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1914?). After all, why be slaves to fashion?

Ah, but their dinners are delightful! And the British officers' red mess-jackets are beautiful! And their wearers appear to find American women amusing. It is mutual. When I first came, I could not get the British army accent. One young subaltern had been telling me the greatest lot at a dance-I couldn't understand a word. Finally I stopped him, and said he'd have to excuse me, but I had only been over a little while, and couldn't understand English yet!

There is an old dear of a British major who is forever giving AngloAmerican parties at the Muscovite.

Our dinners are not so good, but our big parties are perfect. We are better at romping than at conversation.

One of the aides at our Embassy advised a pretty Georgian princess: "If you want a good time, go with the American Navy; but if you want to get married, cultivate the British." Our Navy isn't marrying out here to any extent. They are just having a glorious time in between hard, cold trips into Russia or down to forsaken holes like Mersina or Samsoun.

There was a great deal of entertaining done for the Utah. She was here for three weeks in November, with Admiral Niblack, Commander of our European Squadron, on board. The town was turned upside down to entertain them. Our Embassy gave dinners, dances, and teas. The Italians gave them a ball at their beautiful place that was once the Austrian Embassy. The Utah reciprocated with two big tea-dances on board and any number of luncheons and dinners. Admiral Niblack was greatly intrigued by the spectacle of Turkish ladies dancing at our Embassy. He wired to Mrs. Niblack: "Turkish women very beautiful. Come at once!" And she did come, on the next train from the Riviera. Then the Embassy gave another set of parties for her.

Coming home from these parties late at night, I have seen and heard dreadful things on the street. I just get as far back in the araba as I can and shut my eyes sometimes. Of course the Allied police keep some sort of order in the main streets, but Colonel Ballard, their chief, says, "If you want to be murdered, you can be murdered-just wander around in dark alleys!" The Turkish night watchman is a joke. He carries a big stick and goes "tap, tap, tap," on the pavement, so that thieves will hear him coming and run away. It is creepy to hear him calling out where there is a fire in the middle of the night. And every night there are fires.

I wanted to visit one of the Turkish public schools, but it seems that the present Minister of Education is very much afraid of Christian interference, and nobody dared take me. But I did spend a morning in the best private school in Stamboul. It is kept by Nakya Hanum, a quite emancipated woman. She takes children from five to seven

teen years old; boys and girls together, which is very unusual. It was a pleasant place, shut away from the world in the midst of a rather untidy garden. But the teaching methods were antiquated and the lack of equipment pathetic. In the kindergarten half a dozen of the cleverest children were shown off-they did complicated dances for half an hour-while the rest stood against the wall, looking wistful. One little boy was dressed as a girl; he had long curly hair tied with a red ribbon. His mother had many sons and wanted a daughter, so she just plays he is one. They say it is quite common.

Every mosque has classes of whiteturbaned boys studying the Koran. The Y. W. and Y. M. C. A. conduct classes of all kinds. Although the Turks are afraid of American education, for fear that religion will be thrown in with the rest, an American professional man is looked up to as an oracle. Dr. Hoover, of the American hospital, and Dr. Barton, the American dentist, are just kings out in this part of the world.

Last Sunday I dragged Clee to church by the ear. The first time in two years. The foreign population here has rather free and easy notions of religion. The Turks pray five times a day; they fall on their knees and turn their faces toward Mecca, wherever they happen to be, at the muezzin's cry. But there is no American minister outside of the col leges. We went to the Dutch chapel, and heard a British army chaplain.

And this morning we went againthis time to the chapel in what used to be the Russian Embassy. There are no seats in the Russian church, you know; we stood, for two hours, while more and more crowded in. They were all washed and dressed with extra care. The music was glorious; just singing, so sad and deep. Every one put something into a collection basket, and I saw a woman with tragic eyes drop in an unset diamond among the dirty five-piaster pieces.

