Chapter 641: One Hundred and Ninety-seven Political Art
Chapter 627 The Hundred and Ninety-seventh Political Art
The French government’s energy can be much greater than a few capitalists, after getting the authorization of the government in Paris, Minister Tom’s bottom line is immediately sufficient.
In less than a month’s time, it got the Panama Canal development rights from the Colombian government, and the price paid was only a batch of material aid.
Mainly or arms, the Colombian domestic armed forces did not fight, the main thing is still forced by foreign pressure.
People are afraid that a civil war will break out and be taken advantage of and colonized again.
Especially jealous of Austria next door, the Austrian colonies in Central America alone, there is already a threat to their survival of the military force.
Because of the Central American countries of the previous experience, now the Colombian government even European immigrants, do not dare to casually accept, for fear of being subverted from within the regime.
The population of Colombia itself is not large, and does not dare to accept a large number of European immigrants, economic development is naturally not fast.
Now the Panama Canal authorization to the French, in addition to material assistance, there is the introduction of the French power to counterbalance the meaning of Austria.
This is all a minor issue, neither France nor Austria took Colombia seriously. If you want to play the balance, you also have to see if you can manage it, and if you can’t manage it, you have to be countered.
If the Panama Canal had been navigable, then for the sake of interests, France and Austria may indeed break out in conflict, unfortunately the canal now only stays on paper.
It is not possible for the two great powers to break out in conflict for the benefits that may exist. To put it bluntly, the opening of the canal also requires preconditions, if the geological conditions are not suitable, it is not surprising that the digging cannot be completed.
Everyone is very realistic, to be able to consider what will happen in ten or twenty years, that are far-sighted.
If you think about a hundred years from now, that’s bullshit. The world is changing so fast, who knows what will happen in the future?
The French offered a good price, and the Vienna government did not intervene.
The Canal Company was established very smoothly, and Nino, the backstabbing president, was organizing people to explore the terrain with great enthusiasm.
Canal Company headquarters in Paris, has begun to prepare for the listing of financing. Exploration reports are not, the design plan is not out, the listing plan came out first.
This is not a joke, but reality. In front of the interests, these procedures are not important, capitalists have ways to circumvent.
There are many other such scams in the capital market, and it doesn’t matter if the project succeeds or fails as long as it can make money.
Nino still had some ability, or else he wouldn’t have become a backstabber. Looking at the investigation report in his hands, Nino’s president had a headache.
The Panama Strait has a tropical marine climate, with plenty of local rainfall and loose soil.
Purely from the construction, loose soil seems to be a good thing, easy to excavate earth. But for the canal project, it was a disaster.
In Nino’s opinion, “abundant rainfall + loose soil = landslides + silt”, which not only means higher costs during the development of the canal, but also higher operating costs later on.
In addition, the local jungle is full of poisonous insects and diseases, which are also troublesome in the construction of the canal.
“Dead people” Nino president does not care, with the classic case of the Suez Canal in, he knows very well that the Panama Canal without tens of thousands of lives, afraid of digging out.
The Panama Strait seems to be a bit narrower, just a short 61 kilometers, only slightly more than one-third of the Suez Canal, the construction difficulty is actually higher.
After a preliminary assessment of the incomplete information in his hands, Nino reluctantly came to the conclusion that he least wanted.
Secretary Ralph reported in a deep voice, “President, news just came from the embassy that the Colombian government has refused to provide us with laborers under the pretext of labor shortage.”
Everyone knows that digging the canal has high casualties, and the death of more than 100,000 laborers in order to excavate the Suez Canal is no secret at all at the top.
The Colombian government naturally also heard about it, and the Egyptian government jumped into this huge pit, making the people in the country unhappy, which allowed the French to take advantage of the situation and occupy Egypt.
Colombia’s population is even smaller, and asking them to provide hundreds of thousands of laborers is simply impossible to do.
If they were to conscript indigenous laborers, they would probably use whites as laborers, and before they had enough laborers, there would be a lot of smoke in the country.
Nino frowned: “Contact the embassy and ask them to continue to communicate with the Colombian government, no matter what, we must make them provide a batch of laborers first.
The board is trying to find cheap labor, once they get through the initial start of the project, they won’t be needed later.”
There was no way around it, there were too many potholes these days and investors were not easy to fool. Construction had to start earlier to make it easier to ring up the money.
How could a project on paper compare to one that was already on the ground? Canal Company’s prospectus plan, all the bull to blow the sky, the board of directors every day to urge him to start construction.
Secretary Ralph: “Yes, President.”
As he was about to leave, Nino added, “Wait, report the information we have surveyed in hand to the board of directors.
Remember, hide the line about possible disease outbreaks. Even the homeland has the possibility of a disease outbreak, and with a note like that, the shareholders won’t want to read it.”
Without doing a cost analysis, Nino knew that the canal plan had already exceeded the initial cost estimates, and trying to build a canal out of a third of the Suez Canal was a fool’s errand.
It was not easy to become the head of this project, Nino did not want to see the canal program die. If he missed this opportunity, he might not have the chance to go further in his life.
The best way is to let the canal program start first, when the time to invest more money, the capitalists will not be able to give up, but only hard to do it.
As for whether pitting the big man behind the curtain would cause trouble, Nino was not worried at all. The Panama Canal Company was going to go public to raise money, and all these costs could be passed on to the investors.
It was normal for there to be loopholes in the work, and as long as it could bring everyone a good return, nothing was a problem.
Nino is very confident about the Panama Canal project, as long as the canal is navigable, he is confident that the cost will be recovered within ten years.
This is only the explicit return, the secret return should be several times of the navigation fee. Such a lucrative return would be enough to quell the grievances of the shareholders.
……
In London, Prime Minister Benjamin was fretting over the war reports, already thinking about what would be written in tomorrow’s papers.
The opposition party would surely take the opportunity to make trouble and strike a blow at the government’s prestige.
That’s what everyone does, when they’re on stage they work hard, implement their political ideas and reap the benefits in the process; when they’re off stage they desperately try to tear down their rivals.
At the cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin threw a telegram onto the table, “This is a telegram from that punk Ismail asking for help. The war has only just begun and we’ve lost one-fifth of our troops, which also includes an army regiment that was crippled in formation.
As for the results of the war, it is really very brilliant, wiping out 200,000 enemy troops.
I would rather believe that the sun will come out of the west than believe that this result is true. To have wiped out 200,000 enemy troops, and to request for reinforcements, could it be that the enemy has millions of troops?”
Misreporting battle results, this has become a persistent problem for the British Army. Especially when fighting a losing battle, in order to escape responsibility, it is even more important to create a brilliant battle results.
It’s just that this time the play is a bit excessive, if you report a million or so, the London government will recognize it. After all, the lid is uncovered, the government will also follow the scolding.
In line with the principle of minimizing the big things, minimizing the small things, usually happened this kind of thing, everyone is quietly cover up the past.
Fox, the Secretary of State for War, said with an embarrassed face: ”Your Excellency the Prime Minister, this may have been a mistake on the part of the telegraph operator, who typed in an extra zero.
We have sent people to verify, our army suffered 5876 casualties, three quarters of which were Indian colonial troops, and a total of 15,796 enemy troops were annihilated, which rounds up to 20,000.”
This figure, is going to be much more acceptable. Having suffered more than five thousand casualties and wiping out nearly three times the enemy, it was barely justifiable.
(End of Chapter)