Drawn From Life

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PUBLIC LIBRARY

Kansas City, Mo.
Keep Your Card in this Pocket

BBRKOWITZ ENVELOPe CO., K. C., HO.

KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LIBRAFT,

D OOD1

o M

LIFE

Mark Twain

DRA

FROM
LIFE

by

S. J. Woolf

WHITTLESEY HOUSE

NEW YORK AND LONDON

by

WOOLF

4 ^lf lights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

**** not be reproduced in any form without

permission of the author.

FIRST EDITION

Published by
WHITTLESEY HOUSE

A Division of the
MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC.

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

GRATEFUL acknowledgment is made to the New York
Times for the right to use such material as has ap
peared in its columns. Thanks are also due to the New
York Herald Tribune, Mrs. Henry Moskowitz, George C.
Smith, Jr., Esq., Samuel Finley Thomas, Esq., the German-
town Friends School and the Schwartz Galleries for permission
to reproduce some of the drawings, and to Harlow MacDonald
& Company who own the copyright of the lithograph of
Mark Twain.

Contents

i

Introductory 3

II

<z3xCark Tivain 10
Oliver *&Dendell Holmes 14

III

(jfeorge ^Bernard Shais> 19

IV
in stein 30

V

42

VI
^Alfred . Smith 5 i

VII

60

VIII

Sir James Jeans 70

IX

80

fi* I

X

*Aristide e Briand 88

XI
*3xCurray "Butler 97

XII
Wilbur <. Cross 1 06

XIII
William . Borah 1 1 6

XIV
Qeorges Clemenceau I 24

XV

Winston Spencer Churchill 132

XVI

Henri <^fCatisse 141

XVII

Ignace ^Paderefjoski 151

XVIII
Gfeorge T^ussell (^E) 159

XIX

Ramsay <z3XCac f Dona/d 167

XX

hito <&Cussolini ,177

XXI

Toscanini < 1 8 8

XXII

QustaiJ Stresemanh 198

XXIII
Glihu c R^pt 205

XXIV
Charles S"vans Hughes 214

XXV

<^ndreiv W. tJXCellon 22 3 ^

XXVI
Charles <:JfrC. Schivab 232

XXVII
Julius l^osennva/d 243

XXVIII
Arthur ^Brisbane 251

XXIX
John 2X Itgckefeller, Jr. 263

XXX

William H. Welch 272

XXXI

John J. ^ershing 283

XXXII
Charles (?. Daives 293

XXXIII
Herbert Hoover 303

XXXIV

Sinclair J^eivis 312

XXXV
Cyilbert J^ Chesterton 321

XXXVI
Sir Thomas J^ipton 3 30

XXXVII
Walter 5P. C^ry s ^ er 339

XXXVIII
Walter C* T eagle 347

XXXIX
Walter fDamrosch 356

XL
Franklin 2). f Rooseve/f 364

XLI

^Booth T arkington 371

XLII
Charles <^f. J^indbergh 382

f*. TI
xujf

List of Drawings

MARK TWAIN
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
ALBERT EINSTEIN
CALVIN COOLIDGE
ALFRED E. SMITH
ROBERT A. MILLIKAN
SIR JAMES JEANS
PAUL CLAUDEL
ARISTIDE BRIAND
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
WILBUR L. CROSS
WILLIAM E. BORAH
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU
WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
HENRI MATISSE
IGNACE PADEREWSKI
GEORGE RUSSELL (AE)
R,AMSAY MACDONALD
BENITO MUSSOLINI

Frontispiece
IS

21

3 1
43
53
61

71
81

89

99
107

1*7
125

133

153
161
169
179

fxiiif

ARTURO TOSCANINI 189

GUSTAV STRESEMANN 199

ELIHU ROOT 207

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 215

ANDREW W. MELLON 225

CHARLES M. SCHWAB 233

JULIUS ROSENWALD 245

ARTHUR BRISBANE 253

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR. 265

WILLIAM H. WELCH 273

JOHN J. PERSHING 285

CHARLES G* DAWES 295

HERBERT HOOVER 305

SINCLAIR LEWIS 313

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 323

SIR THOMAS LIPTON 331

WALTER P. CHRYSLER 341

WALTER C TEAGLE 349

WALTER DAMROSCH 357

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT 365

BOOTH TARKINGTON 373

CHARLES A. LINDBERGH 383

frivj

DRAWN

FROM

LIFE

I

FOR some years I have been hunting the great. With
portfolio and charcoal and with pad and pencil I have
been making not only lineal impressions of them but
also verbal ones. In New York as well as Washington, in
Berlin, London, Rome, Paris, and Prague I have pursued
those whom the world holds in esteem.

A long procession of shadowy figures passes before me and
a host of memories attends them. Statesmen and authors,
painters and poets, financiers and scientists are all in the
ranks. As the procession has passed, from time to time I have
halted it and out of the crowd have picked one here, one there,
and from these I have made this book.

