canal its vessels, troops and munitions of 
 war at all times without paying charges of any kind. 
 
 In his memorable speech in the United States Se- 
 nate, March i, 191 2, the eminent Senator from Ne- 
 braska Mr. Hitchcock, appreciated the damages of 
 Colombia as follows: 
 
 "I have been told, and it has been suggest- 
 ed to me, that if arbitrated, probably the mea- 
 sure of Colombia damages would be so great 
 that it would appal the American people; that 
 damages would not be confined simply to the 
 payment of $10,000,000 which we once offered, 
 and the annuity of $250,000 a year in perpetui- 
 ty, because that provided only for the Pana- 
 ma strip for the Canal, whereas, as a matter 
 of fact, our act deprived Colombia not only of 
 the Canal strip, but deprived her of all the Pro- 
 vince. Perhaps if that it so, possibly the 
 damages would not be limited to $10,000,000 
 or $15,000,000 or $50,000,000; they may go to 
 
 70 
 
$100,000,000 or more; but because the damage 
 is great and because a Court of Arbitration 
 might award the people of Colombia such en- 
 ormous damages is no reason for us to shrink 
 from paying the penality of our act. I do no 
 believe that the American people, who are a 
 highly moral people, a highly just people, 
 would shrink from paying to the last cent that 
 penalty which a Court of Arbitration might 
 award.'' — Congressional record. March i, 1912. 
 Taking these facts into account it will be readily 
 seen that the $25,000,000 agreed upon in the Urrutia- 
 Thompson treaty is really a very inadequate indem- 
 nity in comparison to the great damages sustained 
 by Colombia. 
 
 When the Alabama controversy between Eng- 
 land and the United States was submitted to the Gen- 
 eva Arbitration the indemnity that the former was 
 ordered to pay merely for the depredations of the 
 Albama amounted to $15,000,000- It is hardly con- 
 ceivable that those damages should be comparable 
 to those inflicted upon Colombia by the loss of 
 the most valuable portion of her territory, carried out 
 through the action of American warships, like the 
 Nashville and the Dixie, and by the exercise of the 
 power of the United States. 
 
 The truth is that on calm examination no expla- 
 nation can be found for the reduction proposed by 
 the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Indeed 
 it is even more extraordinary in view of other cir- 
 cumstances such as the incalculable political, milita- 
 ry and commercial value of the Panama canal to the 
 
 71 
 
United States and also the overwhelming prosperity 
 which this Republic enjoys and in the increase of 
 which the Panama canal is an essential factor. 
 
 President Wilson's speech in Washington on 
 April 13 contained the following important passage: 
 "As I have listened to some of the spe- 
 eches to-nigth the great feeling has come into 
 my heart that we are better prepared than we 
 ever were before to show how America can 
 lead the way along the paths of light. Take 
 the single matter of financial statistics, of 
 which we have only recently become precisely 
 informed; the mere increase in the resources 
 of the national banks of the United States ex- 
 ceed the total resources of the Deutscher 
 Reichbank, and the aggregate resources of 
 the national banks of the United States exce- 
 ed by three thousand millions the aggregate 
 resources of the Bank of England, the Bank 
 of France, the Bank of Russia, the Reichbank 
 in Berlin, the Bank of the Netherlands, the 
 Bank of Switzerland and the Bank of Japan. 
 Under the provincial conceptions of the repub- 
 lican party this would have been impossible. 
 Under the world conceptions of those of us 
 who are proud to follow the traditions of Tho- 
 mas Jefferson it has been realized in fact, and 
 the question we have to put to ourselves it this, 
 "How are we going to use this power?" 
 
 72 
 
Referring again to the Alabama Case and to 
 the treaty of May 8, 1871, between England and the 
 United States, it will be seen that the latter has an 
 important bearing upon another suggestion of the 
 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in connec- 
 tion with the Urrutia-Thompson treaty. The Com- 
 mittee did not favor the expression of regret contain- 
 ed therein towards a weak and defenceless Republic, 
 but such an expression of regret was found possible 
 and proper in the case of one of the great powers of 
 the world and was written into one of the most im- 
 portant and best known treaties in the history of 
 XIX Century dimplomacy. 
 
