Older faculty members at the École des Ponts et Chaussées were now privately advising graduates not to go to Panama, saying it would be suicidal. Still there was never a shortage of able volunteers. Indeed, the young men who came over the sea to Colón were the pick of the best-trained technicians. For them the canal was a stirring opportunity, a “Cause”—grand in scale, glorious in concept, French—and they sailed as if to battle, as they themselves said repeatedly. They were warriors bearing the banner of France. Discomforts, dangers, the likelihood of a miserable death on the wrong side of the
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