The probable failure of the French became apparent some years before the actual collapse occurred and public opinion in the United States was quite ready for the assumption of the work and its expense by our government. Of course that opinion was not wholly spontaneous--public opinion rarely is, notwithstanding the idealists. There were many parties in interest who found it profitable to enlist various agencies for awakening public opinion in this country to the point of buying the French property and saving something out of the wreck for the French stockholders. But, as a matter of fact, little artificial agitation was needful. The people of the United States readily agreed that a trans-isthmian canal should be built and owned by the United States government. There was honest difference of opinion as to the most practicable route and even today in the face of the victory over nature at Panama there are many who hold that the Nicaragua route would have been better. Naturally the start made by the French had something to do with turning the decision in favor of the Isthmus, but it was not decisive. The French had no rights that they could sell except the right of veto conferred by their ownership of the Panama Railroad. Their franchise from Colombia expressly prohibited its transfer to any other government, so it was unsalable. But the charter of the Panama Railroad, which the French had acquired, provided that no interoceanic canal should be built in Colombia without the consent of the railroad corporation. This to some extent gave the French the whiphand. What they had to sell was the controlling stock of the railroad company, the land they had acquired in Colombia, the machinery on the spot and the work they had completed. But all of this was of little value without a franchise from Colombia and the one the French held could not be transferred to a government, and was of little worth anyway as it would expire in 1910, unless the canal were completed by that year--a physical impossibility. [Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_ PANAMA SOLDIERS GOING TO CHURCH]