It made me ache-I'm going for a walk out toward the "Sweet Waters," in the sunshine.

Later.

We've had a glorious walk, and came back in a caique, down the Sweet Waters into the Golden Horn, past Eyoub. That is the Turkish cemetery where Pierre Loti's sweetheart is said to be buriedthe one in "Les Desenchantées." Here and there on the hills there were Turks blissfully enjoying keyeff. That's their favorite sport; it means less than doing nothing-just being nothing. And we passed Baron Uchida, fishing peacefully from the bank. There are some happy people here, after all; I feel better. Good-night. FRANCES.

Constantinople, April 1, 1922. Good morning, Sam:

Since my last letter I've traveled fast and far. First there was Christmas, six weeks of it-ours, after that the Greek and Armenian, then the Russian. There were three different sets of holidays.

The restaurants kept open all night. Little boys went from door to door with colored paper lanterns and drums, singing queer Eastern Christmas chants. We were living in rooms just off the Rue du Petit Poisson Mort that week. That's a very queer street. I didn't like the look of it, but it was an experience, too. The walls of my room could have told strange stories, I'm sure. It had a latticed baywindow and smelled musty and old. When we came in late at night, Frau Fiedler, the funny old German woman who tended my fire and so on, had to let us in. We knocked on the iron outer door, and after a while it would open mysteriously. Inside, we looked up and saw her leaning out of a little window, holding the string that puiled the latch, looking like a funny old fairy in her ruffled nightcap and wishing us a "gute nacht"!

On Christmas Eve we had dinner at the Muscovite. It was very gay, but not a bit like Christmas. Then one of our men went to the piano and played "Holy Night, Silent Night." I found myself crying into the champagne. It was my first Christmas away from home. We went on to such a nice dance at the Embassy-a family party, nearly all Americans. At twelve o'clock the music stopped suddenly; the Admiral kissed Mrs. Bristol and wished her a Merry Christmas. Then he turned to me and said, "Come and kiss the old man!" And I had to weep again, and laugh; he sounded just like father, and I wasn't homesick any more. After the dance I stayed up till daylight, trimming a little tree to surprise Clee in the morning. He was so pleased with the little foolish things on it.

Toward the last of January it began to get rainy and horrid. Everybody looked fagged out with the prolonged celebration. So a party of us went to Egypt and the Holy Land for six weeks. We came back in March, to find the sky all blue for the summer (the sun shines here for six months of the year), the street flower markets gay with sweet violets, yellow mimosa, scarlet anemones, almond blossom-oh, so lovely! Every Sunday there's a picnic somewhere. We go to Prinkipo or Halki, in the sea of Marmora; or up the Bosphorus toward the Black Sea. One evening we had supper in a ruined palace garden, over on the Asiatic side. A harem, it used to be one of Abdul Hamid's. All open now to the four winds; gilt chairs with brocade hanging in tatters, great mirror-lined halls. All along the shore are places falling in ruins like that-Turkey is so poor. Have you read "Stamboul Nights," by a man named Dwight, who lived out here for years? He will make you feel what I feel in these places but can't express.

Soon the gay summer season will begin. The Embassies will move to Therapia, and there will be more picnics, more moonlight on the Golden Horn. Pray for me, or I may never come home! FRANCES.

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From Albert B. Herrman, Santa Cruz, California

HAULING TIMBER FROM THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS Ox-teams are less common in the Central West now than in pioneer days; Chicago recently had difficulty in procuring such a team for the transportation parade, it is said. But in the region near Santa Cruz, California, our correspondent says, oxen are in constant use for bringing timber and firewood out of the canyons and gulches where horses or mules would be useless

