wished a law ordering it to be made by the United States and Morgan by the Maritime Canal Co. Third. The lack of veracity of Messrs. Sullivan and Cromwell's plea for fees when it conceals the aggressive report of Mr. Hepburn February 13, 1899, against the Morgan bill and the Maritime Canal Co. as set forth in House Report No. 2104, Fifty-fifth Congress, third session, which forms an insurmountable obstacle to the passage of the Morgan Nicaragua bill. The lack of veracity consisting in concealing this report is explained by the fictitious claim of the plea for fees that the obstacle to the passage of the Morgan bill through the House was Mr. Cromwell's activities thus expressed: "As a result of the support we gave to this plan the efforts of the Nicaragua party failed and this party being incapable to bring its bill to a vote, etc. (p. 179). * The consequence of this demonstration is exactly the same as that of the one referring to the first point. It shows again that a document found to be so absolutely deficient in veracity as to material facts registered by official documents is the most unfit base for writing the history of Panama. This will be further confirmed by the other examples I shall give of this lack of veracity. THIRD DEMONSTRATION OF AN ABSOLUTE LACK OF VERACITY ON A GIVEN POINT IN MESSRS. SULLIVAN & CROMWELL'S PLEA FOR FEES. The point I am going to examine is that of Mr. Cromwell's dismissal from the company's service. It is a good point to probe the veracity of the plea for fees. If it is truthful it will state the fact in a few words. It will exhibit how afterwards on Mr. Hanna's request he was taken back again in spite of the company's reluctance. Let us see how the plea of fees translates the fact. On page 196 there is a heading telling the story in these terms: “July 1, 1901, January 27, 1902-Our instructions are to cease all activity." Under this heading one can read: "For the period from July 1, 1901, to January 22, 1902, we have no responsibility as during that period the company for reasons it deemed sufficient ordered the cessation of all activity in the United States and took over the management of the affair, relieving us of all responsibility during that period." On page 198 we further see under the heading "1902-January 27, resumption of our activities," we read what follows: "The above résumé shows only too clearly that the situation of the cause of Panama at this moment was in truth dangerous and desperate. In these circumstances the company cabled to Mr. Cromwell asking him to resume his former connection and activity as general counsel of the company in charge of the matter." Who would think after reading such a relation of events that Mr. Cromwell ever was dismissed from the service and taken back thanks to the influence of his friend Mr. Edward Simmons over Senator Hanna? The reader believes that Mr. Cromwell simply received instructions to take the attitude of silent expectation, and that the company in despair when their situation became desperate cabled him to be active again. This is the most complete disfiguration of facts which could be produced. In fact, Mr. Cromwell was politely dismissed from the service by the following letter: [Translations.] PARIS, June 19, 1901. DEAR SIR: We have the honor of informing you that in the meeting of June 14 last our committees have esteemed that in the actual situation there was a necessity for the company to manage directly all their business in the United States without the employment of any intermediate agent. It has, therefore, been decided that your situation as counsel of the company in the United States would come to an end on the date of June 30 next. We address you the thanks of the company to the care you have taken of their business. HUTIN. Please, etc. There is a positive lack of veracity in translating such a letter by: Our instructions are to cease all activity. There is an equal and obvious lack of veracity in stating also that, the situation being desperate, the company cabled to Mr. Cromwell to resume this activity which he had been, as he says, instructed to suspend. At the end of January, 1902, for the first time the victory of Panama was dawning and rendered at last material by an extremely weighty fact. The most important event in its American history next to its final adoption by purchase had taken place. The unanimous recommendation of the Panama route by the Isthmian Canal Commission had been made on the 18th of January, 1902. We have learned to know how the plea for fees changes dates, and conceals important events to adjust facts to its theories, but we have not yet seen qualified as a desperate thing the most happy and felicitous victory won on the technical field. It is this victory, which might have been considered as final, which the plea for fees considers as creating such a desperate condition that the company must look for Mr. Cromwell's activities to be liberated from the terrible condition into which it has fallen. It is equally fictitious to state that the company took the initiative of appealing to him. After the unanimous recommendation by the commission, Senator Hanna requested me to do him the service of urging the company to take again Mr. Cromwell. "It is not because I care at all for him," said the Senator, "but my old banker, Edward Simmons, presses me to obtain that for his friend. You know it is difficult," added the Senator, "to refuse something to a man who has been your banker for 30 years. At any rate the company wants a lawyer to discuss the legal question s of Panama. Why not Cromwell? He is one of the best lawyers