WHEN a boy has a name like George Washington Goethals he must have something out of the ordinary about him to let it pass with his companions on the playground. Should he prove a weakling, should the other boys discover any flaw in the armor of his self-confidence, such a name would be a mockery and a misfortune.

Is there any one who cannot recall certain rarely uncomfortable moments of his childhood when he wished that the fates had provided him with a Christian name that the other chaps couldn’t send back and forth like a shuttlecock, with a new derisive turn at each toss? One expects to endure a certain amount of “Georgie Porgie” nonsense, which has the excuse of rime if not of reason, but when one also has a last name that nobody ever heard of before, he finds himself wishing sometimes that he had been born a Johnson or a Smith.

“I don’t believe that I quite like our name,” remarked little George Goethals in the confidence of the family circle one evening. “It is a bit queer, isn’t it?”

“It’s a name to be proud of, son,” was the reply. “It’s a name to live up to. For more than a thousand years it has been borne by strong, brave men. It belongs to the history of more than one country and century, and the way it was won makes a pretty story.”

“Tell me the story!” begged the boy, breathlessly, his eyes dark with interest.

“In the days when knights were bold, a man named Honorius, whose courage was as finely tempered as his sword, went with the Duke of Burgundy from Italy into France. In a fierce battle with the Saracens he received a terrible blow on the neck which would have felled most men to the ground, but his strength and steel withstood the shock and won for him a nickname of honor—Boni Coli (good neck). Later, when he was rewarded for his valor by a grant of land in the north country which is now Holland and Belgium, this name was changed after the Dutch fashion into Goet Hals (good or stiff neck), and became the family name of all that man’s descendants, who made it an honored name in Holland. When your ancestors came to America they hoped that it would become an honored name in the new country, and it must be your part to help bring that to pass.”

The boy’s eyes grew thoughtful. “For more than a thousand years it has been the name of brave men,” he repeated to himself. “But it is an American name now, isn’t it?” he added anxiously.

“Yes, son, it is just as American as it can be made,” his father returned with a laugh. “We call it Go´thals,—there is nothing more truly American than a thing that has go, you know,—and we’ve given you the name of the first American to go with it.”

“I’ll show that an American Goethals can be as brave as any Dutch one,” George boasted.

“Strong hearts and brave deeds speak for themselves, son,” he was reminded, “and they are understood everywhere, whether the people speak Dutch, English, or Chinese.”

As the boy’s school-days went by, it seemed that he had made that truth his own. In his studies he showed that common sense and thoroughness are better than mere dash and brilliancy. On the playground he let others do the talking, content to make his reply when he had his turn at the bat—or not at all. And the knightly baron of old who won the name of Good Neck could not have held up his head and faced his world with a stronger and more resolute bearing than did this American school-boy.

To those who knew him it was no surprise when he entered West Point; and it was no surprise to any one when he graduated second in his class.

“Of course, he wouldn’t be first,” one of his classmates said; “that would have been too showy for G. W. I don’t know any one to whom just the honor of a thing means less. He’s glad to have done a good job, and of course he’s glad to be one of the picked few to go into the engineer corps.”

As if unwilling to part with the young lieutenant, West Point kept him as an instructor for several months before sending him on to Willett’s Point, where he remained in the Engineering School of Application for two years. He soon proved that he had the virtues of the soldier and the leader of men—loyalty and perseverance; loyalty, that makes a man able to take and give orders without becoming a machine or a tyrant; and perseverance, that makes him face each problem with the resolution to fight it out to the finish.

There were years when he was detailed to one task after another. Now it was the development of irrigation works for vast tracts of land in the West where only water was needed to make the section a garden spot of the continent. Then, when his system of ditches was fairly planned out, he was ordered off to cope with another problem, the building of dikes and dams along the Ohio River to curb the spring floods and to make the stream a dependable servant to man. Always he was “on the battle-front of engineering,” facing nature in her most obstinate moods and conquering obstacles that stood in the way of achievement.