In writing about a man one has met, certain restrictions
impose themselves. Confidences must be respected, while
personal opinions must be subordinated if an impartial portrait
is to be presented. Moreover, men long prominent become
more or less fixed figures in the public mind. Often the
impression that is firmly rooted, though very different from
the man himself, has become so identified with the individual
that it takes more than one article to dispel the false picture,
if indeed it can be dispelled at all.

I have found the taciturn Coolidge talkative, the domineer
ing Mussolini docile, the satiric Shaw sympathetic. Under
Italian skies the cold, cruel former Crown Prince of Germany
has been kindly and humorous, and Einstein, remote and

[3}

absorbed in theories, has dunked his coffee in homely style
before me. No man is said to be a hero to his valet, but while
the valet lays out the clothes for his partially dressed master,
the artist also has an opportunity of really seeing his subject
despite the apparel which In most cases does not proclaim the
man.

There is no surer way of getting to know a person than
by drawing his picture. The silence that Is broken only by
the scratch of charcoal upon paper or brush on canvas seems
to remove restraint. The artist has his sitter at an unfair
advantage. One is working; the other sits quietly self-conscious.
It rarely happens that the subject does not relax and as a
usual thing in a short time he starts to talk. In this respect the
man who also draws has an advantage over his less fortunate
brother who only writes. His victim is disarmed* Nothing makes
for taciturnity or at least care in what Is said so much as a
writer s pad and pencil; nothing Is so likely to make even a
shy person talk as the quietness of a room la which some one
else is working.

And so, sitting in their offices, In their homes, or in their
workshops, these men have talked to me while I have been
drawing their portraits. The light and shade falling upon their
heads brought out their features and I tried to reproduce what
I saw, while at the same time I jotted down the high lights of
their conversations on the margin of the paper.

In both cases I have endeavored to give the Impression
that the subjects made upon me. My drawings are not photo
graphs nor are the articles phonograph reproductions. A broad
sweeping line may better portray the contour of a face than a
narrow halting one which delineates distracting details, and
the same is true of quotations. A man s speech, in both manner

and subject, has as many characteristics as his nose or eyes or
mouth. In a drawing the artist seizes upon those forms which
to him appear vital and perhaps exaggerates them in order
to convey the impression that his sitter makes. I have done the
same thing in words that I have done in line.

Yet it has been purely as an observer that I have met these
men and drawn their pictures. There has been no attempt to
delve into their innermost selves from a psychological point of
view, nor to interpret what they said. That has been left for the
reader. Yet despite the desire to draw what is seen and to write
what is heard, it is impossible not to permit one s own feelings to
enter into whatever one does. I have tried to keep mine in the
background as much as possible so that they would not distort
the pictures I have drawn, either by line or by word.

It goes without saying that some of the subjects appealed
to me more than others. Some of the drawings almost made
themselves; some of the articles required little work on my
part; they took form in my mind before I had put a word on
paper. Other subjects were more difficult, probably because I
was not so much in sympathy with them. But the strange thing
connected with this is the fact that the professions or occupa
tions of these diverse personalities apparently played no part
in the Interest they evoked. I have found men presumably
absorbed in business who were much more interesting than
some of those who had devoted their lives to the pursuit of
the muses; on the other hand I have seen business men
to whom nothing but money meant anything,

By and large, men who have achieved success are about as
interesting or as dull as the same number of individuals who
have not. Some waiters are more diverting than some writers,
some laborers more engrossing than some leaders of industry.

{[si

Men who are supposedly brilliant often were boring; others*
presumably colorless, sometimes were entertaining. Some have
gloated over their success and others have attributed it to any
thing but themselves. Some have liked to talk, others have
been silent. They are as varied as their appearances^ as
different as their pursuits.

This is to be expected, and yet one unconsciously looks
for some common element in all who achieve eminence, some
characteristic which all possess. I hate to be trite. "Self Help"
is a book which has done much harm. Picking up pins in a
crowded London street is not a particular quality that goes
to making successful bank presidents, The use of midnight
oil is as likely to cause the conflagration of a city as to produce
a burning success. And yet, looking back on all the men whom
I have drawn, I am inclined to think that none of them reached
the pinnacle with his eyes sometimes turned In another direc
tion. No half-hearted attempts succeeded. Each one of them
was absorbed in his particular calling.

This does not imply that they are of necessity narrow-
minded, that nothing apart from their own particular activities
holds any interest. There are scientists who love music, and
musicians who dabble in science. Paderewski has been in
j politics, but he compares statesmanship to piano playing.
i His country has been a keyboard on which he performed the
I overture of a nation. Even this is no exception, for his service
to his country was not given until years after his reputation
as a musician had been made. Einstein s violin playing is but a
diversion and plays no greater part in his life than does the
bricklaying of Churchill.

