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130 Personality of Colonel Goethals
was among the latter, rather than among
the former, that the most strenuous opposition
to absolute control by one man was
to be manifested.
Not only was it an arm}' of civilians,
but its duties were civil, not military, and
covered a wide and diversified field. In
order to construct the Canal it was necessary
to create an American state in the
heart of a Central American republic,
with a civil government, schools, courts,
churches, police system, post-offices, and
taxation and revenue systems. This civil
government, distinct from engineering
control of Canal work, was exercised over
one of the most heterogeneous populations
ever assembled anywhere on earth,
comprising at its maximum about sixtyfive
thousand souls, and made up of many
and widely differing nationalities—North
Americans, Spaniards, Italians, West Indians,
Greeks, Armenians, Central Americans,
and others. To unite in one the two
forms of government—engineering and
civil—over this population and make it
autocratic was no slight problem in administration,
and so to exercise that autocratic
rule as to make it not only acceptable
and effective but popular was a task
certainly not inferior to that of the actual
construction of the Canal itself.
What was needed, in fact, for the accomplishment
of the gigantic work which
the United States Government had undertaken
on the Isthmus of Panama was a
man at the head who was both a great engineer
and a great administrator. This
rare combination—for few engineers possess
large administrative ability—was
found in Colonel Goethals. He had not
been long on the Isthmus before he made
it apparent that both as an engineer and as
an administrator he stood in the first rank.
He revealed himself almost at once as
that rare product of nature, the born
leader of men. From the outset he took
his place in a class by himself, and he held
it, without dispute or question, till his task
was completed. There were among his
official associates able engineers and men
of trained ability in other professions, but
he alone possessed in the supreme degree
which the case demanded the qualities of
leader and administrator.
It might be said that many generations
had united in fitting him for his great task.
The history of his family dates back to
860, in which year one Honorius left Italy
with the Duke of Burgundy for France.
In a fight with Saracens, Honorius was
struck across the neck with what was
capable of proving to be a deadly blow, but
because of the fine quality of his armor
and the physical strength of his person no
injury was caused. His escape won for
him the title of "Boni Coli." Certain
lands were given to him in the north of
France, now forming Holland and Belgium.
His nickname was translated into
the native tongue as "Goet Hals," meaning,
as it had in Italian, "good neck" or
"stiff neck," and in course of time it was
united in one word and became the family
name. The family divided, part settling
in Belgium and part in Holland. Colonel
Goethals is descended from the Holland
branch, both father and mother being
Dutch. His parents migrated from Holland
to the United States, and he was born
in Brooklyn, N. Y., on June 29, 1858.
(The name has been Americanized and is
pronounced—Go-thals.)
The Goethals family, in both Holland
and Belgium branches, has contained
many members who have achieved distinction
in professional and public life, and
the ancestral quality of "stiff neck" has
persisted with its pristine rigidity unimpaired
to the present day.
With the blood of this ancestry in his
veins young Goethals entered West Point
Academy, from which he was graduated
in 1880, standing second in his class. He
was retained there as instructor in practical
astronomy for a few months, when
he went to Willett's Point, remaining
there in the Engineering School of Application
for two years. After two years'
service as chief engineer on government
work in the Department of Columbia,
which includes the States of Idaho, Washington,
and Oregon, and one year in similar
work on the Ohio River, where he was
in charge of dikes and dams, he returned
to West Point, where he served as assistant
instructor and assistant professor in
civil and military engineering for four
years. During the next five years he was
on duty in Tennessee, part of the time in
charge of the Elk River division of the
Mussel Shoals Canal, and later of all improvements
on the Tennessee River from