When the Panama Canal was built 26 years ago the menace of the bombing aeroplane was not foreseen. Today, although its fortifications are as nearly impregnable as man can make them, and although U.S. army engineers are' confident that there is little chance of the canal being destroyed, there remains the fish that it might be blocked by the deliberate sinking of a freighter, or that a great dam like that which created the lake at Gatun by holding back the Chagres River, might be temporarily damaged. The fleet would thus be forced to steam round Cape Horn when time might be vital to the security of the United States.
A canal across Nicaragua would reduce this danger by one-half. The nature of the terrain there is such that the risk of a successful attack would be considerably less than at Panama.
The Nicaraguan Canal was surveyed in great detail by U.S. Army engineers between 1929 and 1931, and they subsequently reported that the project was entirely feasible. The cost at that time was estimated at about £145,000,000, and the annual outlay for maintenance of £ 2,000,000. The canal would be 173 miles long, of which 70 miles would consist of a channel through Lake Nicaragua, and there would be two sets of locks, one at each end. The lock chambers would be 1,200 feet long and 125 feet wide, compared to the existing locks at Panama which are 1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.