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CANOEING DURING A VACATION IN THE ONTARIO WOODS "The picture preserves for me," our contributor writes, "one of the most thrilling moments of a memorable vacation. The canoeists are shown running a rapid well named The Needle's Eye,' on the Maguetawan River. The entire river here narrows from a stream a hundred yards wide to twenty or thirty feet, plunging through a miniature gorge. The innocent-looking wave on the side of the birch canoe almost stopped her voyage by dropping a couple of barrels of water aboard"

racy,

THE BOOK TABLE

A GREAT AMBASSADOR 1

A PERSONAL IMPRESSION

BY EDWIN A. ALDERMAN

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

HE Life and Letters of Walter H. Page" is a book of great distinction. As a document of democas the unfolding of a career constituting a complete and inspiring definition of Americanism, this book must appeal to thoughtful people all over the world, and as a colorful, graphic picture of men, atmosphere, events, and social conditions in the two great English-speaking democracies under the strain of war it is an invaluable contribution to history. Mr. Hendrick has wisely let Walter Page tell the story in his glowing, pungent letters and memoranda; but he has done the work of compilation and comment with skill and restraint, combined with a certain ardor in the portrayal of his subject that stirs the sympathy and interest of the reader. This is not a book that one skips about in or dips into here and there. If you begin it, you finish it with a rush of pride in the story, with the sensation of having met an unforgetable man, with a gasp of sympathy for the sheer courage and tragedy of his career.

My qualifications for reviewing this notable work rest upon an acquaintance and an association with Walter Page of forty-three years. We were born in the same old Southern State of North Carolina and in essentially the same era, though he was my senior by six years. Our section was struggling on under the paralysis of war and seeking grimly and bravely to find its place in modern industrial democracy. There was everywhere then in the homes of good people in the South an atmosphere of seriousness and unselfishness. Most of us felt, even in the full tide of buoyant youth, that we must make ourselves fit to be helpful in the rebuilding so plainly before us and that we must stay where we were and use our fitness in bettering conditions right at our doors. This feeling was an obsession with Page, and, though he actually spent only a few years in his home State, and those turbulent and unsatisfactory, his heart and his dreams were always there. He became a cosmopolitan in the highest sense-a true citizen of the world; but his day dreams forever played about the sand-hills of North Carolina and the prosperity of the South. Indeed, perhaps the most poignant scene set forth in these volumes is the scene of the wasted, broken man on the Scottish moors planning to return "home," fancying that health would come back to him

1 The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page. Edited by Burton Hendrick. 2 vols. Doubleday, Tige & Co., New York. $10.

in that old air, smiling wistfully at his son a few days before his death as he was lifted from the train at Pinehurst, and exclaiming: "Well, Frank, I did get here after all, didn't I?”.

I saw Walter Page for the first time forty-two years ago. He was then a young man twenty-four years of age, and I a lad at college. He was standing on a platform at the summer session of the University of North Carolina, talking to a group of teachers with fierce eagerness and a kind of defiant intellectual confidence about the value to them to be got out of studying the Greek language and literature. It did not strike me as a very live thesis at the time, but he was putting life into it, and to spare. I recall that I rejoiced in the fact that he seemed to be flouting the oratorical pomposities current at the time in all American, and especially Southern, speaking. He wore no black frock coat, and did not even thrust his right hand into the lapels of the coat which he did wear, which was of rough tweed. His hands were in his pockets, in fact, and, though he "bawled out" his company every now and then, his gestures were few and his manner conversational. saw him for the last time in October, 1914, standing in the doorway of the old American Embassy, on Victoria Street in London, bidding me good-by on my homeward voyage.. He was then preparing to move the Embassy to worthier quarters in Grosvenor Place, but the staff was still there. In many ways he was the same man who was urging Greek discipline upon the Carolina teachers a generation before, with the same unconventionality (he was shouting gentle insults at me for remaining in London so long after the beginning of the war instead of going "on home"), the same vigor and charm. Marks of care and toil were plainly upon him, but also evidences of high pride and purpose, as he undertook the duties of a mission destined to mark a new era in the story of Anglo-American understanding.