in New York and knows the question when another would have much to learn." I answered: "I have never seen Mr. Cromwell. I know he has been dismissed by the company, but I do not know why, because the company and myself never were friends and I know their affairs by their public aspect. But you are the only hope of Panama. Whatever you want should be done. Though I have no direct connection with the company, I may get friends to inform them of your desire and if they are intelligent enough to understand that they must do it, they will do it." On leaving Senator Hanna I stopped at the Raleigh, Mr. Cromwell's hotel, for some information. He was not there. I left a card. A short time after he came to see me at the New Willard and engaged in a conversation of terrible length rather in the form of a monologue. I asked him if he was willing to accept that his fees would be determined sovereignly by the company, supposing it would be a good recommendation. Finally I sent, immediately after he had gone, at 2 a. m. on the 23d of January, 1902, a cablegram to Mrs. Bunau-Varilla, in Paris, requesting her to inform a certain Mr. Dolot of the wish of Senator Hanna. This Mr. Dolot was the intimate friend of an important member of the board of directors, Mr. Terrier. They refused to listen to the suggestion. Seeing no result, and Senator Hanna growing impatient, I cabled again through the same channel, on the 26th of January, requesting Mrs. Bunau-Varilla to urge again my recommendation and also to inform my brother, Maurice, proprietor of the greater part and directing editor of the Matin. He acted personally on the board and carried their decision the following day in favor of the reinstatement of Mr. Cromwell. The demonstration that the reinstatement of Mr. Cromwell was not desired by, but forced upon the company, is shown by the exchange of telegrams which can be found on pages 121 and 122, between Mr. Cromwell and myself: WASHINGTON, January 27, 1902-10 a. m. CROMWELL, Care Sullivan & Cromwell, 49 Wall Street, New York. Your affair was settled this morning Paris according to my recommendation which I had to renew yesterday with great force. Felicitation. BUNAU VARILLA. NEW YORK, January 27, 1901. * Many thanks for your kind message. When will confirmation be received? WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL. But the lack of veracity of the plea for fees in what regards the origin of the reinstatement is also obviously demonstrated by the almost insulting condition attached to the reinstatement in the cablegram and in the letter sent by the company for that purpose. If it had been an initiative of the company looking for a saviour in a desperate condition, as the plea of fees asserts, another form, that of a polite request, would have been chosen. A first telegram says without further advice to Mr. Cromwell: "You will receive through Lampre, after translation, telegram reinstating you as general counsel Compagnie nouvelle and containing instructions." This is not the way a lawyer of high standing is treated when he is requested to assume again a case which has been taken away from him seven months before. The other telegram still more shows the irritation and the reluctance of the company. It is absolutely equivalent to an insult. At the third line it contains a standing condition incompatible with the dignity of a lawyer: "You to be reinstated in your position as general counsel of Compagnie Nouvelle de Panama; rely on your cooperation to conclude matter sale property; you better than anyone can show title Compagnie Nouvelle de Panama to property and incontestible right she has to sell them. But we require most expressly that no donations be made now or later, nor promises be made to anyone whomsoever which might bind the Compagnie Nouvelle de Panama." In order to make more precise the insulting signification of donations and promises, the company, in the letter confirming the cablegram, says (p. 122), after reciting the task she gives to the counsel: "But it must be clearly understood, and on this point we shall surely be in accord with you, that these results must be sought only by the most legitimate means; that is to say, that in no case could we recourse to methods as dangerous as they are unlawful, which consist principally in gifts or promises of whatsoever nature they may be, and that the same 2 reserve must scrupulously be observed by every person acting for us or in our name. The use of such a language and the mention of such an insulting condition in writing to an eminent lawyer the services of which are asked for would be inconceivable. It is so much more inconceivable when said lawyer has been four years and a half in your service. To say that clearly means: "I reinstate you, but under the condition that you will not resort to these illegal and dangerous methods, called in plainer words corruption." That is not the language anybody uses when he asks for a service. It is the language which may be used toward a man whom you know to be pressing himself into a place and who is therefore ready to accept any language used and any condition expressed, even those which would be inacceptable for a man of some standing. These facts clearly demonstrate: 1. The lack of veracity of the plea for fees when it translates the dismissal of Mr. Cromwell by "our instructions are to cease all activity." 2. The lack of veracity of the plea for fees, when it minimizes the importance of the event of the first order for the company, which took place before the reinstatement of Mr. Cromwell and which is the unanimous recommendation by the Isthmian Canal Commission of the Panama route, and when the plea for fees says with incredible audacity that after such a signal victory the situation is desperate. 