The Times, with that magnificent enterprise characteristic of the finest modern journalism, has been quick not only to realise this but to provide a remedy.
Recently a new and striking departure was initiated by the proprietary of that great newspaper, taking the form of the issue of special numbers dealing exhaustively, comprehensively, and authoritatively with topics of current interest to such good effect that these special issues may fairly be said to represent records of contemporary history.
The completion of the Panama Canal has furnished The Times with the occasion for the publication of a special Pacific Coast number consisting - supplementary to the ordinary issue for the day - of fifty-four pages of closely compressed but attractively presented information concerning the natural resources, past history, and probably future development of the Pacific Coast States of North America.
The entire number has been conceived and compiled under the influence of the noble conception that with the completion of the canal ''a new era is opening which will greatly add to the general prosperity and contentment and the peace of the human race.''
In this spirit the history of the canal is written, and the regions through which this great waterway has forced its track is passed under review.
The story makes one of the most fascinating records of modern times.
There can be glimpsed between the lines of this special issue a marvellous vista of the immense natural resources of these Pacific States, and of the enormous amount of work which man will be called upon to perform.
''From California, with its marvellous climate, through Oregon and Washington, and our own British Columbia, right up to Alaska, which will now certainly emerge from its glacial period of arrested development, the land is crying out for more labourers''.
Few thoughtful men will be able to peruse this Pacific Coast number without being touched with a feeling of delightful optimism.
It needs not the vision of a fanatic, but only the ordinary imagination of the healthy man, to discern in the throwing open of the Panama Canal, if not an effectual remedy, at least a distinct palliative for much of the existing unrest.
Here are comparatively unworked fields for the employment of capital and labour on terms and under conditions that may be devised to return satisfaction to all.
The Times gives expression to a feeling of regret - which will be widely shared - that the British Government should have seen fit to stand aloof from the Exhibition with which the United States will celebrate the opening of the finest engineering work of the century.
Since so large a benefit is likely to accrue, both directly and indirectly, to the dominion of Canada and also, and more particularly, to British Columbia, consequent on the opening of the Panama Canal, the attitude of the British Government in the matter would seem to partake of a narrow-mindedness that is not usually associated with it.
There can be little doubt that all who study this issue of The Times will be prompted to hope that they may be able some day not only to view for themselves the canal, but also to travel through the regions so vividly pictured by our illustrious contemporary.
- ODT, 14.2.1914