Sometimes when he was sent to a new point on the firing-line, leaving others to carry his work to completion, he would say to himself a bit ruefully, “What would it be like, I wonder, to stay by a job till the day of results?” But always his experience was the same. This year, orders took him to canal work along the Tennessee River; the next, perhaps, found him detailed to the work of coast fortifications at Newport. He was sent for a time to the Academy at West Point as instructor in civil and military engineering, and for a while he was stationed at Washington as assistant to the chief engineer of the army. Everywhere he showed a love of work for the work’s sake, a passion for a job well done. But what was rarer still, he showed a reach of understanding that was as broad as his practical grasp was firm. He always saw the relation between his own job and a greater whole.

“While he keeps his eye on the matter in hand, it doesn’t shut out a glimpse of the things of yesterday and to-morrow. That’s why he’s so reasonable and why his men will follow wherever he leads,” it was said.

When the Spanish-American war broke out he went to Porto Rico as chief engineer of the First Army Corps. There his initial task was to construct a wharf where supplies could be landed, while a war vessel, which had been detailed for the purpose, stood guard over the operations. When the chief engineer looked at the heavy surf breaking on the beach his eye fell upon some flat-bottomed barges which had been captured by the warship, and a plan for quick and effective construction recommended itself on the instant.

“Fill the barges with sand, and sink them as a foundation for the wharf,” was his order.

Only one, however, had been so appropriated when the amazed admiral in command of the man-of-war sent his aide to direct the engineer to call a halt in his extraordinary proceedings.

“I am acting upon orders from my commanding officer and can take none from any one else,” replied Major Goethals, while the work with the second barge went on merrily. In a trice the aide returned with the warning that unless the orders were obeyed, the man-of-war would open fire on the rash offender.

“You’ll have to fire away, then,” was the reply, “for we shall not stop until we have completed the work we were sent here to do and landed the stores.”

The admiral did not send a shot after his threat, but he did forward a complaint to the engineer’s commanding officer, who directed that lumber be employed instead of the barges.

Major Goethals sent back the reply that there was no lumber to be had, and, while the offended admiral darkly threatened a court-martial, completed the wharf.

“It was pretty uncomfortable during the time the admiral passed by without speaking, was it not?” a brother officer asked the major.

“Well—we landed the supplies,” returned the engineer, quietly, as if that was the only thing that mattered after all. As usual, he was content to let results speak for themselves.

All of the work that this master engineer had done up to this time, however, was really unconscious preparation for a mighty task that lay waiting for a man great enough to face with courage and commanding mind and will the difficulties and problems involved in the biggest engineering job in America, or, indeed, in the whole world—the digging of the Panama Canal. Ever since Columbus made his four voyages in the vain hope of finding a waterway between the West and the East, ever since Balboa, “silent upon a peak in Darien,” gazed out over the limitless expanse of the Pacific, it had seemed as if man must be able to make for himself a path for his ships across the narrow barrier of land that nature had left there as a challenge to his powers. At first it seemed that it must be as simple as it was necessary to cut a canal through forty miles of earth, but time showed that the mighty labors of Hercules were but child’s play compared to this.

Before Sir Francis Drake, the daring pirate whom destiny and patriotism made into an explorer and an admiral, died in his ship off the Isthmus in 1596, a survey had been made of the trail along which the Spanish adventurers had been carrying the plunder of their conquests in South America across the narrow neck of land from the town of Panama to Porto Bello, where it could be loaded on great galleons and taken to Spain. For three centuries men of different nations—Spain, France, Colombia, and the United States—made surveys and considered various routes for a canal, but when they came face to face with the project at close range, the tropical jungle and the great rocky hills put a check on their ventures before they were begun.

In 1875, however, when the Suez Canal was triumphantly completed by the French canal company it seemed as if Count de Lesseps, the hero of this enterprise, might well be the man to pierce the New World isthmus. Blinded by his brilliant success, the venerable engineer (de Lesseps was at this time seventy-five years old) undertook the leadership of a vast enterprise to dig a similar canal across Panama. A canal was a canal; an isthmus was an isthmus. Of course, the man who had made a way for ships through Suez could join the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific at Panama. No one seemed to realize that the digging of a ditch through one hundred miles of level, sandy desert was an entirely different problem from cutting a waterway through solid rock and removing mountains, to say nothing of diverting into a new channel the flow of a turbulent river and reconciling the widely different tides of two oceans.

