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 all 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

То

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"

It had never

occurred to him

E seemed to have all the

H 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 use 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.

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 sympathetic portrayal of British society before 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 presently 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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66

THE GIST OF IT ALL

The nation has had a Postal Savings Bank since January, 1911. Every other savings bank in the world makes at least a pretense of serving the interest of depositors, getting for them the largest possible returns consistent with safety and availability.

The Postal Savings Bank has been shackled by the opposite rule, attempting to get from depositors as much money as possible for the least possible interest, paying them only 2 per cent per annum, on money left in the bank at least one year. In practice this return is less than 1% per cent. Furthermore, the law permits the funds in the Postal Savings Bank to be loaned to commercial banks at 24 per cent, the banks loaning it to the Government, and to the people, at anywhere from two to four and five times that rate, and yet at no time has the market price for money on the solidest security been less than 31% to 4 per cent, and today is 6% to 8 and 9 per cent. It is now proposed:

First-The Postal Savings Bank shall be open and accessible to all without limit as to amounts that may be deposited, and interest thereon paid for any period of time, as is customary with commercial banks.

Second-These deposits shall be loaned at the market price for money on security that is good beyond question. This should make, in these times, the net income for deposits at least 6 per cent, gradually diminishing to 5 or less as world prosperity returns.

Third-Four per cent semi-annual compound interest will go directly to depositors.

To Men of Business

To men of business, "big" and "little." To all who toil.

To stimulate "thrift and saving" among the millions who labor --such as the world has never before seen.

To stabilize business, build confidence, pour the oil of peace and prosperity on the troubled waters of unrest.

To get for YOU who are now "thrifty" 4 per cent, compounded semiannually, on your "daily balance" of every surplus dollar you possess-even the dollars in your pocket, cash drawer and safe.

To get for YOU whenever you want to "borrow money, all you want and can adequately secure, for "long time or short time, at the market price for money.

Without an iota of "fiat" fallacy, without an atom of "inflation." Without a shadow of “injustice or of "favoritism" to any class" or

"interest." To do all this:

Unfetter the existing Postal Savings Bank, now "shackled " hamstrung"-by cunning, short-sighted, selfish greed.

Three Billion Dollars

"REAL MONEY"-INTEREST FREE. No "bluff " about it, no "magic," no "fiat" fallacy, no "inflation."

One hundred and twenty million dollars or more in taxes, yearly, saved right in your pocket and mine!

All available by a little "practical sense" and JUSTICE-see the book for details.

Fourth-The balance of the profits shall be paid twice a year into the United States Treasury, thus making possible the reduction of taxes and thereby benefiting the whole citizenship, including, of course, the depositors. This, it is estimated, should bring into the U. S. Treasury, without taxing anybody one cent, an annual income of at least $120,000,000, to possibly $300,000,000 or more.

Fifth-Every banking institution in the United States in good standing may become an agent for the Postal Savings Bank, both to receive deposits and to make loans, receiving a small commission on both deposits and loans.

The Postal Savings Bank will thus become the greatest and strongest bank in the world, one vast national reservoir of the people's savings, available for loans to all who furnish proper security. There will be no favoritism to any class or interests-practically no limitation to loans except the limitation of good security and use in harmony with public good.

Sixth-The present gold standard is not affected and will be permanently maintained, yet gold is made no longer either a fetish or a scarecrow.

Seventh-The Postal Savings Bank will be placed beyond the power of domination by any interest or class. It will have no power of either inflation or contraction, these powers being left in the exclusive possession of the existing Federal Reserve Banks.

Eight-It will quickly mobilize and put into ordinary bank channels over three billion dollars ($3,000,000,000) of money not now in any bank-the identical kind of money that is now the foundation resource of all banks.

Ninth-With this bill in operation there will be scores of millions of depositors, instead of half a million as at present, with deposits exceeding thirty billions, possibly soon nearer one hundred billions, instead of one hundred and fifty-five million deposits as when this is written.

Bankers with Brains, Vision,

Conscience and Patriotism (plenty of all four cordially recognized) will see, not antagonismi, but co-operation in an unshackled Postal Savings Bank.

Bank prosperity goes naturally with industrial prosperity which the freed Postal Bank will enormously stimulate.

PATRIOTISM-the freed Postal will absorb the entire National debt and provide resource practically unlimited for National emergencies, at low interest, without perceptibly trenching on commercial funds.

CONSCIENCE-it is not believable that honorable bankers approve of the way Uncle Sam has been "used to get the money of Postal Bank depositors at one-third to one-fifth of the "market price for money "-95 per cent of it going to bankers' use.

PROFIT-legitimate, honorable, in return for economic service, will go to bankers in commissions on both deposits and loans of the Postal Bank-profits 100 times greater than had in the past from "skinned" depositors in Postal.

Balking Bandits and Burglars

No more U. S. mail robberies; no more pay-roll "hold-ups ;" INCIDENTAL results of an unfettered Postal Savings Bank.

Every certificate of deposit, whether $1 or $1,000, is to order," or " to bearer at the option of its owner; if "to order" bandit or burglar can't "cash" or "pass" without identification and consequent arrest-no inducement to steal or rob.

Another INCIDENTAL result is, certificates of deposit are good anywhere in the United States or world-the same as "gold certificates," thus doing away with present enormous cost of "bank exchange," and risk of money transportation.

An unfettered Postal Savings Bank would bring billions of dollars to bankers-bring tens of billions to men who toil-justly, expediently, bring prosperity and "peace"-in exchange for the "economic war "of the past-and of the present.

Outlook readers.

money or return book.

Address

Publisher

THE BOOK TABLE Continued) between his country and England in their common ideals of law and justice and their similar codes of manners and morals. And, finally, he came to believe that the greatest of all political tasks was to effect an understanding between these two great self-governing peoples, constituting, in his thought, the backbone of modern civilization. In a letter to me, written June, 1916, he said: "The thing, the only thing is a perfect understanding between the English-speaking peoples. That's necessary and that's all that's necessary. We must boldly take the lead in that. I frankly tell my friends here that the English have got to throw away their damned arrogance and their insularity and that we Americans have got to throw away our provincial ignorance ('What is abroad to us?'), hang our Irish agitators and shoot our hyphenates, and bring up our children with reverence for English history and in the awe of English literature. This is the only job now in the world worth the whole zeal and energy of all first-class, thoroughbred English-speaking men. We must lead. We are natural leaders. The English must be driven 'to lead."

Under the impulsion of these great convictions and carrying them forward fearlessly, it came about that he and the President did not see eye to eye as to policies and procedures. Page did not falter, but pounded away at the PresiIdent himself and at his wise, unselfish old friend, Colonel House. It is a strange, frank correspondence. These volumes relate in a moving way how, after we finally entered the war in April, 1917, the pent-up conclusions of Page's fiery spirit poured forth to the Government in suggestions of genuine foresight and good sense. The plain American journalist became an international statesman who not only had held together the two countries for their mighty association, but by discernment and intuition indicated the lines of common endeavor most suitable for winning the war.

I did not see my old friend after he came home to die. The victory had been won and he heard from his bed the ringing of the bells and the shouting. I know that he faced death like a proud man, knowing that he had fought stoutly for the great faith and had found a place in the hearts of his countrymen and perhaps of all English-speaking peoples.

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The facility, indeed the Speed, with which its business is transacted through the mails is winning it golden opinions.

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Name... Address

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Exact date of birth..