Exercised

Senator Borah in the Senate, Representative Newton of Minnesota in the House, began last week suddenly to talk of something that their colleagues had never heard of. They in turn heard of the matter from Richard O. Marsh, a former diplomatic official of the U. S. in Panama, now a rubber expert, and most distinguished as the discoverer of the "white Indians" (TIME, June 30, 1924, SCIENCE).

He wrote to the two speakers: "In April the government of the Republic of Panama granted to powerful British financial interests, encouraged by the British government, immense concessions to practically all the valuable public lands of Panama.

"The ostensible purpose of these concessions was to give to the British exclusive control of practically all future development of mineral rights in Panama, excepting oil, coal, salt and mineral waters.

"The main purpose of these concessions was to prevent the possibility of a large American owned and controlled rubber development in Panama, sufficient in scope to make America independent of the present British monopoly of the world's crude rubber."

He said further that the concessions were some 4,600 square miles on both sides of the canal (within 50 or 60 miles, his maps indicated), that they included the only two harbors on the Pacific coast suitable for military operations against the canal, and that the people of Panama were giving away these valuable concessions in perpetuity with almost no return.

Senator Borah promptly introduced a resolution directing the State and the War Departments to cell the Senate what they knew about the concessions and what it anything they had done about the matter.

The State Department promptly made public the text of the contract granting the concessions. This gave a British company formed for the purpose a right to explore for ten years all public lands, in certain areas, and the right to perpetual ownership of any gold mines or other mines (excepting salt, oil, coal and miner 1 water) discovered during that period. The company is made a "public utility," hence freed from all taxes; Panama is to provide sanitary and police protection at the company's expense (much of the area has never even been explored); the company has permission to use streams for water power, to install telegraph, telephone and railway lines, build roads, aqueducts and power lines; the company must in turn undertake certain public improvements-- building roads, bridges, harbors, etc.; the company will further pay the government as royalty 2% of the gross profits; any dispute arising between the concessionaire and Panama is to be settled by arbitration; diplomatic intervention by a foreign power is specifically forbidden.

The question yet to be definitely answered is whether the concession was a British move to prevent U. S. rubber-planting in Panama. Until that question is settled, the dastardliness of the project cannot be estimated.