Ill 



PANAMA ! 



>NE could not write the word without a note of 

 ixclamation when I was in Paris fifteen years ago, 



.nd to say it aloud on the boulevards was to risk 

 in exhibition of the savate, for it had untied many 

 a treasure-stocking, and the thrifty bourgeois was 

 infuriated by a fiasco that swallowed up his hard- 

 earned francs. Not even the tragic fall of the man 

 who had made Suez and conceived Panama could 

 appease his outraged countrymen. Had anyone 

 told me at the time that I should one day see the 

 Canal in a fair way of realisation, I should have 

 thought the prophecy twice false, for there was 

 then no prospect of my voyaging to those parts, nor 

 did I, or anyone else, imagine that the scheme 

 would ever see fruition under a Government 

 capable of carrying it through. Kismet ! I have 

 seen the Canal, and ships will navigate it. 



It was with no little interest that I walked 

 down the gangway of the Tagus one Sunday 

 morning after early coffee and found myself on the 

 historic Isthmus that has within a few years wit- 

 nessed the most gigantic engineering failure and 

 the most bloodless revolution of our time. Within 

 a few minutes I had passed the frontier of the 

 Isthmian Zone and was once more, so to speak, on 

 American territory, and the whole tragedy of the 

 French evacuation came back as I stood under the 



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