3. The lack of veracity of the plea for fees when after depicting as a desperate condition the brilliant victory won while Mr. Cromwell is not at the service of the company, it says that the company appeals to him. The telegrams exchanged, as well as the letter sent by the company, shows that it was with great reluctance that the company yielded to the pressure I indirectly exerted upon it to meet the wishes of Senator Hanna. The consequence of this demonstration is the same as those of the demonstrated lack of veracity in the first and second point. There we have seen the plea for fees, tampering with dates and withholding the mention of real, important facts in order to give a fictitious prominence to imaginary services. Here we see the same systematic lack of veracity simply covering a wound of vanity. FOURTH DEMONSTRATION OF AN ABSOLUTE LACK OF VERACITY ON A GIVEN POINT IN MESSRS. SULLIVAN AND CROMWELL'S PLEA FOR FEES. We are going to speak of the Spooner law, of its inception and consequences. In answer to the telegram reinstating him, Mr. Cromwell sends a message to the company, which can be found on page 200. "I acknowledge receipt of your cable of 27 reinstating me. * * * I have inspired a new bill adopting our project and leaving to the decision of the President all ques 1 In the translation given on page 122 "bind" is erroneously written "find." tions relating to titles and to the new treaty to be concluded with Colombia with discretionary power to choose the other route if the President is not successful in obtaining a satisfactory title and treaty for our route." This is the summing up of the so-called Spooner bill. In his first cablegram to the company, Mr. Cromwell says he has inspired it. Is it true? Do we find there a new example of the method which characterizes the pleafor fees and of which I have shown striking examples? Is it a new manifestation of the method of concealing the determinant facts, of changing the dates, in order to suit a fanciful account of events? Fortunately for the historical truth, we have the statement of Senator Spooner before the Senate on this point. The allegation of Mr. Cromwell, though contained in a purely confidential dispatch which has been dragged to light by a succession of unforeseen events, early filtrated in the public. Senator Morgan makes in the Senate allusions to it. Mr. Spooner, if he was not the author of it, could very well have said that it resulted from an exchange of ideas with different persons. There would have been no dishonor for him to do that nor would it have minimized his right to give his name to a bill that he had introduced into the Senate. What did he say about it? We find it in the Congressional Record. (Vol. 35, No. 145, 57th Cong., 1st sess., p. 7180, first column.) We reproduce the dialogue between Senator Morgan and Senator Spooner; but for its intelligence it must be noted that the Spooner proposition being an amendment to the House bill, the Spooner bill is called there "amendment." "Mr. SPOONER (answering to Senator Morgan). If the Senator will allow me, as he uses my name and says I will not offer the amendment, does he mean that I am not the author of it? "Mr. MORGAN. I am satisfied the Senator wrote it. "Mr. SPOONER. And that the Senator was the author of it. "Mr. MORGAN. Of course. "Mr. SPOONER. And not only wrote it but devised it." There was no reason whatever, if Mr. Cromwell inspired the Spooner law, for Senator Spooner to disgrace himself on the floor of the Senate by emphatically stating a thing he knows to be untrue, by emphatically stating that he has devised the bill, which in a confidential telegram Mr. Cromwell says he has inspired. Mr. Spooner never has been accused, and therefore still less convicted, of making knowingly a false statement. The preceding study of Mr. Cromwell's plea for fees demonstrates on the contrary striking lacks of veracity in the latter one's written self eulogy. There should be on that account no hesitation between the assertions of the two men. Something must be added to indicate where the truth is. Mr. Hall asserts on page 294 that Mr. Cromwell flatfootedly told he inspired the Spooner amendment and that Mr. Spooner flatfootedly denied it on the floor of the Senate. Mr. Spooner publicly and emphatically asserted that he had devised the amendment in response to an insinuation that he had not. Mr. Cromwell has wired in a confidential dispatch to the company that he had inspired it. This dispatch being linked with his reinstatement must be brought to light before the arbitrators. It is time for Mr. Cromwell to reassert the authorship of the bill if he fathered it. Mr. Spooner has taken a strong position in the Senate and is not dead. If Mr. Cromwell has said the truth, he is bound to be behind his statement. If he has not, he will drop it in his plea for fees. This is the test of veracity of the plea for fees on this point. The test fails again as it has always failed wherever we have probed the veracity of this document. In his description of his activities in this important affair, which is the introduction of the Panama Canal into the laws of the United States, here is what he says on page 202, under the heading: "We encourage the passage of a law authorizing the purchase of the Panama Canal on certain conditions * * It goes without saying that, unless the Senate and the Government of the United States had fallen in 1902 into a state of incurable imbecility, there