No one can dispute the wisdom of the United States in deciding to build a lock canal. To have undertaken a sea-level canal would have involved this Government in difficulties so great that even with all the wealth and determination of America, failure would have ensued. It is, perhaps, putting it too strongly to say that a sea-level canal is a physical impossibility, but it is not too much to say that such a canal would take so much money and so much time to build that the resources and patience of the American people would be exhausted long before it could be made navigable. The advocates of a sea-level canal declared that a channel could be dug through Culebra Mountain with the excavation of 110,000,000 cubic yards. As a matter of fact, Culebra Cut, with its bottom 85 feet above sea level, required the excavation of almost that same amount. Engineers who advocated a sea-level canal declared that the material in Culebra Mountain was stable, and that only moderate slopes would be necessary. As a matter of fact, the material in the mountain proved highly unstable, and, except for a few short sections, slides and breaks were encountered all during the construction period. The result was that practically two Culebra Cuts were dug. The engineers, in beginning the present canal, calculated that 53,000,000 cubic yards would be excavated in Culebra; the amount actually removed was 105,000,000 cubic yards. Upon this basis a sea-level Culebra Cut might have required the excavation of 230,000,000 cubic yards. Calculating an average monthly excavation of a million cubic yards, the task would have required 17 years to complete. In other words, if a sea-level canal had been undertaken and had been physically possible, the celebration of the opening of the waterway would have been set for 1925 instead of 1915. Among all of the members of the majority of the board of consulting engineers who favored a sea-level canal, only one, E. Quellenec, Consulting Engineer of the Suez Canal, showed any appreciation of the difficulties which were to be expected in Culebra Cut. He announced, in voting in favor of a sea-level canal, that he could not do so without first reminding the United States Government of the great difficulties that would lie before it in Culebra Cut. Henry Hunter, Engineer of the Manchester Ship Canal, declared that Culebra Cut presented no serious problems at all; that a sea-level cut could be dug more quickly than the locks of the other type of canal could be built. He further declared that it was as clearly demonstrable as any engineering problem could be, that it would be possible to use 100 steam shovels in Culebra Cut. No one has accused the engineers on the canal of lack of ability in maneuvering shovels, yet at no time were they able to use more than 46.