Privately, I freely say to you that I should be delighted if Panama were an independent state, or if it made itself so at this moment; but for me to say so publicly would amount to an instigation of a revolt, and therefore I cannot say it.[191] This letter throws an interesting light on an article in the _Review of Reviews_ for November of the same year in which Dr. Shaw discussed the question, "What if Panama should Revolt?" and outlined with remarkable prophetic insight the future course of events. In his annual message of December 7, 1903, the President discussed the Panama revolution and undertook to justify his course under the treaty of 1846. This message failed to allay public criticism, and on January 4, 1904, he sent a special message to Congress in defense of his action. He held that Colombia was not entitled "to bar the transit of the world's traffic across the isthmus," and that the intervention of the United States was justified, (1) by our treaty rights, (2) by our international interests, and (3) by the interests of "collective civilization." The "legal" argument in this message, if we may dignify it by that name, is reported to have been prepared by Root and Knox, both at that time members of the Cabinet. Several years later, after Mr. Roosevelt had retired from the presidency, he expressed the real truth in a public speech when he said: If I had followed traditional conservative methods I should have submitted a dignified state paper of probably two hundred pages to the Congress and the debate would be going on yet, but I took the Canal zone and let Congress debate, and while the debate goes on the canal does also. The reason why the President did not wish the matter to go before Congress again was that he had decided upon the Panama route, and he knew that when Congress convened in December, the situation remaining unchanged, action would be taken to compel him to adopt the alternative of the Spooner amendment and go to the Nicaragua route. His object in the hasty recognition of the Panama revolution was therefore to make the Panama route an accomplished fact before Congress should meet. This was the attitude definitely assumed in the message of January 4, 1904, in the course of which he said: The only question now before us is that of the ratification of the treaty. For it is to be remembered that a failure to ratify the treaty will not undo what has been done, will not restore Panama to Colombia, and will not alter our obligation to keep the transit open across the Isthmus, and to prevent any outside power from menacing this transit.