and scandal. Politics got hold of the proposition, and there ensued a carnival of calumnies and canards, epithets and recriminations the like of which has hardly a parallel.
The company went into bankruptcy; slander and defamation tied the hands of the great engineer, and the hundreds of thousands of citizens who had invested in the great patriotic enterprise were left without a friend in the government or banking interests of France. Of the great army of engineers and financiers, dreamers and adventurers that began the great enterprise, one only remained, still firm in his intention to build this canal and vindicate his chief and his comrades, and give lustre to the genius of France.
His name was Philippe Bunau-Varilla, at one time chief engineer of the canal, and in the end the sole remaining champion of its feasibility. He had no official capacity in France, and not even any further connection with the bankrupt company. He was obsessed with a mania that the world needed the canal and that
