GEORGE W. GOETHALS 215 Hill should fall in some momingy he 'd say, ' Well, it might be worse/ and light another cigarette. In the last analysis, indeed, the same high qualities of man- hood exhibited in Pickett's charge at Gettysburg are all ex- emplified in the attacks upon Gold Hill at Panama. No sooner are these soldiers of the new dispensation beaten back tiian they re-form, advance their batteries of drills, move forward with their giant steam shovels, deploy their regiments of workmen and storm the works I Men are just as truly giving up their lives on the steep soft slopes of Cucurache slide as were they who gave them up at Gettysburg I It seems to me I have never seen anything finer than this spirit at Panama. After years of hearing of the shame of corrupt politics and of the inhumanity of industry in Amer- ica, it is refreshing, indeed, to find here not only an exempli- fication of the ancient fiber of the race but a realization of its newest ideals. When I began making inquiries about Colonel Goethals's personal history, for it seemed highly important that we should know something of the origin and training of the new leadership, I found almost no available material beyond the colorless facts of his military record. He has never courted publicity, he never makes a speech if he can help it, he has none of that political instinct which so readily coins pictur- esque personal facts into popular interest. He has always been a worker, not a talker; and it is by his work that he wishes to be judged. But through somewhat extended in- quiries not only at Panama, but at Washington, West Point, and in New York City, I have been able to gather some inter- esting and significant facts showing from what sources and by what training Colonel Goethals has risen. Colonel Goethals is fifty-five years old. He was bom in Schermerhom Street near the old Talmage Church in the heart of the city of Brooklyn, New York. His father and mother were both Hollanders. His grandfather, who was a physician, came to America early in the last century, but later returned to Holland and died there. I found that Lewis S. Burchard, a classmate of Colonel Goethals at the College of
