THE PROPHET ENGINEER.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13495, 15 June 1914, Page 8

THE PROPHET ENGINEER.

• "If Colonel Goethals had been an 1 Englishman and had built the Panama Canal and governed the zone for England, he would have been made a' peer of the realm. A title for him has indeed been suggested—Lord Culebra," says the "Outlook." At the presentation to him of" the Civic Forum medal, a poem, written for the occasion, was read by its author, Percy MacKaye. It is not only a fine example of occasional verse, but a stirring description of Colonel Goethals's task, and of the spirit in which he accomplished it, as the following stanzas show:— 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. For' a poet wrought in Panama, With a continent for his theme. And he wrote with flood and fire, To forge a planet's dream, And the 'derricks rang his dithyrambs, And his stanzas roared in steam. Where old Balboa bent his gaze He leads the liners through. And the Horn that tossed Magellan Bellows a far halloo, For where the navies never sailed Steamed Goethals and his crew. So nevermore the tropic routes Need poleward warp and veer, But on through the Gates of Goethals The steady keels shall steer, Where the tribes of man are led toward peace By the prophet-engineer.