 Such an expression of regret was found also in 
 many solemn documents of contemporary diplo- 
 matic history. The last we know is the note of the 
 German Government offering reparation to the Unit- 
 ed States for the attack upon the steamboat Sussex. 
 This note says as follows. 
 
 "In view of these circumstances the Ger- 
 man government frankly admits that the as- 
 surance given to the American government, in 
 accordance with which passenger vessels were 
 not to be attacked without warning, has not 
 been adhered to in the present case. As was 
 intimated by the undersigned in the note of 
 the 4th inst. the German government does not 
 hesitate to draw from this resultant conse- 
 quences. It therfeore expresses to the Ameri- 
 can government its sincere regret regarding 
 the deplorable incident and declares its read- 
 
 73 
 
iness to pay an adequate indemnity to the in- 
 jured American citizens. It also disapproved 
 of the conduct of the commander, who has 
 been appropiately punished." 
 Much criticism has been launched against the 
 Wilson administration for having agreed upon the 
 mild and perfectly honorable expression of regret 
 contained in the Urrutia-Thompson treaty, but it 
 seems to be forgotten that the Taft Administration 
 sent to Bogota a Minister who, as the initial step of 
 his mission presented a solemn document to the Co- 
 lombian Chancellery, in which he said: 
 
 "The Government and the People of the 
 United States sincerely regret the occurrence 
 of events that in any manner may have chang- 
 ed the long and sincere friendship which exist- 
 ed for almost a century between Colombia and 
 the United States has ardently desired the ef- 
 facement of the unfriendly feeling created in 
 Colombia by the secession of Panama. 
 
 74 
 
COLOMBIA AND THE 
 PANAMA CANAL 
 
COLOMBIA AND THE PANAMA CANAL 
 
 The relations between Colombia and the United 
 States, until 1903 were of the most friendly nature and 
 the directness of Colombia was always recognized 
 by the United States not only in negotiations about 
 the Panama Canal but in all matters Let us remem- 
 ber these words of Abrahan Lincoln in his last aimal 
 message (December 6, 1864) : 
 
 "It would be doing injustice to an impor- 
 tant South American State not to acknow 
 ledge the directness, frankness, and cordia 
 lity, with which the United States of Colom- 
 bia have entered into intimate relations with 
 this Government-" 
 The statement that Colombia ever opposed obs- 
 tacles to the opening of the Panama canal is a gross 
 libel. On the contrary the entire dimplomatic histo- 
 ry of Colombia, from the time of its emancipation 
 from Spain, shows how great was her desire to see 
 the canal built, although, as dictated by an element- 
 ary regard for her self preservation, she endeavour- 
 ed to bring about a realization of her desire without 
 any impairment of her own sovereignty. 
 
 The canal being now open, Colombia cannot ig- 
 nore the fact that this great work is one of the chief 
 factors in the future material development of the 
 
 77 
 
world, but as long as the agreement giving a lawful 
 title to the United States is not carried out, Colom- 
 bia will also maintain that the work, great as it is 
 stands as a monument to an even greater crime; and 
 that Colombia and Colombia alone is the lawful 
 owner of the Isthmus of Panama. 
 
 Should the formal opening of the canal unfor- 
 tunately take place before a final settlement is 
 arrived at, Colombia will be forced once more to 
 protest to the other nations of the world, against the 
 violation of her sovereignty. 
 
 In the eyes of the people of Colombia and of 
 all America, the Panama Canal stands for the victory 
 of might over right, the triumph of brute force over 
 law, far more than for the splendid subjugation of 
 tropical nature by the science and energy of the 
 people of the United States. It is in the power of 
 the United States to remove this feeling, to change 
 this state of affairs and to ensure that the canal shall 
 be, what it always would have been without the cri- 
 me committed in 1903, and what the governments 
 and statesmen of Colombia and the United States 
 constantly worked for it to be : a great and powerful 
 link uniting the two Republics. 
 
 Reference has been made to the danger which 
 might accrue to the canal if it were attacked from 
 Colombian territory and of the necessity of prevent- 
 ing an alliance between Colombia and any other 
 nation. If any such danger or any such necessity 
 exist, the best guarantee of the safety of the canal 
 lies in an agreement with Colombia. 
 
