National Affairs: At Culebra Cut

Dr. Belisario Porras, onetime (1918-20; 1924) president of Panama, last week announced he would cause a statue of Theodore Roosevelt by Sculptress Gertrude Vanderbilt (Mrs. Harry Payne) Whitney, to be erected at Culebra Cut, on the Panama Canal. It was easy to foresee that U. S. poets might seize this news as a theme with a classic precedent. The classic precedent, however, contains an error. The traveler who first stood "silent upon a peak in Darien" was not "stout Cortez" (Hernando Cortez) as sung by Poet John Keats. It was Vasco Nunez De...

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