DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FLORIDA CANAL 401

distance to get a dear and unbiased picture. But when one stands far enough
away from the tumult and the shouting the truth begins to emerge above the
clamor of tongues.
 This is an effort to tell the plain, unvarnished truth about the canaL I have
spent weeks of time in examining the facts as impartially and coldly as it is
in me to approach any subject. I think the facts, divested of all distortion
and camouflage, are simple and incontrovertible. I think that certain conclu-
sions from those facts are inescapable.
 Though I write as one whose heart lies in Florida, I see no fair and honest
approach to the canal except from the point of view of its national importance
and value. It is only incidentally a local Florida enterprise. It is unfortunate
in more ways than one that petty local jealousies and antagonisms should have
been aroused, creating a smoke screen which has obscured the project's national
aspects. How far the controversial situation in Florida over the canal has
resulted from misunderstanding of the facts, and how far from deliberate mis-
representations actuated by selfish interests, it is not my purpose to discuss.
The reader may draw his own conclusions. The fact is that the echoes of
Florida's domestic quarrel have aroused such a din in Washington as to obscure
the broader aspects of the canal matter.
 The most Important fact, and one on which not enough emphasis has been
 placed, is that the Congress of the United States is committed to the con-
 structing of the canal.
 That should be kept clearly in mind. The Senate, by a majority of 10, has
 voted that the Florida Canal is a duly authorized project. The House committee
 in charge of War Department appropriations is on record as accepting the
 canal as having been authorized by Congress.
 Far from having been "killed" by Congress the Florida canal is very much
 alive. The only possible question about it, as I see the situation, is whether
 the necessary appropriations to complete it will be made by the present Congress
 or by some succeeding Congress. That they will eventually be made, I have not
 a shadow of a doubt.
 The only question worth discussing, then, is that of the grounds upon which
 the Florida ship canal is entitled to national support.
 From a broadly national point of view it is of minor consequence whether
 the canal runs from A to B or X to Y. Nationally, it is of major importance
 only that it shall provide a navigable seaway between the Gulf of Mexico and
 the Atlantic Ocean. If, in achieving that end, it cuts through somebody's
 orange grove, or thwarts the ambition of some real or potential seaport; even
 if it leaves some town, county, or Congress district out on a limb, or threatens
 the revenues of a railroad or two, those purely local considerations are of little
 weight if the benefits of the canal are to accrue to the people of the whole
 United States.
 NOT A FIOMIDA PROJBOT BUT A NATION-WIDE UTILITY

 If the canal will bring no such widespread national benefits, then there is
 no possible justification for its construction as a national undertaking. For it
 is as certain as anything yet in the future can be that the canal will be built,
 maintained, and operated at the cost of the Nation as a whole. It will not be
 a Florida enterprise, for which Florida will pay. Its cost and operation will
 not be a charge upon the ships that use it. That was definitely and finally
 settled when the canal project was taken out of the hands of the Public Works
 Administration and turned over to the Army.
 It is to be a sea-level canal, and it is to be a free waterway for all craft
 which may traverse it, as free as are all the rest of America's inland waterways.
 What then do the benefits to the Nation consist in? Are they measurable in
 dollars?
 As well ask what the Army and Navy are worth to the Nation in dollars
 per annum. Their value is incalculable; and, like the Army and the Navy, the
 value of the Gulf-Atlantic canal is, to a very high degree, its potential value
 as a measure of national defense.
 Has the canal a commercial value as well? Of a surety, but how is that to
 be measured by the dollar emblem? Can one measure in terms of money in-
 come the value of the Abrose Channel through which the great liners of the
 Atlantic enter the port of New York? Or of the Mississippi River improve-
 ments, or the jetties at the mouth of the St. Johns? Millions upon millions of
 the Nation's tax income has been invested in these and similar aids to com-