James H. Stratton

President Johnson's announcement on December 18, 1964, that the United States is prepared to renegotiate the 1903 Panama Canal Treaty apparently has given encouragement to the efforts of the new Panama Government to find a basis for reconciling the differences between the two countries and has stiffened its determination to control the dissidents who have been planning further demonstrations of the kind that led to the flag-raising incident and riots of January 1964. The warmth with which the President's statement was first received has since then somewhat cooled, but the fact that he expressed the intention to meet Panama at least halfway has diminished the tensions which had been mounting steadily because of the apparent lack of progress in the discussions begun last spring.