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The record of Walter Page's life and achievements during the thirty-five years between these two memories is fully and faithfully set forth in Mr. Hendrick's book, and constitutes a splendid proof of what talents and purposes and labor can bring forth in American life, even if the Ambassadorship to Great Britain during a World War had not fallen to his lot. Walter Hines Page was born in the little village of Cary, near Raleigh, North Carolina, August 15, 1855. His racial stock was pure English, with a

Huguenot strain. His parents were vigorous, forceful people of pioneer breed. He was well educated in the best schools of his region, and came to manhood just in time to be captivated by the fame of the great scholars Daniel C. Gilman had called around him at Johns Hopkins University. I have never understood why he fell upon Greek as his mistress there unless it was the dominating personality and style of Gildersleeve that caught his fancy. He was happy enough in the task of interpreting Eschylus and the comedies of Aristophanes, but he balked at philologica! grinding in the deep marshes of Greek syntax and Byzantine writers, "fulminated against the grammarians" and fought toward his life's job of studying social conditions, describing the scene of life as he saw it, discovering excellence, shouting at shams, and fighting like a trooper for the things that seemed to him good and durable. The cloister tugged hard at Page. He even considered the ministry as a calling in his youth, his mind doubtless dwelling upon its obvious opportunities for expression, but the world rather than the cloister, won for the world's good. "I am sure that I have mistaken my life-work, if I consider Greek my life-work. In truth, at times I am tempted to throw the whole thing away. . . . But without a home feeling in Greek literature no man can lay claim to high culture." So he would keep at it for three or four years and "then leave it as a man's work.” Despite these despairing words, Page acquired a living knowledge of Greek that was one of his choicest possessions through life. That he made a greater success than his self-depreciation would imply is evident from the fact that his fellowship was renewed for the next

year.

At the age of twenty-three Page grappled with life in earnest, and for the next twenty years he may be seen roving from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Boston, Massachusetts, in ever-increasing posts of difficulty, but with perfect unity of purpose, striving to comprehend the currents of American life, to interpret them to various sections, and to express them vividly and fairly. He was in turn teacher, lecturer, reporter, editor, student of sociological problems, from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Utah, and finally found himself in the managership of the "Forum," a moribund magazine which he quickly restored to vigor and prosperity. At forty Page achieved the top of his profession by becoming editor of the "Atlantic Monthly." His final progress to the partnership of Doubleday, Page & Co. and the founding of the "World's Work," with which his name will always be associated, followed naturally out of the talents displayed in this field and out of his desire for independ ence economically and spiritually.

I first came into intimate contact with

him in 1897, when I sat on the platform of the State Normal College at Greensboro and heard his famous address "The Forgotten Man," wherein he formulated a great programme of educational development for the Southern States. Five years before Charles D. McIver and I, with the daring of youth and the enthusiasm of ignorance, had set ourselves the task of proving to the people of North Carolina that it was the privilege and duty of a democratic State, through the instrument of taxation, to educate all of its children, high and low, rich and poor, black and white, from the primary school to the university. This was then a new doctrine in the South, and those who fought for it had need of faith and will. It is an old and accepted doctrine now, and nowhere more completely than in North Carolina, but then its friends were not in authority. It was, however, one of those things that just had to be done. Page, ever on the alert for a stiff fight in a good cause, smelled the battle from afar and came into it with a bound. That speech, with its appealing title, was a piece of heavy artillery in the contest, and its reverberations are still to be heard. I do not think that anything held Page's interest more closely until the outbreak of the World War than the educational struggle in the South and in the Nation to put the life of the common man and his child upon a sound, hopeful educational and economic basis. This programme meant to him, not only more schools, but sensible schools, farming as an intelligent business, care of the public health, and the promotion of all agencies looking to the elevation of standards of living. He found-all of us in this battle found-in the Southern Education Board, and later in the General Education Board, great, far-seeing, wisely controlled agencies for advancing those ends. His magazine and his business delighted him and gave him pleasure in these fruitful days of his life, but his chiefest satisfaction lay in co-operation with the men at work in these constructive fields. He somehow envisaged it al! as a great victorious battle. There lies before me as I write an old copy of his book "The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths," sent to me at New Orleans, where I then lived and directed the work of promoting public education in that region. It is inscribed in his scriptlike hand-writing

To

Brigadier-General Alderman
Commanding the Division
of the Southwest,
W. H. P.
April, 1902.

