The news that the Panama Canal has been informally opened means virtually that the great waterway has been opened commercially-that is, for popular traffic.
This event was promised, as a matter of fact, for July 1. The official festivities connected with the completion of the stupendous undertaking represented by the construction of the canal will probably be languishing in prospect, as the result of the war in Europe, and the same may doubtless be said of the Panama Exhibition.
In the meantime it is something to know that the Panama Canal is open for vessels drawing thirty feet of water, and that the gigantic work upon which life and money have been so lavishly spent is at last completed and about to serve the maritime commerce of the world. In contemplation of Panama the world is apt to forget just all that that great achievement there in evidence really stands for.
For the canal is a triumph not of man's hand but of machinery. The grave though it has been of many hopes, the canal is no doubt entitled to rank as one of the seven wonders of the world today. It represents achievement in the face of enormous difficulties.
It represents, as the Americans have dealt with it, the labours of 30,000 men and an expenditure which cannot fall much short of eighty million pounds. The Roosevelt Government was gifted with the wit to find in the United States army men who could carryout this big work, and with the good sense to employ them.
• Transcending in importance any news that is published this morning from the theatres of operations in Europe is the information, the authenticity of which cannot be doubted, that Japan has issued an ultimatum, couched in peremptory terms, to Germany.
Japan, in the first place, ''advises''-a diplomatic term which, apparently, in this connection, has all the significance of a demand upon - Germany to withdraw her warships of all kinds from Chinese and Japanese waters, and to disarm those which she cannot withdraw.
In the second place, Japan requires Germany to deliver to her, unconditionally, by the 15th September, the entire territory of Kiau-chau for eventual restoration to China. If these terms are not accepted by noon on Sunday next, Japan will take action.
he ground upon which this ultimatum is based is the importance and necessity of removing the causes of the disturbance of peace in what is termed the Far East-though for us it is the comparatively Near West-and of safeguarding the general interests under the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
In face of an ultimatum of this description, Germany seems very helpless.
The fleet which she has been maintaining on the China station, though possibly sufficient to protect her interests against the fleet of any European Power that is available on the Yellow Sea, shrivels up into absolute insignificance in contrast with the Japanese Navy, consisting, as this does, of over 170 vessels, exclusive of several that may be disregarded as obsolete. Effective resistance on the part of Germany is therefore impossible.
- ODT, 18.8.1914.