Other engineers realized that the difficulties in the way of a sea-level ditch were stupendous and that the lock canal was the type for Panama. Trusting, however, in the careless plans of Lieutenant Lucien Napoleon Bonaparte Wyse of the French Navy, who did not cover in his hasty survey more than two thirds of the territory through which the canal was to pass, Count de Lesseps estimated that the work could be completed for $120,000,000, and promised that in six years the long-sought waterway to the Pacific and the East would be open. None could doubt that the tolls paid by ships which would no longer be compelled to round Cape Horn in order to reach the western coast of the continents of North and South America, the islands of the Pacific, and the rich trading centers of the Orient, would repay tenfold the people who supplied the money for the great enterprise.

Trusting in the magic name of the engineer who had brought glory to France and wealth to those who had supported his Suez venture, thousands of thrifty people throughout France offered their savings in exchange for stock in the canal company. But the only persons who ever made any money out of the enterprise were the dishonest men in high positions who took advantage alike of the unsuspecting optimism of de Lesseps and the faith of the public in his fame. They drew large salaries and lived like princes, while, for want of proper management the money expended for labor and machinery on the isthmus was for the most part thrown away. Many of the tools imported were suited to shoveling sand, not to removing rock. The matter of transportation for men and supplies seemed not to have been considered at all. And the engineers and workmen fell prey in large numbers to yellow fever and malaria, for at that time it was not known that the mosquito was responsible for the spread of these diseases. Even the splendid hospitals built by the French provided favorable breeding-places for the carriers of the fever germs.

The success of any large enterprise depends above everything else on the skilful handling of the problems of human engineering. For the quality of any work depends on the character of the workers. This means that a master of any great undertaking that involves the labor of many must first of all be a master of men. The successful engineer of the Panama Canal had not only to secure the loyalty and coÖperation of all the workers of many races and prejudices, but also to provide comfortable houses, wholesome food, and healthful living conditions, alike for body and mind, of his army of workers. The French did not know the country in which they worked—the difficulties and dangers it presented. They did not know the men who worked for them—their needs and how to meet them. They did not know the men they worked with—their inefficiency and graft and how to forestall them. The de Lesseps enterprise was, therefore, doomed to failure. After expending $260,000,000 (more than twice as much as the entire cost of Suez) in nine years, less than a quarter of the canal was dug and the chief problems, presented by the unruly Chagres River and the floods of the rainy season, were still untouched.

This is not the place to describe the disorderly retreat of the French forces, who hastily abandoned work and workers, tools and machines, like so much wreckage of a hopeless disaster. Some of the rascals and swindlers were punished; many others escaped. The aged de Lesseps—acclaimed as a hero yesterday, denounced as a traitor to-day—died of a broken heart. Thousands of poor people lost their little savings and with them their hope of comfort in their old age. When the United States offered to pay forty million dollars for all that the French company had accomplished, and all that it possessed in the way of equipment, plans, and privileges, the stockholders were only too glad to close the bargain.

The whole story of how the United States went about this world job makes one of the most interesting chapters of our history. It is, however, “another story.” We cannot here go into the matter of how Panama became a republic independent of Colombia, and how the United States purchased for ten million dollars a strip of land ten miles wide, five miles on either side of the canal, across the isthmus. This Canal Zone is “as much the territory of the United States as the parade-ground at West Point,” the ports of Balboa and Cristobal are

American, and the United States holds the right to enforce sanitary regulations in the cities of Panama and Colon at either end of the canal and to preserve order when the Panama authorities prove unequal to the task.

The shout went up from all over America: “Make the dirt fly! Show what the spirit of ‘get there’ and Yankee grit can do!” Of course, the temptation to produce immediate results was great. But the clear-seeing men in control said: “There must be no headlong rush this time. We will be content to make haste slowly and take steps to prevent the evils that have defeated those who have gone before. We must clean the cities, drain the swamps, make clearings in the rank growth of the jungles. We must make a place even in the tropics where health and happy human living are possible.”

But the “clean-up” slogan was not able alone to conquer the specter of disease. Yellow fever still haunted the sanitary streets and byways. Only through the heroism of brave men who loved their neighbors better than themselves and who were willing to die that others might live was the secret learned. The experiments to which they gladly offered up their lives proved that the bite of a particular kind of mosquito was responsible for the spread of the disease, and that, if this insect could be destroyed, yellow fever would be destroyed with it. Colonel Gorgas, the chief sanitary officer, whose watchword was “First prevent, then curb, and, when all else fails, cure,” was the leader in the fight for healthful conditions on the isthmus.

