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 It has also been said that we could better defend the canal underthe old treaty, that we could have more assurance that the canal would remain secure and operational if it is in American hands.
 There was also some point that was to be drawn f rom the secret session. As I suggested before, I f ound it very hard to discover the relevance between the treaties and the disclosures we heard earlier this week. I suppose the implication was that if we turned the treaties downit is going to somehow help solve the drug problem in Latin America. Upon closer examination these claims all tend to crumble.
 Even setting aside the feasibility problem and the billions in co st, there is, for example, no reason at all to believe that we can negotiate. a. better deal with Nicaragrua than with Panama. Nor is there reason to believe that the human rights of the Panamanians will improve in the slightest should these treaties be scrapped. It is likely the opposite. will happen, that all Panamanians will suffer both the injury of oppression and the continued insult of a f oreign zone dividing their nation.
 Similarly, the matter of defending the canal should have been longsince settled, both by the explicit testimony of our top military commanders and by simple logic.
 Most deeply of all we can set aside the notion that there is somehowa relation between these treaties and the international traffic in narcotics. Whether we support or oppose the treaties, I think most of us, have come to the view that the secret session proved to be irrelevant and a waste of our time. It is quite safe to predict that rejecting. the treaties -will have no impact at all on the problem of narcotics.
 So what we will really have if we reject these treaties, after weighingall the claims, is it seems to me we come down to only one indisputa 'ble result. It will be the right, if we reject these treaties, to throw out our chests and say that the Panama Canal is still ours. In the final analysis,l that is -what we are really talking about, the prize of claimed ownership. It is a sort of collective possessiveness over a things to which we. have, over the years, become strongly attached.
 1 must say, Mr. President, that the strength of that emotion is surprising. People who never thought about the canal are discovering nowthey cannot live without it.


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