Some readers may perhaps think that these forecasts of the results of running a canal through the isthmus of Panama are somewhat exaggerated. It is sufficient to point out to such a critic how different the course of American and world history might have been if Nature had left a practicable channel between the two Americas. The effect of erecting an artificial passage there in these days may be even greater than at present we can imagine. Some of these results will be apparent at once; others may take decades or even centuries to materialize. Many of the commercial and political results which have followed the construction of the Suez Canal were quite unforeseen in 1869. We may be similarly mistaken in our forecast with regard to the Panama Canal. Mr. Bryce suggests that if a dozen experts were, in 1914, to write out and place in the libraries of the British Museum and of Congress their respective forecasts bearing on this subject, sealed up and not to be opened till A.D. 2000, they might make curious reading in that year. We may venture to predict that the results of Panama will be much more profound and revolutionary than those of Suez. The Panama Canal, says Mr. Bryce, is "the greatest liberty man has ever taken with Nature." It will involve a far greater shifting of centres of gravity, political and commercial, a more radical readjustment of ideas and points of view than the Suez Canal. As the past four hundred years have belonged to the Atlantic, the present century and others to come may belong to the Pacific. That area of 70,000,000 square miles may become the main theatre of the rivalries--commercial, political, and racial--of the most powerful nations of East and West. Some believe that the world is advancing to that loud and fateful day when East and West will fight out their long difference in some naval and aerial Armageddon on and above this miscalled Pacific. Without straining our imaginations to this extent, we may well observe that the canal brings Eastern and Western civilizations into much closer contact and competition than before. Mr. Kipling has informed us that East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet; and a still earlier author, desiring to give the penitent sinner the uttermost consolation, declared that the Lord removes his transgressions from him "as far as the east is from the west."