 78 
 
In a letter which I wrote to the Washington 
 Post on this question I said: 
 
 "In one of the editorials of the Wash- 
 ington Post of Januray 24, I find the follow- 
 ing paragraph: 
 
 'There is a possible source of war in the 
 danger to which the Panama Canal would be 
 exposed in case Colombia should make a bar- 
 gain with an oversea power seeking territory 
 in South or Central America. The canal could 
 be attacked from the territory of Colombia 
 and the ports of that Republic used advan- 
 tageously by a naval enemy of the United Sta- 
 tes to forbid the making of an alliance between 
 Colombia and any European or Asiatic power 
 having for its object an assault upon the Pa- 
 nama canal, and the first errand of the Ame- 
 rican fleet would be to protect the canal.' 
 
 "Anyone reading the above statement 
 without a knowledge of the geography of this 
 hemisphere might possibly be led to believe 
 that Colombia is a protectorate and not a sov- 
 ereing and independent nation of six million 
 inhabitants, with its own free institutions and 
 enjoying the same rights as the United States 
 and the other nations of the Pan-American 
 Union." 
 
 "When onte this rectification has been 
 made, permit me to say that the fear that the 
 Panama Canal might be attacked some day 
 from Colombian territory may be averted in 
 
 79 
 
due time by the United States, should such a 
 danger really exist, not by means of a policy 
 of aggression which the Colombian people, 
 firmly and fully conscious of its rights, would 
 always reject, but by means of a policy of fra- 
 ternity, fellowship and justice which will unite 
 the two countries in common ideals, common 
 interests, and common sentiments. Such a po- 
 licy calls for the restoration — by means of the 
 reparation of past grievances — of the ancient 
 and traditional goodwill and friendship bet- 
 ween Colombia and the United States. In this 
 connection let me remind you that Dr. Jose 
 Maria Galviz, a delegate from the Republic 
 of Chile to the Second Pan American Scien- 
 dific Congress, expressed in "The Boston 
 Globe" his astonishment that reparation 
 should still be delayed." 
 
 ''The friendship between Colombia and 
 the United States had as a firm basis the si- 
 milarity of democratic institutions, and culmi- 
 nated in the Treaty of 1846, which became an 
 exceptional agreement in the history of Unit- 
 ed States diplomacy, and which was unfortu- 
 nately violated in 1903 when the dismember- 
 ment of Colombian territory through the se- 
 paration of Panama was countenanced." 
 
 "Thanks to this genuine friendship, not 
 only the political relations of the two count- 
 ries improved, but their commercial inter- 
 course grew by rapid strides- Has the fact that 
 
Colombia opened her doors and allowed free 
 passage through the Isthmus of Panama to 
 everything needed for the development of Ca- 
 lifornia and the other western States been 
 forgotten?'' 
 
 "If the safeguarding of the Panama Canal 
 enters into the scheme of the national de- 
 fense of the United States, it is natural to sup- 
 pose that that protection would be sought in 
 an honest and loyal manner by cultivating the 
 friendship of Colombia and by respecting her 
 sovereignty; it can never be attained by re- 
 turning to a policy already disapproved by the 
 whole of the American continent. 
 
 "As Minister for Foreign Affairs of Co- 
 lombia and in every other important position 
 held by me, I have zealously labored to bring 
 about a good understanding between Colom- 
 bia and the United States, and it is my earnest 
 hope that all those in this country who may 
 desire to see the future relations of the two 
 republics guided by a spirit of justice and con- 
 fraternity will direct their efforts to the attain- 
 ment of this same lofty purpose." 
 
 8x 
 
COLOMBIA'S CASE 
 AND PAN-AMERICANISM 
 
COLOMBIA'S CASE AND PAN-AMERICANISM 
 
 Inmediately after coming into power the Wilson 
 Administration sought to realize one of the parts 
 of the democratic programe by doing justice to Co- 
 lombia. For that purpose Mr. Thadeus A. Thompson, 
 a diplomat of high attainments and just mind, was 
 sent to Bogota with Specific instructions to propose 
 a Treaty. After extended negotiation in which he 
 overcame Colombia's strong belief that the case could 
 only be satisfactorily settled by arbitration, Mr. 
 Thompson realized the object of his mission and on 
 April 6, 1914, there was signed in the capital of Co- 
 lombia the Tre:aty for the settlement of the differen- 
 ces that had arisen from the loss of Panama, which 
 is now before the Senate of the United States. 
 