Page thoroughly believed that the only true measure of any civilization was the extent to which it improved the condition of the common citizen and offered him "equality of opportunity." To this end his hearty co-operation with these Boards was directed and his maga

zine was made to play its part in the interpretation of American life and to set forth in a vital, picturesque, but accurate way the progress the county was making in democracy, education, agriculture, industry, social life, and politics. For nearly a decade a group of men associated with educational activities were accustomed to assemble at the home of Mr. George Foster Peabody on Lake George each summer to discuss

WALTER H. PAGE

and plan for the promotion of such interests. Page was always there, vital, soaring, argumentative, optimistic, ready to discuss anything-especially the futility and emptiness of most of the writing that came to his desk-abounding in humor, bluff heartiness, and generally happy over the discovery of some new man somewhere who was doing some concrete thing better than anybody else. I recall his delight in Seaman Knapp and Wyckliffe Rose. I remember his greeting me at Nashville with the remark, "Come on, I want to show you a man who has more sense than you and I put together," and he carried me off to meet David Lubin, the founder of the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome. There also stands out in my memory the passion that rang in his voice in a speech at Montgomery, when he recited his creed of democracy to the

great throng assembled to discuss the educational needs of the South:

I believe in the free public training of both the hands and the mind of every child born of woman.

I believe that by the right training of men we add to the wealth of the world. All wealth is the creation of man, and he creates it only in proportion to the trained uses of the community; and the more men we train, the more wealth every one may create.

I believe in the perpetual regeneration of society, and in the immortality of democracy and in growth everlasting.

445

Woodrow Wilson, therefore, when he selected Page for the English post was not choosing, as many people imagined. a brilliant literary man with a genius for editorship alone. He was naming for a task of unimagined complexity a sincere philosophical democrat who had thought out and talked out that high hope until the conception thrilled and exalted and stimulated him as religion used to guide its devotees in the age of faith. He was setting apart for enduring international service a man of courage with a talent for co-operation but little stomach for compromise. He was sending to England a man of imagination, of intellectual resource, and an artist in the use of language. Page was not a politician, but forever, as I have said, on the lookout for excellence. He beheld in Woodrow Wilson a man of strong intellect, dignity of character and purpose, and he quickly rallied to his leadership. I have always believed that in his secret heart he would have preferred the Secretaryship of Agriculture in the President's Cabinet to any other office, though he would have scorned to seek it or to obtrude himself into any problem. He was not a "dirt farmer" in any just sense, but I believe he would have rendered notable service in that office, for no man in America had at heart more genuinely the welfare of the farmer or believed more intensely that agriculture must be made a business and given every opportunity to apply science to the production and distribution of the products of the soil. He worked loyally for the election of Mr. Wilson, and immediately upon his election was at him with carefully prepared briefs suggesting lines of policy in the interests of agriculture and education and urging that he gather around him strong, capable men. His letters to me during the interval between the election and inauguration show an interest almost amounting to excitement in the character and purposes of the unusual, lonely man upon whom had fallen this "monstrous job." The two had known each other since their student days at Johns Hopkins.

They were intellectually and morally akin, because of their common possession of style in writing, taste in literature, hatred of the secondrate thing or man, and faith in democracy.