But all this time we have been talking much about the battle-ground and little about the general who led the forces to victory.

It was clear that the time was ripe. The moment cried out for a man of power—one whose might as an engineer could command the forces of earth and ocean, and whose understanding of the even more difficult problems of human engineering would make him a true leader of men.

In 1905 Mr. Taft, who was at that time secretary of war, journeyed to Panama to see how the work was going forward and to plan for the fortifications of the canal. He took with him an officer of engineers, a tall, vigorous man of forty seven, with gray hair, a strong, youthful, bronzed face, and clear, direct, blue eyes. No trumpet sounded before Major Goethals to announce the man of the hour—the one whom destiny and experience had equipped for the great work. He studied every phase of the giant enterprise, and, when he returned to Washington, prepared a report that showed not only a thorough understanding of every detail, but also a broad comprehension of the problems of the whole. His recommendation of a lock canal was submitted by the secretary of war to the President, and with it went Mr. Taft’s recommendation of Major Goethals for the position of chief engineer. Experience had proved that divided authority and changes in policy through changes in management were serious drawbacks.

“If I can find an army officer equal to the job, he will have to fight the thing out to the finish,” said President Roosevelt. “He must manage the work on the spot, not from an office in Washington. He must be given full power to act and to control; and he must be a man big enough to realize that large authority means only large responsibility.”

After carefully considering Major Goethals’ record and reports and then talking with the man himself, the President became convinced that he had found the right chief for the work and the army of workers. But when it was generally known that an army officer was to command at Panama, people shook their heads. “The high-handed methods of the military will never succeed there,” they said. “Shoulder-straps cannot do the work!”

On the occasion of Major Goethals’ first appearance before his staff of engineers and other assistants it was very clear that they looked upon the departure of their late chief, Mr. Stevens, with regret that became keener as they anticipated the formality and rigors of military control. When it was the new leader’s turn to speak they faced him silently. Major Goethals stood tall and firm like a true descendant of the “Good Neck” of old, but he looked them in the eyes frankly and pleasantly.

“There will be no militarism and no salutes in Panama,” he said. “I have left my uniform in moth-balls at home, and with it I have left behind military duties and fashions. We are here to fight nature shoulder to shoulder. Your cause is my cause. We have common enemies—Culebra Cut and the climate; and the completion of the canal will be our victory. I intend to be the commanding officer, but the chiefs of division will be the colonels, the foremen the captains, and no man who does his duty has aught to fear from militarism.”

Let us see how they went against the first enemy, Culebra Cut; the channel that was to be made through the formidable “peak in Darien” known as Culebra Mountain. It is only seven o’clock, but the chief engineer—Colonel Goethals, now—is at the station ready to take the early train.

“Suppose we walk through the tunnel,” he remarks. “You know the dirt-trains have right of way in Panama. We should hesitate to delay one even for the President of the United States or the Czar of all the Russias.”

At the end of the tunnel a car that looks like a limousine turned switch-engine is waiting on a siding for the “boss of the job.” Painted light yellow, like the passenger-cars of the Panama Railroad, it is known among the men as the “Yellow Peril,” or the “Brain-wagon.” But if any one expects, as a matter of course, to see the colonel in the “Yellow Peril,” he is as likely as not doomed to disappointment. The chief engineer drops off, now to see men drilling holes for dynamite, now to watch the loading of the dirt-trains from the great steam-shovels.

As we see the solid rock and rocklike earth of Culebra we realize that without dynamite the canal would be impossible. Let us watch for a moment the tearing down of the “everlasting hill.” Deafening machine-drills pierce the rock or hard soil with holes from three to thirty or forty feet in depth. These holes, which have been carefully arranged so as to insure the greatest effect in an earth-quaking, rock-breaking way, are filled with dynamite and then connected with an electric wire so that the pressure of a button will set off the entire charge. A rumble and then a roar—the earth trembles—heaves—then great masses of rock, mud, and water are hurled high in the air. A fraction of Culebra larger than a six-or seven-story building is frequently torn down by one of these explosions and the rock broken into pieces that can be seized by the steam-shovels and loaded on the dump-cars.