 The signature of that treaty was hailed with 
 keen satisfaction throughout Latin-America. With- 
 out exception the leading newspapers of every Ame- 
 rican nation praised it, and this feeling was even 
 conveyed by official acts of various governments. 
 From that moment lost confidence began to revive, 
 and a great impetus was given to the ideals of Pan- 
 Americanism. 
 
 The success of the late Pan-American Scientific 
 Congress which met this year in Washington was an 
 earnest proof of this re-awakened confidence. Had it 
 not been for the high aims and just spirit of the Wil- 
 
 85 
 
son policies there could have been no such unanimous 
 cordiality on this continent as was manifest on that 
 occasion. Attention was solemnly called to this fact 
 in Philadelphia by one of the delegates to the Con- 
 gress- 
 
 The report of the Senate Committee on Foreign 
 Relations on the Colombian Treaty, coming as it did 
 a few days after the adjournment of the Congress, 
 created a most unfavorable impression as being at 
 variance with the spirit of cordiality and of construc- 
 tive Pan-Americanism which had been so marked a 
 feature of the Scientific Congress and of the meeting 
 of the American Institute of International Law. 
 Such Colombians as had taken part in the deliberat- 
 ions of these two bodies, were really able to believe 
 that at last the time had come when the dark days 
 of difficulties between Colombia and the United Sta- 
 tes were really at an end. We were most unhappily 
 wrong, and we must admit at the very least that our 
 confidence was misplaced. 
 
 Several of the delegates of other American 
 republics who attended the sessions made no at- 
 tempt to conceal their conviction that before the 
 brotherhood of the Americas could be an accomplish- 
 ed fact the questions between Colombia and the 
 United States would have to be settled. The truth is 
 that these questions in the state in which they have 
 been left by the report of the Committee on Fore- 
 ign Relations of the United States Senate will con- 
 tinue to be an insurmountable obstacle to the develop- 
 ment of Pan-American ideals and principles in which 
 
all the nations of the new world are more or less de- 
 eply interested. 
 
 What is happening in respect to the Pan-Ame- 
 rican treaty recently suggested by the Government 
 of the United States bears out what we say. President 
 Wilson, whose noble desire to bring closer together, 
 within the bounds of justice and equality, the peoples 
 of the American continent will be one of the great 
 glories of his administration, recently proposed to all 
 the American nations a Treaty the principal clauses 
 of which would be: 
 
 "Article I. — The high contracting parties 
 agree to join one another in a common and 
 mutual guarantee of territorial integrity un- 
 der Republican forms of Government. 
 
 "Article II. — To give definite application 
 to the guarantees set forth in Article I, the 
 high contracting parties severally agree to 
 endeavor forthwith to reach a settlement of all 
 disputes as to boundaries or territory now 
 pending between them by amicable agreement 
 or by means of international arbitration. 
 
 Article III. — The high contracting parties 
 further agree that all questions of internatio- 
 nal character arising between any two or more 
 of them which cannot be settled by the or- 
 dinary means of diplomatic correspondence 
 shall before any declaration of war, or begin- 
 ning of hostilities be first submitted to a per- 
 manent international commission for inves- 
 tigations, and if the dispute is not settled by 
 
 87 
 
investigation to submit the same to arbitra- 
 tion, provided the question in dispute does not 
 affect the honor, independence, or vital inte- 
 rests of the nations concerned or the interests 
 of third parties. 
 
 Article IV. — To the end that domestic 
 tranquillity may prevail within their territory, 
 the high contracting parties furher agree not 
 to permit the departure of any military or na- 
 val expedition hostile to the established gov- 
 ernment of any of the contracting parties and 
 to prevent the exportation of arms and mu- 
 nitions of war destined to any person or per- 
 sons in insurrection or revolt against the Gov- 
 ernment of any of the contracting parties. 
 As far as we many judge by reports which have 
 appeared in the American press and especially an 
 article in the New York Evening Post of April i, 
 1916, on the negotiations in connection with the pro- 
 posed Treaty, it has met with certain objections from 
 several of the diplomats acredited to the Government 
 of Washington by other American Republics. In no 
 small measure these objections have borne upon the 
 pending controversy with Colombia, the present 
 state of which does not appear to be compatible with 
 a treaty of the nature of the one proposed. 
 
