From the beginning to the end our course was straightforward and in absolute accord with the highest of standards of international morality.  Criticism of it can come only from misinformation, or else from a sentimentality which represents both mental weakness and a moral twist.  To have acted otherwise than I did would have been on my part betrayal of the interests of the United States, indifference to the interests of Panama, and recreancy to the interests of the world at large.  Colombia had forfeited every claim to consideration; indeed, this is not stating the case strongly enough:  she had so acted that yielding to her would have meant on our part that culpable form of weakness which stands on a level with wickedness.  As for me personally, if I had hesitated to act, and had not in advance discounted the clamor of those Americans who have made a fetish of disloyalty to their country, I should have esteemed myself as deserving a place in Dante’s inferno beside the faint-hearted cleric who was guilty of “il gran rifiuto.”  The facts I have given above are mere bald statements from the record.  They show that from the beginning there had been acceptance of our right to insist on free transit, in whatever form was best, across the Isthmus; and that towards the end there had been a no less universal feeling that it was our duty to the world to provide this transit in the shape of a canal—­the resolution of the Pan-American Congress was practically a mandate to this effect.  Colombia was then under a one-man government, a dictatorship, founded on usurpation of absolute and irresponsible power.  She eagerly pressed us to enter into an agreement with her, as long as there was any chance of our going to the alternative route through Nicaragua.  When she thought we were committed, she refused to fulfil the agreement, with the avowed hope of seizing the French company’s property for nothing and thereby holding us up.  This was a bit of pure bandit morality.  It would have achieved its purpose had I possessed as weak moral fiber as those of my critics who announced that I ought to have confined my action to feeble scolding and temporizing until the opportunity for action passed.  I did not lift my finger to incite the revolutionists.  The right simile to use is totally different.  I simply ceased to stamp out the different revolutionary fuses that were already burning.  When Colombia committed flagrant wrong against us, I considered it no part of my duty to aid and abet her in her wrongdoing at our expense, and also at the expense of Panama, of the French company, and of the world generally.  There had been fifty years of continuous bloodshed and civil strife in Panama; because of my action Panama has now known ten years of such peace and prosperity as she never before saw during the four centuries of her existence—­for in Panama, as in Cuba and Santo Domingo, it was the action of the American people, against the outcries of the professed apostles of peace, which alone brought peace.  We gave