Page's place in American history, in the minds of most of his countrymen, will rest upon his services in England during the World War. He sailed for England on the Baltic in May, 1913. He was not a rich man, and had debated the wisdom of undertaking the Ambassadorship from many angles, but he loved adventure of the mind and the great task called to him. He departed absorbed wholly, as was his chief, in domestic affairs, but with his eyes open and his brain racing like a trip-hammer. His plastic, inquisitive mind got to work at once upon his new and strange existence. He began a study of England and the English that soon expressed it

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It had never occurred to him

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E seemed to have all the qualifications for business. success. Yet, somehow or other, he didn't advance as he should have. Something seemed to stand in his way.

The thing that held him back was in itself a little thing. But one of those little things that rest so heavily in the balance when personalities are being weighed and measured for the bigger responsibilities of business.

Halitosis (the medical term for unpleasant breath) never won a man promotion in the business world-and never will. Some men succeed in spite of it. But usually it is a handicap. And the pathetic part of it is that the person suffering from halitosis is usually unaware of it himself. Even his closest friends don't mention it.

Sometimes, of course, halitosis arises from some deep-rooted organic disorder; then professional help is required. Smoking often causes it, the finest cigar becoming the offender even hours after it has given the smoker pleasure. Usually-and fortunately, however-halitosis yields to the regular nse of Listerine as a mouth-wash and gargle.

Recognized for half a century as the safe antiseptic, Listerine possesses properties that quickly meet and defcat unpleasant breath. It halts food fermentation in the mouth and leaves the breath sweet, fresh and clean.

Its systematic use this way puts you on the safe and polite side. Then you need not be disturbed with the thought of whether or not your breath is right. You know it is.

Your druggist will supply you. He sells a great deal of Listerine. For it has dozens of different uses as an antiseptic. Note the booklet with each bottle. Lambert Pharmacal Company, Saint Louis, U. S. A.

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in the form of letters, hitting off English life, its strength and weakness, in a fashion marked by humor and truth. He was attracted by the English, but he saw their weaknesses and frailties, and pictured them frankly and so naturally that the record constitutes a sympa

thetic portrayal of British society before WHITING-ADAMS

and during the war and, in addition, furnishes a comparison of high value between the ways of an aristocratic society addicted to democracy in government and the ways of this Republic. Nothing escaped him and every impression found utterance in quaint, humorous, discerning phrase.

Page wrote many articles and made many speeches, and they were all good, but his claim to distinction in the field of literature rests upon his letters. These letters reveal him as a master of that most human form of literary expression. At the memorial exercises held in his honor in New York in April, 1919, I ventured to make this prophecy: "If he shall not be adjudged the best letter writer of his generation, I shall be much mistaken." These volumes sustain my prophecy, I dare to claim, and Walter Page has found, without conscious seeking, a permanent place in American literature.

Page spent five continuous years in England, save for a short furlough in America in 1917. The Mexican crisis and the Panama tolls tested his power of statesmanship immediately, and it quickly became clear that this American gentleman, untrained in diplomacy, had a statesman's mind and a breadth of view that placed him securely among the unusual men whom America has sent to Great Britain. And then the Great Smash came. It was my fortune to be his guest in London and at his quiet little home in Surrey during the days which saw the first battle of the Marne. I was a witness of the first flood of work that came rushing upon him and of the unhurrying confidence with which he accepted the burden and grappled with his labors. I shall not here undertake to recite these labors. The reader of these volumes will see the man at work and catch glimpses of his mind and soul that will not fade from the memory. He saw from the start the real issues at stake. His beloved democracy was menaced by a mighty foe. That was the main thing. Driving in from his country place one morning in early September, 1914, as we reached London, we saw the young recruits in golf caps and tweeds who were forming Kitchener's army marching about the streets. Pointing at them in his eager way, he said: "Those men must cross the Rhine, or democracy as we understand it will cease to exist." He believed that America must share in this battle for the doctrine which had made her great and unique among nations. He believed that the leadership of the world must pres ently fall into American hands and be applied to the highest uses of democracy. He had the courage to like the English, to discern the essential kinship

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