That public policy with which Mr. Roosevelt's administrations will be most closely associated is unquestionably the conservation of natural resources. It is true that he did not originate it or secure the enactment of any significant legislation on the subject. The matter had been taken up in Congress and out as early as Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and the first important law on conservation was the act of March 3, 1891, which authorized the President to reserve permanently as forest lands such areas as he deemed expedient. Under this law successive Presidents withdrew from entry enormous areas of forest lands. This beginning Mr. Roosevelt enlarged, and by his messages and speeches, he brought before the country in an impressive and enduring manner the urgent necessity of abandoning the old policy of drift and of withholding from the clutches of grasping corporations the meager domain still left to the people. Without inquiring into what may be the wisest final policy in the matter of our natural resources, all citizens will doubtless agree that Mr. Roosevelt's service in this cause was valuable beyond calculation. Among the proudest achievements of Mr. Roosevelt's administration was the beginning of the actual construction of the Panama Canal. A short route between the two oceans had long been considered by the leading commercial nations of the world. In 1850, by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, the United States and Great Britain had agreed upon the construction of a canal by a private corporation, under the supervision of the two countries and other states, which might join the combination, on a basis of neutralization. The complete failure of the French company organized by De Lesseps, the hero of the Suez Canal, discouraged all practical attempts for a time, but the naval advantages of such a waterway was forced upon public attention in a dramatic manner during the Spanish War when the battleship _Oregon_ made her historical voyage around the Horn.[66]