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

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

official dignity. He held the office just long enough to
negotiate and sign with John Hay the Hay-Bunau-Varilla
treaty, which constituted the basic title of the United
States to the Zone and the canal.
Away back in the early days of the "battle of the
routes" we had hoped that if the canal was ever built by
way of Panama we might go through it together on the
first boat making the passage. When Goethals had completed the mighty work Bunau-Varilla came over from
France for that purpose but I was unable to leave New
York. He, however, had the sentimental satisfaction of
passing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the
troublesome Gaillard Cut, on which he had labored more
than a quarter of a century before, on the first steamer that
went from ocean to ocean. On that same day, August 3,
1914, the World War began. He came to see me as he was
hurrying back to France to volunteer his services as a
soldier-engineer, and when I next saw him he had lost
his right leg, shattered to the thigh by a bursting shell
near Verdun.
His dream of the vindication of the French project had
been realized. His share in the work had been recognized:
by President Obaldia of Panama, who registered him as
the benefactor of that republic; by John Hay, who wrote,
"It is not often given to any man to render such a service
to two countries and to the civilized world as you have
done"; and by Theodore Roosevelt, who once, in reply
to a criticism of his much-misunderstood phrase "I took
Panama," put the case exactly in the remark "I took
Panama because Bunau-Varilla brought it to me on a
silver platter."
When the Amen Corner honored me in 1922, at the

time of practical retirement from newspaper work,
Philippe Bunau-Varilla was in Washington as adviser of
the French Government in President Harding's Peace
Conference. He came to New York to be at the dinner.