To furnish himself an excuse for breaking it he devised the plan of summoning a Congress especially called to reject the canal treaty.
The State Department immediately negotiated a canal treaty with the new Republic.
The canal treaties were revised under President Carter, with control passing to Panama at the end of the century.
Even the new canal treaties of 1977 assure Washington the right to intervene to protect the canal.
Washington, more interested in negotiating a new canal treaty, looked the other way.
Lodge was suspected of working against his friend Hay's canal treaty.
The Whitney family had given Hay rather more trouble than the canal treaty.
Under the canal treaties signed in 1977, a Panamanian is supposed to take the job next year.
In fact a plot is afoot, under British auspices, but obscurely so, to get the canal treaty aborted.
The canal treaties were the culmination of 13 years of intermittent talks.