Part 7

The discoverer of “Treasure Island” turned pale with disgust and backed out of the laboratory with these words, “Yes, Doctor, I know you have a lantern at your belt, but I don’t like the smell of your oil!”

The brilliant imagination of the great writer failed to understand the steady light of the imagination that seeks patiently after scientific truth in spite of discouragements and years of fruitless work.

In the last public address which Trudeau made, in 1910, before a gathering of physicians and surgeons, he said these words which show that he had caught the gleam of Stevenson’s lantern:

Let us not quench our faith nor turn from the vision which, whether we own it or not, we carry, as Stevenson’s lantern-bearers, hidden from the outer world; and, thus inspired, many will reach the goal; and if for most of us our achievements must fall short of our ideals, if, when age and infirmity overtake us, we come not within sight of the castle of our dreams, nevertheless, all will be well with us; for, as Stevenson tells us rightly, “to travel hopefully is better than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.”

One of Trudeau’s most cherished possessions was a fine copy in bronze of Mercié’s statue “_Gloria Victis_,” given him by one of his patients. The sculptor created this statue in 1871, after the crushing blow inflicted on France by the German arms, to console and inspire the French people with the hope of triumph through defeat. It shows a young gladiator who has received his death-wound while facing the foe, lifted up and borne onward by a splendid Victory with outstretched wings. He has fought the fight and still holds his sword in his lifeless hand. In losing his life he wins his victory, that of one of the “faithful failures” who marched toward the new day whose dawn is not for them but for those who come after.

Dr. Trudeau, ever in the grip of the enemy that could be held at bay, but never conquered, labored year after year to save the lives of others. Many he was able to cure through rest and the life-giving air of the place he had found and made to be the battle-ground against tuberculosis. In many more he succeeded in arresting the disease and giving years of useful life, with restrictions--days and nights in the open, eternal watchfulness. And always, so conditioned himself, he worked, while often laboring for every breath he drew, to find the real cure--a something that would be able to destroy the terrible germs. He never lived to find it, but he prepared the way for others, who will go on with his work and carry it to success.

Shortly before his death, in November, 1915, Dr. Trudeau tried to explain what the statue “_Gloria Victis_” had meant to him:

“It typifies,” he said, “many victories I have seen won in Saranac Lake by those whom I had learned to love; the victory of the spirit over the body; the victories that demand acquiescence in worldly failure, and in the supreme sacrifice of life itself as a part of their achievement; the victory of the Nazarene, which ever speaks its great message to the ages.”

“THE PROPHET-ENGINEER”: GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

A man went down to Panama, Where many a man had died, To slit the sliding mountains And lift the eternal tide: A man stood up in Panama, And the mountains stood aside. PERCY MAC KAYE.

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 Gō´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.”