236 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



of high salaries. I have referred to the part- 

 mercenary, part-Quixotic nature of the enterprise 

 from first to last, and this dual interest, I venture 

 to think, inspires all concerned, from the President, 

 throughout the most loyal and unflinching advocate 

 the undertaking ever had in America, down to the 

 youngest clerk in the offices of the Commission. 

 It is not probable that the Frenchmen who 

 formerly filled every position on the Isthmus were 

 moved by any such spirit. They were far from 

 home, a condition intolerable to men of that nation, 

 and they were in constant fear of the fiasco that 

 came at last. Even De Lesseps must have fore- 

 seen it long before the end. Well, his name has 

 been execrated in his own country loudly enough 

 to bias even the Recording Angel, yet not one of 

 the Americans on the Isthmus with whom I dis- 

 cussed him and his scheme doubted for a moment 

 that he was more sinned against than sinning, and 

 the victim of bad luck rather than the defrauder of 

 the small investor that his enemies depicted him. 

 It must be remembered that Americans on the 

 Isthmus have already had some opportunities of 

 estimating the huge difficulties that confronted him. 

 I venture to think that, before they are through 

 with it, they will have some more. 



The hostility of a section of Americans to the 

 construction of the Canal by the Government is 

 either political or economical. Opposition of the 

 first kind is aimed at the men, or rather at the man, 

 and not at the measure ; and those who seize every 

 opportunity of condemning Mr Roosevelt's policy 

 naturally revel in such adverse reports of the state 

 of affairs in the Isthmus as those sent home by 



