These are the facts of history, and they are not disputed. Shall history repeat itself? Shall we delay or miscarry in our efforts to complete a canal across the Isthmus of Panama upon similar pretensions of assumed dangers and possibilities of disaster, all more or less the result of engineering guesswork? Shall we take fright at the talk about the mischief-maker with his stick of dynamite, bent upon the destruction of the locks and the vital parts of the machinery, when history has its parallel during the Suez Canal agitation in "the Arab shepherd, who, flushed with the opportunity for mischief and with a few strokes of a pickax, could empty the canal in a few minutes"? Shall we be swayed by foolish fears and apprehensions of earthquakes or tidal waves, and waste millions of money and years of time upon a pure conjecture, a pure theory deduced from fragmentary facts? Again the facts of canal history furnish the parallel of Stephenson and other engineers, who successfully frightened English investors out of the Suez enterprise by the statement that the canal would soon fill up with the moving sands of the desert, that one of the lakes through which the canal would pass would soon fill up with salt, that navigation of the Red Sea would be too dangerous and difficult, that ships would fear to approach Port Said because of dangerous seas, and, finally, that in any event it would be impossible to keep the passage open to the Mediterranean. It was this kind of guesswork and conjecture which was advanced as an argument by engineers of eminence and sustained by one of the foremost statesmen of the century. How absurd it all seems now in the sunlight of history! The Panama Canal is a business enterprise, even if carried on by the nation, and with a thorough knowledge of the general facts and principles we require no more expert evidence, so called, nor additional volumes of engineering testimony. The nation is committed to the construction of a canal. The enterprise is one of imperative necessity to commerce, navigation, and national defense, and any further discussion, any needless waste of time and money, is little short of indifference to the national interests and objects which are at stake.