This all-powerful government insists on and enforces many of the things which Americans as a whole stand for,—­Sunday closing, suppression of resorts, forbidding of gambling.  But the Zone is no test whether these laws could be genuinely enforced in a whole nation.  For down there Panama and Colon serve as a sort of safety-valve, where a man can run down in an hour or so on mileage or monthly pass and blow off steam; get rid of the bad internal vapors that might cause explosion in a ventless society.  This we should not lose sight of when we boast that there are few crimes and no real resorts on the Zone.  “The Colonel” himself will tell you there is no gambling.  Yet it is curious how many of the weekly prizes of the Panama lottery find their way into the pockets of American canal builders, and in any Zone gathering of whatever hour—­or sex!—­you are almost certain to hear flitting back and forth mysterious whispers of “—­have a 6 and a 4 this week.”

The Zone system is work-coupons for all; much as the Socialist would have it.  Only the legitimate members of the community—­the workers—­can live in it—­long.  You should see the nonchalant way a clerk at the government’s Tivoli hotel charges a tourist a quarter for a cigar the government sells for six cents in its commissaries.  Mere money does not rank high in Zone society.  It’s the labor-coupon that counts.  They sell cigarettes at the Y.M.C.A.; you are in that state where you would give your ticket home for a smoke.  Yet when you throw down good gold or silver, black Sam behind the showcase looks up at you with that pitying cold eye kept in stock for new-comers, and says wearily: 

“Cahn’t take no money heah, boss.”

That surely is a sort of socialism where a slip of paper showing merely that you have done your appointed task gets you the same meal wherever you may drop in, a total stranger, yet without being identified, without a word from any one, but merely thrusting your coupon-book at the yellow West Indian at the door as you enter that he may snatch out so many minutes of labor.  Drop in anywhere there is a vacant bed and you are perfectly at home.  There is the shower-bath, the ice-water, the veranda rocker—­you knew exactly what was coming to you, just what kind of bed, just what vegetables you would be served at dinner.  It reminds one of the Inca system of providing a home for every citizen, and tambos along the way if he must travel.

But it is the same meal.  That is just the point.  There is where you begin to furrow your brow and look more closely at this splendid system, and fall to wondering if that public kitchen of socialism would not become in time an awful bore.  There are some things in which we want variety and originality and above all personality.  A meal is a meal, I suppose, as a cat is a cat; yet there are many subtle little things that make the same things distinctly different.  When it comes to dinner you want a rosy fat German or a bulky French madame putting thought and pride and attention into it; which they will do only if they get good coin of the realm or similar material emolument out of it in proportion.  No one will ever fancy he has a “mission” to serve good meals—­to the public.