The possible implications of these glaring facts were cleverly met by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress and by the Secretary of State in the correspondence growing out of the affair. The Government really relied for its justification, however, not upon these technical pleas but upon the broad grounds of equity. America has learned in the last few years how important it is for its safety that "scraps of paper" be held sacred and how dangerous is the doctrine of necessity. Nevertheless it is well to observe that if the United States did, in the case of Panama, depart somewhat from that strict observance of obligations which it has been accustomed to maintain, it did not seek any object which was not just as useful to the world at large as to itself, that the situation had been created not by a conflict of opposing interests but by what the Government had good reason to believe was the bad faith of Colombia, and that the separation of Panama was the act of its own people, justly incensed at the disregard of their interests by their compatriots. This revolution created no tyrannized subject population but rather liberated from a galling bond a people who had, in fact, long desired separation. With the new republic negotiation went on pleasantly and rapidly, and as early as November 18, 1903, a convention was drawn up, in which the United States guaranteed the independence of Panama and in return received in perpetuity a grant of a zone ten miles wide within which to construct a canal from ocean to ocean. CHAPTER XVI. Problems Of The Caribbean As the acquisition of the Philippines made all Far Eastern questions of importance to the United States, so the investment of American millions in a canal across the Isthmus of Panama increased popular interest in the problems of the Caribbean. That fascinating sheet of water, about six hundred miles from north to south by about fifteen hundred from east to west, is ringed around by the possessions of many powers. In 1898 its mainland shores were occupied by Mexico, British Honduras, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela; its islands were possessed by the negro states of Hayti and the Dominican Republic, and by Spain, France, Great Britain, Holland, and Denmark. In the Caribbean had been fought some of the greatest and most significant naval battles of the eighteenth century and, when the canal was opened, across its waters would plough a great share of the commerce of the world. As owner of the canal and professed guardian of its use, the United States was bound to consider its own strategic relation to this sea into which the canal opened.