Two American transcontinentals have not come wooing traffic in Vancouver for nothing. The Canadian Pacific is not double tracking its roadbed to the Coast for nothing. The Grand Trunk has not bought terminals in Seattle for nothing. Yet, having jockeyed for traffic in Vancouver, the two American roads have recently evinced a cooling. They are playing up interests In Seattle and marking time in Vancouver. Grand Trunk terminals in Seattle don't help Vancouver; but if Canada doesn't want the traffic from the world commerce of the seas, then Portland and Seattle do. One recalls how a person feels who is wakened a bit sooner than suits his slumbers. He passes some crusty comments and asks some criss-cross questions. The same with Canada regarding Panama. What's Panama to us? How in the world can a cut through a neck of swamp and hills three thousand miles from the back of beyond, have the slightest effect on commerce in Canada? And if it has, won't it be to hurt our railroads? And if Panama does divert traffic from land to water, won't that divert a share of shipping away from Montreal and St. John and Halifax? There is no use ever arguing with a cross questioner. Mr. Hill once said there was no use ever going into frenzies about the rights of the public. The public would just get exactly what was coming to it. If it worked for prosperity, it would get it. If it were not sufficiently alert to see opportunity, it certainly would not be sufficiently alert to grasp opportunity after you had pointed it out. Your opinion or mine does not count with the churlish questioner. You have to hurl facts back so hard they waken your questioner up. Here are the facts. How can Panama turn the Pacific Coast into a front door instead of a back door? Almost every big steamship line of England and Germany, also a great many of the small lines from Norway and Belgium and Holland and Spain and Italy, have announced their intention of putting on ships to go by way of Panama to the Orient and to Pacific Coast ports. Three of those lines have explicitly said that they would call at Pacific ports in Canada if there were traffic and terminals for them.