To bring this work to a close I cannot do better 
 than to quote the words of Abraham Lincoln, in his 
 last annual message, on the policy of Colombia tow- 
 ards the United States: 
 
 ''It would be doing injustice to an impor- 
 tant South American State not to acknowled- 
 ge the directness, frankness and cordiality 
 with which the United States of Colombia 
 have entered into intimate relations with this 
 Government." 
 
 89 
 
THE TREATY 
 
TREATY 
 
 Between the United States of America and the Rep- 
 ublic of Colombia, for the settlement of their 
 differences arising out of the events 
 which took place on the 
 Isthmus of Panama 
 in November 
 1903 
 
 The United States of America and the Republic 
 of Colombia, being desirous to remove all the mis- 
 understandings growing out of the political events 
 in Panama in November 1903; to restore the cor- 
 dial friendship that formerly characterized the rela- 
 tions between the two countries, and also to define 
 and regulate their rights and interests in respect of 
 the interoceanic canal which the Government of the 
 United States is constructing across the Isthmus of 
 Panama, have resolved for this purpose to conclude 
 a Treaty and have accordingly appointed as their 
 Plenipotentiaries : 
 
 His Excellency the President of the United Sta- 
 tes of America, Thaddeus Austin Thomson, Envoy 
 Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotenciary of the 
 United States de America to the Government of the 
 Republic of Colombia; and 
 
 93 
 
His Excellency the President of Colombia, 
 Francisco Jose Urrutia, Minister for Foreign Affairs; 
 Marco Fidel Suarez, First Designate to exercise the 
 Executive Power; Nicolas Esguerra, ex-Minister of 
 State; Jose Maria Gonzalez Valencia, Senator; Ra- 
 fael Uribe Uribe, Senator; and Antonio Jose Uribe, 
 President of the House of Representatives ; 
 
 Who, after communicating to each other their 
 respective full pov^ers, v^hich were found to be in 
 due and proper form, have agreed upon the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 Article I 
 
 The Government of the United States of Ameri- 
 ca, wishing to put at rest all controversies and dif- 
 ferences with the Republic of Colombia arising out 
 of the events from which the present situation on the 
 Isthmus of Panama resulted, expresses, in its own 
 name and in the name of the people of the United 
 States, sincere regret that anything should have oc- 
 curred to interrupt or to mar the relations of cordial 
 friendship that had so long subsisted between the 
 two nations. 
 
 The Government of the Republic of Colombia, in 
 its own name and in the name of the Colombian peo- 
 ple accepts this declaration in the full assurance that 
 every obstacle to the restoration of complete harmo- 
 ny between the two countries will thus disappear. 
 
 Article II 
 
 The Republic of Colombia shall enjoy the follow- 
 ing rights in respect to the interoceanic Canal and 
 Panama Railway: 
 
 94 
 
I. The Republic of Colombia shall be at liberty 
 at all times to transport through the interoceanic Ca- 
 nal its troops, materials of war and ships of war, even 
 in case of war between Colombia and another coun- 
 try, without paying any charges to the United Sta- 
 tes. 
 
 2- The products of the soil and industry of Co- 
 lombia passing through the Canal, as well as the Co- 
 lombian mails, shall be exempt from any charge or 
 duty other than those to which the products and 
 mails of the United States may be subject. The pro- 
 ducts of the soil and industry of Colombia, such as 
 cattle, salt and provisions shall be admitted to entry 
 in the Canal Zone, and likewise in the islands and 
 main land occupied or which may be occupied by 
 the United States as auxiliar y and accessory thereto, 
 without paying other duties or charges than those 
 payable by similar products of the United States. 
 
 3. Colombian citizens crossing the Canal Zone 
 shall, upon production of proper proof of their na- 
 tionality, be exempt from every toll, tax or duty to 
 which citizens of the United States are not subject. 
 