It is interesting to see how, through an ingenious arrangement of the network of tracks, the loaded cars always go on the down grade and only empty trains have to crawl up an incline. Much of the rock taken from the cut is used to build the great Gatun Dam, that keeps the troublesome Chagres River from flooding the canal. The rest goes to the construction of breakwaters at the ends of the waterway or to the filling of swamps and valleys.

The “brain-wagon” is going along without the head. He is climbing blithely over the roughest sort of ground, now dodging onrushing dirt-trains, now running to shelter with the “powder-men” at the moment of blasting. A question here, a word there, and on he goes. It seems as if even the steam-shovels know that there is a masterhand at the helm and vie with one another to see which can take up the most earth at a bite. You would think any man would be completely played out after such constant jumping and climbing under the hot rays of a tropical sun, as the hours draw near to noon, but the colonel pulls up the long flight of steps that lead from the cut and remarks briskly, “Nothing like a little exercise every morning to keep your health in this climate!”

“There never was such a man for being on the job!” exclaimed one of his foremen, admiringly. “The only time the colonel isn’t working is from ten P.M. to five A.M., when he is asleep.”

No despotic monarch in his inherited kingdom ever had more absolute power than had the Man of Panama. The men from the chiefs of divisions down to the last Jamaican negro on the line realized that he was master of the business and that his orders sprang from a thorough understanding of conditions and a large grasp of the whole. He was a successful engineer, however, not only because he knew the forces of nature that they were working to conquer in Panama, but also the human nature he was working with. He knew that no chain is stronger than its weakest link, and that no matter how perfect his plans and how powerful his huge machines and engines, the success he strove for would depend first of all on the character and the coÖperation of the workers.

“The real engineer must above all feel the vital importance of the human side of engineering work,” he declared. “The man who would move mountains and make the flow of rivers serve human ends must first be a master of human construction.”

He knew that if there were to be able and willing workers in Panama, they must be provided with the means of comfortable and contented living. It was not enough to defeat death in the form of plague and fever; it was necessary to make life worth while. For man could not live by work alone in a land of swamps and jungles. Houses with screened porches, with gardens, and all the comforts and conveniences to be found at home were provided for the five thousand American engineers, clerks, and foremen. Ships with cold-storage equipment brought food supplies from New York or New Orleans, and every morning a long train of refrigerator-cars steamed across the isthmus carrying fresh provisions to all the hotels, town commissaries, and camps.

“You needn’t pity us because we live in the Zone,” said Mrs. Smith. “We get just as good meat and green vegetables as you can in market and at wholesale prices. Our house is rent free, with furniture, linen, and silverware provided. We have electric lights and a telephone. We even have ice-cream soda and the movies!”

The Man of Panama knew that all work and no play would not only make Jack a dull boy, but also a poor workman. Recreation buildings were provided where one could enjoy basket-ball, squash, bowling, or read the latest books and magazines. There were clubs for men and for women, band concerts, and a baseball league.

“The colonel not only gave time and thought to the things that kept us contented and fit,” one of the engineers said, “but he always had time for everybody who felt he wanted a word with him. The man who was handling the biggest job in the world nevertheless seemed to think it was worth while to consider the little troubles of each man who came along. Have you heard the song they sing in Panama?

The colonel’s Sunday mornings were remarkable occasions. You might see foregathered there the most interesting variety of human types that could be found together anywhere in the world—English, Spanish, French, Italians, turbaned coolies from India, and American negroes. One man thinks that his foreman does not appreciate his good points; another comes to present a claim for an injury received on a steam-shovel. Mrs. A. declares with some feeling that she is never given as good cuts of meat as Mrs. B. enjoys every day. Another housewife doesn’t see why, if Mrs. F. can get bread from the hospital bakery, she can’t as well; because she, too, can appreciate a superior article!

“Of course, many of the things are trivial and even absurd,” said the colonel; “but if somebody thinks his little affair important, of course it is—to him. And that is the point, isn’t it? He feels better when he has had it out; and if it makes the people any happier in their exile to have this court of appeal, that is not a thing to be despised. Besides, first and last. I come to understand many things that are really important from any point of view.”

“He is the squarest boss I ever worked for,” declared one of the locomotive engineers, “and I’ll tell you the grafters don’t have any show with him. He had a whole cargo of meat sent back the other day because it wasn’t above suspicion. I happen to know, too, that he turned back a load of screening on a prominent business house who thought that they could save a bit on the copper—that for a government order it would never be noticed if it was not quite rust-proof.”