was no necessity of the encouragement of Mr. Cromwell to pass a bill embodying the final report of the Isthmian Canal Commission. This bill had to come under one form or another. The question is, Who gave it the form of the Spooner bill? The plea for fees does not dare to repeat in its description of Mr. Cromwell's activities in that period what he has cabled to the company in Paris after the flat-footed denial of Mr. Spooner in the Senate. Here is what the plea for fees says when it comes to this particular point: "These conferences (with Senator Spooner and Senator Hanna) resulted in Senator Spooner preparing and introducing in the Senate a bill for the adoption of the Panama route." Therefore, far from reproducing and maintaining the assertion of his telegram, the plea for fees recognizes for Mr. Spooner the paternity of the bill. It settles the whole question; it is equivalent to a confession of guilt. This new test of veractiy shows the statements made to the company by Mr. Cromwell to have the same spirit which we find pervading every point of the plea for fees if examined with caution and method and placed next to documents as we have seen. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE SPOONER BILL. I shall not follow in details the description the plea for fees gives of Mr. Cromwell's activities in that period. It is concentrated in this heading, which we find on page 215: "Great struggle in the Senate on the occasion of the vote which was to decide the selection of Nicaragua or of Panama, our preparations to assure the adoption of the minority report favorable to Panama and our success." page 218: It is further expressed by this modest conclusion to be read on "Thus our long fight in the Senate has been won for Panama.' It is a proper time to remember that the fight was engaged on a technical field and that perhaps engineers and not a lawyer might have had some part to play in the demonstration of the superiority of one route over the other. It is extremely distasteful to me to enter upon this subject, because during all the period from inception to the vote of the Spooner bill I was in America devoting my efforts and my knowledge to the victory of Panama. The documents I produced, the arguments I gave, were said to have some influence on the final result. I was qualified to speak, being the former chief engineer of the Panama Canal during the most active part of its existence, and having more published and publicly spoken about the subject than anybody living. The plea for fees does not pronounce once my name. It acts in relation to what I did as we saw it has acted in relation to the report of Col. Ludlow of October 31, 1895, in relation with the report of Representative Hepburn of February 13, 1899. . If anything could lead me to believe I had a preponderant action in the events, it would be such silence which is even observed for the treaty of November 18, 1903, which is usually designated, except in the plea for fees, by the name of the signers, the Hay Bunau-Varilla treaty. However, I may be mistaken. The demonstrated fact that Mr. Cromwl's plea for fees systematically withholds and conceals very important events and substitutes trifling ones for the interest of the plea for fees, does not carry the consequence that all he neglects is of importance. In order to know which is true, I may be allowed to quote two authoritative statements. They will show if any reference to my acts has been withheld in the plea for fees because they were too important or because they were too unimportant for the plea for fees. One is by the Sun. This great New York paper, which had followed with a remarkable intensity and accuracy all the phases of the fight, published on the 19th of March, 1903, an article entitled the "Battle of the routes," from which I extract the following: "The Senate's nearly unanimous vote for the canal treaty and for the canal by way of Panama may properly be placed in contrast with the previous expression of legislative sentiment as to the preferable route for the waterway. "January 9, 1902. The Hepburn bill for a Nicaragua Canal passed the House of Representatives amid great applause by a vote of 308 to 2. March 17, 1903. The Colombian treaty for a Panama Canal was ratified by the Senate by a vote of 73 to 3. "This remarkable change of policy and of national opinion indicated, by these two votes has occurred within fifteen months. * * * "Many persons, forces, influences, circumstances and accidents have contributed to the fortunate result. If we were asked to catalogue some of the principal factors we should promptly mention President Roosevelt, Secretary Hay, the Hon. Marcus Alonso Hanna, Senator Spooner's genius for doing the right thing at the right time, the monitory eruption of Montombo and the last but not least the former chief engineer of the French work on the Isthmus, Mr. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who throughout the negotiations has typified the good sense and good faith of the Paris shareholders and has likewise illustrated in his own person a sort of resourceful energy which some people are accustomed to regard as peculiarly American." Another statement was made by a man of considerable technical eminence, George S. Morison. He was then the greatest of American engineers and had been by far the most prominent personality in the very select body which was the Isthmian Canal Commission of 1899-1901. In the Volume XXV, No. 1, February, 1903, of the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society can be found the text of a lecture made by George S. Morison in |