Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

hold, to be a foregone conclusion for Nicaragua, and had
opened the way for American work in Panama, except for
German inspired opposition at Bogota, he produced at
the psychological moment and without the complicity
of the United States Government-as he always has been
careful to show-the bloodless revolution in Panama which
made possible the American canal that exists to-day.
Two incidents that I especially recall may serve to illustrate the wide range of Bunau-Varilla's activities, as well
as the way he could turn his energies from small things
to big ones.
In the swiftly shifting aspects of the general controversy
there came uppermost in the spring of 1902 the question
of the danger of seismic attack upon the cement construotion of the canal, the locks and so forth. The appalling
demonstration of Mont Pelee in early May of that year
had called everybody's attention to the potency of the
Caribbean underworld. The advocates of Nicaragua, led
by Senator Morgan of Alabama in Congress and by
Colonel Watterson in the newspapers, were quick to
seize upon this argument for their route, alleging on the
one hand a terrible earthquake menace at Panama and
on the other absolute immunity from volcanic disturbance
along the upper line; there was not a single active volcano
in Nicaragua, no risk whatever from below. Just at that
moment, by one of the most singular coincidences, a
dispatch from New Orlears announced a violent eruption
on May 14 of Momotombo, on Lake Managua, an upper
water of Lake Nicaragua, and an earthquake destroying
the wharves of the town of Momotombo, at the foot of
the mountain, the lake terminus of the railroad to Corinto
on the Pacific. This looked bad for the argument on which

Senator Morgan was seeking to concentrate public attention, and I wrote concerning the timely Momotombo:
His great voice has uttered a warning of incalculable value
to the United States. Here is what it said: