Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

Data, not dramatics, would get him the ten further votes he needed. “I was once,” he admitted, “in favor of the Nicaragua Canal.” But after two years of reflection, “I have been forced by stubborn facts and conditions to change my mind.” For the next one and a half hours, Hanna funneled his “stubborn facts” like wheat into the Senate granary. Every dry grain had its kernel of persuasion. “The Panama route is forty-nine miles long, as against one hundred eighty-three miles of the Nicaragua.… Trade winds blow every day in the year from sixteen to twenty knots across the Nicaragua route.… The annual cost of operating the Nicaragua Canal is one million, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or, say one million, three hundred—” “Oh, do make him sit down,” came a woman’s voice from the gallery. It was a cry of concern more than boredom: Hanna’s arthritis was visibly tormenting him. He said that he would conclude his speech the next day.