 4. During the construction of the Interoceanic 
 Canal and afterwards, whenever traffic by the Canal 
 is interrupted or whenever it shall be necessary for 
 any other reason to use the railway, the troops, ma- 
 terials of war, products and mails of the Republic of 
 Colombia, as above mentioned, shall, even in case of 
 war between Colombia and another country, be tran- 
 sported on the Railway between Ancon and Cristo- 
 bal or on any other Railway substituted therefor, 
 
 9$ 
 
paying only the same charges and duties as are im- 
 posed upon the troops, materials of war, products and 
 mails of the United States. The officers, agents and 
 employees of the Government of Colombia, shall, 
 upon production of proper proof of their official cha- 
 racter or their employment, also be entitled to pas- 
 sage on the said Railway on the same terms as offi- 
 cers, agents and employees of the Government of the 
 United States. The provisions of this paragraph shall 
 not, however, apply in case of war between Colombia 
 and Panama. 
 
 5. Coal, petroleum and sea salt, being the pro- 
 ducts of Colombia, passing from the Atlantic coast 
 of Colombia to any Colombian port on the Pacific 
 coast, and viceversa, shall be transported over the 
 aforesaid Railway free of any charge except the ac- 
 tual cost of handling and transportation, which shall 
 not in any case exceed one half the ordinary freight 
 charges levied upon similar products of the United 
 States passing over the Railway and in transit from 
 one port to another of the United States- 
 Article III 
 
 The United States of America agrees to pay to 
 the Republic of Colombia, within six months after 
 the exchange of the ratifications of the present Trea- 
 ty, the sum of twenty-five million dollars gold. Unit- 
 ed States money. 
 
 Article IV 
 
 The Republic of Colombia recognizes Panama as 
 an independent nation and taking as a basis the Co- 
 lombian law of June 9, 1855, agrcK that the boundary 
 
shall be the following: From Cape Tiburon to the 
 headwaters of the Rio de La Miel and following the 
 mountain chain by the ridge of Gandi to the Sierra 
 de Chugargun and that of Mali going down by the 
 ridges of Nigue to the heights of Aspave and from 
 thence to a point on the Pacific half way between Co- 
 calito and La Ardita. 
 
 In consideration of this recognition, the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States will, inmediately after 
 the exchange of the ratifications of the present Trea- 
 ty, take the necessary steps in order to obtain from 
 the Government of Panama the despatch of a duly 
 acredited agent to negotiate and conclude with the 
 Government of Colombia a Treaty of Peace and 
 Friendship, with a view to bring about both the es- 
 tablishment of regular diplomatic relations between 
 Colombia and Panama and the adjustment of all ques- 
 tion of pecuniary liability as between the two coun- 
 tries, in accordance with recognized principles of law 
 and precedents. 
 
 Article V. 
 
 The present Treaty shall be aproved and ratifi- 
 ed by the High Contracting Parties in conformity 
 with their respective laws, and the ratifications lliere- 
 of shall be exchanged in the city of Bogota, as 
 soon as may be possible. 
 
 In faith whereof, the said plenipotentiaries have 
 signed the present Treaty in duplicate and have he- 
 reunto affixed their respective seals- 
 Done at the city of Bogota, the sixth day of April 
 
 97 
 
in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and four- 
 teen. 
 
 (L. S.) Signed, Thaddeus Austin Thomson. — 
 (L. S.) Signed, Francisco Jose Urrutia. — (L. S.) 
 Signed Marco Fidel Suarez. — (L. S.) Signed, Nico- 
 las Esguerra. — (L. S.) Signed, Jose M, Gonzalez Va- 
 lencia — (L. S.) Signed, Rafael Uribe Uribe.— (L. S.) 
 Signed, Antonio Jose Uribe. 
 
 98 
 
^N INITIAL F^^O;r.oS 
 
 DAY AND TO $10" 
 
 OVERDUE. == 
 
 /:i^ 
 
 UD 21-l00m-8,'34 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 '•• .- ■ h,-^ 
 
iiilii 
 
 iiiiiJlHlill 
 
 '!««» !Sji!|i|| 
 
 mm