The feudal authority, the patriarchal power which Col. Goethals possesses over the means of livelihood of every man on the Zone, nay more, over their very right to stay on the Zone at all, gives to his decisions more immediate effect than attends those of a court. The man who incurs his displeasure may lose his job, be ousted from his lodgings and deported from the Isthmus if the Colonel so decrees. A Jamaican negress came in to complain that her husband took her earnings away from her; would not work himself but lived and loafed on the fruits of her industry. The Colonel ordered the man to allow her to keep her earnings. The man demurred saying sullenly that the English law gave a husband command over his wife’s wages. [Illustration: A SIDE DRILL CREW AT WORK] “All right,” said the Colonel, “you’re from Jamaica. I’ll deport you both and you can get all the English law you want”. The husband paid back the money he had confiscated and the pair stayed. Family affairs are aired in the Colonel’s court to a degree which must somewhat abash that simple and direct warrior. What the dramatists call “the eternal triangle” is not unknown on the Zone, nor is the unscriptural practice of coveting your neighbor’s wife wholly without illustration. For such situations the Colonel’s remedy is specific and swift--deportation of the one that makes the trouble. Sometimes the deportation of two has been found essential, but while gossip of these untoward incidents is plentiful in the social circles of Culebra and Ancon the judge in the case takes no part in it. It is not in me to write a character sketch of Col. Goethals. That is rather a task for one who has known him intimately and has been able to observe the earlier manifestations of those qualities that led President Roosevelt to select him as the supreme chief of the canal work. All his life he has been an army engineer, having a short respite from active work in the field when he was professor of engineering at West Point. Fortifications and locks were his specialties and fortifications and locks have engaged his chief attention since he undertook the Panama job. Perhaps it is due to his intensely military attitude that the public has insensibly come to look upon the canal in its quality as an aid to national defense rather than a stimulus to national commerce. For the Colonel any discussion of the need for fortifying the canal was the merest twaddle, and he had his way. He begged long for a standing army of 25,000 men on the Zone, but it is doubtful whether he will win this fight. Moreover he would so subordinate all considerations to the military one that he urges the expulsion from the Zone of all save canal employees that the danger of betrayal may be less. How far that policy shall be approved by Congress is yet to be determined. Thus far however the Colonel has handled Congress with notable success and even there his dominant spirit may yet triumph. [Illustration: THE COLONEL’S FIRE WORKS