When the announcement was made to the country that the work of building the canal was to be put in the hands of the Army, the whole country began to inquire: Who is Major Goethals? that inquiry revealed the fact that he was a man who had accomplished much in his 49 years. Born in 1858, of Dutch parents, whose ancestors had settled in New York when it was still New Amsterdam, he was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point where he was graduated in the class of 1880 with such honors that he was entitled to enter the Engineer Corps of the Regular Army. In 1891 he rose to the rank of captain, and in 1898 became lieutenant colonel and chief engineer of the First Volunteer Army Corps in Cuba. On the last day of that year he was honorably discharged from the volunteer service, and, in 1900, became a major in the Engineer Corps of the Regular Army. For a number of years prior to 1898 he had been instructor in civil and military engineering at West Point. He had been in charge of the Mussel Shoals canal construction on the Tennessee River, a work which won praise from engineers both in civil and in military life. It was in a measure his record made on the Tennessee River work that led to his appointment as chairman and chief engineer of the Isthmian Canal. When he took charge of the work at Panama he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Arriving there he immediately informed all hands that while the work of building the canal had been placed under Army engineers, no man who was then on the job and faithfully executing his work need fear anything from that administration. From that time down to the last stages of the work that statement held good. Trained at West Point, brought up in the atmosphere of the Army, a lover of its traditions and in full sympathy with its spirit, he laid aside everything that might handicap the success of the undertaking and sought at once to get the full benefit of all that was best in the Army and in civil life as well. He put his uniform in moth balls when he started to the Isthmus, and from that day to this no man has ever seen him on the Canal Zone wearing an Army uniform.