The canal was finished not only in less time than had ever been thought possible, but also with such honest and efficient administration of every detail that nowadays, when the statement is sometimes made that no great public enterprise can be carried through without more or less mismanagement and jobbing, the champion of Uncle Sam’s business methods retorts, “Look at Panama!”

The colonel’s quiet mastery in moments of stress was perhaps the most interesting phase of his human engineering. The representatives of a labor union threaten a strike unless he orders the release of one of their number who has been convicted of manslaughter. “When will we get our answer?” asked the spokesman.

“You have it now,” replied Colonel Goethals. “You said that if the man was not out of the penitentiary by seven this evening you would all quit. By calling up the penitentiary you will learn that he is still there. That is your answer. It is now ten minutes past seven.”

“But, Colonel, you don’t want to tie up the whole work?” protested the leader.

“I am not proposing to tie up the work—you are doing that,” was the reply.

“But, Colonel, why can’t you pardon the man?”

“I will take no action in response to a mob. As for your threat to leave the service, I wish to say that every man of you who is not at his post to-morrow morning will be given his transportation to the United States, and there will be no string to it. He will go out on the first steamer and he will never come back.”

There was only one man who failed to report the following day, and he sent a doctor’s certificate stating that he was too ill to be out of bed.

Human engineering was especially called into play when the Man of Panama faced committees of inquiry and investigation from Congress. A pompous politician once demanded in a challenging tone and with a sharp eye on the colonel, “How much cracked stone do you allow for a cubic yard of concrete?”

“One cubic yard,” was the reply.

“You evidently do not understand my question,” rejoined the investigator in the manner of one who is bent on convicting another through his own words. “How much cracked stone do you allow for a cubic yard of concrete?”

“One cubic yard.”

“But you don’t allow for the sand and concrete.” The implied accusation was spoken with grave emphasis.

“Those go into the spaces among the cracked stone,” was the unruffled reply. The smile that went around the room was felt rather than heard, but the pompous politician had no further questions.

This master of men, who was never known to yield his ground when he had once taken a stand, was always a man of few words. He preferred to let acts and facts do the talking.

“You know, Colonel Goethals,” said a prominent statesman on one occasion, “a great many people think we are never going to carry this job through to the finish. What would you say when diplomats of the leading powers come at you with questions and declare it will never be done?”

“I wouldn’t say anything,” was the reply.

On another occasion the boss of the job said: “Some day in September, 1913, I expect to go to Colon and take the Panama Railroad steamer and put her through the canal. If we get all the way across, I’ll give it out to the newspapers—if we don’t, I’ll keep quiet about it.”

It was said of old that if one had faith enough he could move mountains. We cannot doubt that the Man of Panama carried through his great work because he had faith—not a passive faith that hoped and waited, but an active faithfulness that worked in full confidence that destiny worked with him. And this faith and loyalty was a living power that enkindled like faithfulness in those who worked with him.

The Man of Panama is General Goethals now, but when any admirer would imply that his generalship—his administration and human engineering—was the chief factor in the success of the great work, he invariably replies that he was but one man of many working shoulder to shoulder in a common cause. The simple greatness of the “prophet-engineer” and leader of men was shown in the words with which he accepted the medal of the National Geographic Society:

“The canal has been the work of many, and it has been the pride of Americans who have visited the isthmus to find the spirit which has

animated the forces. Every man was doing the particular part of the work that was necessary to make it a success. No chief of any enterprise ever commanded an army that was so loyal, so faithful, that gave its strength and its blood to the successful completion of its task as did the canal forces. And so in accepting the medal and thanking those who confer it, I accept it and thank them in the name of every member of the canal army.”

Since the completion of the canal, its master-builder has been called to serve his country in more than one great crisis. At the time of the threatened railroad strike in the fall of 1916, he was made chairman of the commission of three appointed by President Wilson to investigate the working of the eight-hour law for train operators, which was the subject of dispute between the managers of the roads and the men who ran the freight-trains. In March, 1917, he was selected by Governor Edge of New Jersey to serve as advisory engineer on the construction of the new fifteen-million-dollar highway system of that State.