WHILIE Cromwell and Bunau-Varilla were busy with plans for
a revolution in Panama in the summer and fall of 1903, Presi-
dent Roosevelt was giving consideration to a solution of his
own. Virtuously, he "cast aside . . . the proposition to foment the seces-
sion of Panama." The United States could not, "by such underhanded
means," encourage a revolt against Colombia. The President admitted,
however, in communicating these views to Dr. Albert Shaw on October
10, 1903, that he would "be delighted if Panama were an independent
State." ¹ The same idea was expressed in other letters. Roosevelt told
President Schurman of Cornell that "for me to announce my feelings
would be taken as equivalent to an effort to incite an insurrection in
Panama. . . . If I were to state what I, in the abstract, thought would
be most desirable, it would . . . be deemed . . . an effort to bring
that state of affairs in the concrete.

"If Congress will give me a certain amount of freedom and a certain
amount of time," he added, "I believe I can do much better than by
any action taken out of hand." ²

Three days before the United States Senate confirmed the Hay-Her-
ran Treaty in March, 1903, Roosevelt prepared for possible trouble
with Colombia. He ordered Secretary of War Root to send two or three
army officers "to map out and gather information concerning the coasts
of those portions of South America which would be of especial interest
. . . in the event of any struggle in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean
Sea." Work on the canal might soon start. and data on Venezuela, Co-
lombia, and the Guianas would be valuable. The officers, he directed,
should go in civilian dress.³

These were merely precautionary measures. Roosevelt still counted
upon ratification by Colombia. When the "foolish and homicidal corrup-

-315-