The State Department immediately negotiated a canal treaty with the new Republic.

One of the foremost men in securing the independence of Panama, and the treaty which authorized the United States forthwith to build the canal, was M.Philippe Bunau-Varilla, an eminent French engineer formerly associated with De Lesseps and then living on the Isthmus; his services to civilization were notable, and deserve the fullest recognition.
From the beginning to the end our course was straightforward and in absolute accord with the highest of standards of international morality.
Criticism of it can come only from misinformation, or else from a sentimentality which represents both mental weakness and a moral twist.
To have acted otherwise than I did would have been on my part betrayal of the interests of the United States, indifference to the interests of Panama, and recreancy to the interests of the world at large.

Colombia had forfeited every claim to consideration; indeed, this is not stating the case strongly enough: she had so acted that yielding to her would have meant on our part that culpable form of weakness which stands on a level with wickedness.

As for me personally, if I had hesitated to act, and had not in advance discounted the clamor of those Americans who have made a fetish of disloyalty to their country, I should have esteemed myself as deserving a place in Dante's inferno beside the faint-hearted cleric who was guilty of "il gran rifiuto." The facts I have given above are mere bald statements from the record.

They show that from the beginning there had been acceptance of our right to insist on free transit, in whatever form was best, across the Isthmus; and that towards the end there had been a no less universal feeling that it was our duty to the world to provide this transit in the shape of a canal--the resolution of the Pan-American Congress was practically a mandate to this effect.