v And although no one comes to mind who has not apparently
striven with all the energy of which he was capable to achieve
{61

his position, nevertheless, in addition to purposeful concentra
tion, another element has entered. Another force over which the
individual himself had no control has also been at work. Over
and over again while drawing I have wondered if there were
not something, call it luck or chance or opportunity, which
has not also played an all important part. More and more
have I come to believe that toil and toil alone is not enough,
and that ability unattended by this other factor is not sufficient
to reach the goal. Of course, opportunity probably knocks at
all doors; the sense to open is requisite. Still, there is something
that is more than just opportunity, When you hear of a man
who through a mistake directed his letter to a wrong firm, and
as a result obtained a position which he did not set out for,
and which ultimately led to his becoming president of one
of the largest companies in America, while you cannot deny
his ability, you must still wonder what would have happened
had he not misaddressed his letter. That, incidentally, is the
story that Walter S. Gifford, president of the American Tele
phone and Telegraph Company, told me himself. It is uncer
tain what David Sarnoff of the Radio Corporation would be
doing if by mistake he had not applied at a Postal Telegraph
office for a job on a newspaper. Had there not happened to be
a vacancy in the Physics Department of Oberlin College,
Professor Millikan to-day might be teaching Greek instead
of delving into the make-up of the universe. The examples are
so countless that one wonders how many Michelangelos there
have been who never chanced to meet those popes who were
decorating Sistine Chapels.

I am not trying to tear halos from any one. I do not think
the halos exist. I am not endeavoring to detract one whit
from the genius of great men in any field. I do not for one

minute attempt to imply that men achieve reputations without
tremendous capacity. But I assuredly believe that more
geniuses have been born and died unsung than have ever been
heard of. Capability, by itself. Is not sufficient. It must be
accompanied by luck and it must secure recognition. Post
humous fame, though poetical to read about, is comparatively
rare. The days of building mousetraps in the middle of a
forest, if Indeed they ever existed, are surely over now. With
so many good roads men no longer have the time to beat
paths through dense underbrush- To-day even great men
must let the world know of their greatness.

But shrinking from publicity Is something that Is an un
certain and indefinite quality. I have heard much about it,
but seldom encountered it. In most cases where I have, It
has always seemed to me that perhaps It was but a more
subtle way of securing publicity; for after all mystery Is
interesting. At heart the majority of people are much alike.
It is a human failing to like to see one s name In print. If this
were not so, such a large number of clipping agencies could
not exist.

I remember trying to obtain a meeting with Sir TTiomas
Lipton. His personal secretary was not only abrupt but
absolutely rude. I left the hotel at which they were stopping,
having expressed my opinion. Within an hour I was called
by another representative who, having arranged matters,
laughingly remarked, "Some people are dreadful fools. We
are paying a thousand dollars a week for less space than you
are willing to give us free."

But merchant princes are not the only people who need
publicity. Statesmen soon wither and die without It as quickly
as actors; even poets and other writers require It, much as
C8]

many profess to run from it. However, this is to be said: that
many a man sincere in his desire to avoid notice has never
theless consented to pose for his portrait. To see ourselves as
others see us appears to be a most common human trait and to
gratify it very often even a shy man will fall.

19}

II

-f-N LOOKING back on the ways that many of these meetings
I were obtained, I think I can honestly say that the
JL greatest obstacles that had to be overcome were private
secretaries. Whether they are naturally stupid they may
be spoken about collectively, for with few exceptions they are
alikeor whether they have some strange desire to shield
their employers from unknown dangers, It Is hard to say.
They are kind, they are courteous and most encouraging In
their conversation. There they stop and In the majority of
cases, like Cerberus, bark at any further approach. Many a
telegram sent to a man s home has secured a meeting which I
had been informed by a secretary was out of the question.
As I write these words, the figure of one woman comes back
to my memory. She was Mark Twain s secretary, and though
it is years ago that I made a picture of him I can still remember
her suave manner and the way she laughed at everything he
said whether It was really humorous or not. She guarded him
too well for my purposes. I had to go over her head and
obtained an appointment through a friend.

Mark Twain was living then in an old red brick house at the
corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue In New York City. I
was very young and he was the first celebrity who had ever
posed for me. My heart was in my throat when I rang the bell
and I can distinctly recall my embarrassment as I dropped some
of my drawing materials on entering the long dreary parlor^

with its tremendous melancholy organ. And then came the great
man himself; and I was disappointed and disillusioned. He was
so much smaller and more human than I had expected. The
remaining spell was broken when he ran his hands through his
bushy mane, which still retained a canary tinge, and asked
whether I thought he had better go down to the Brevoort
which was at the next corner and get a haircut. As I said, I
was young at the time. It was not until years later that I saw
a famous general in beleaguered Paris send his orderly up
stairs for a mirror so that he might see if his hat were on at the
proper angle for me to draw. When I drew Mark Twain I still
thought that all eccentricity existed without premeditation.

It was shortly after his "Life of Joan of Arc" had been
published. On the mantel in the front parlor prominently
displayed was the bronze laurel leaf which a young girl dressed
as the Maid of Orleans had placed on the humorist s brow but
a few weeks before at his seventieth birthday dinner.

For the painting which I did of him he sat in the large
bow window of one of his rooms. But my lithograph was made
from a pencil sketch which I drew one day when he was
not feeling well and had received me while he was still in
his huge bed with its carved cherubim in the room on the
second floor.

There was something ^iLabout him at all times. Occasion
ally he would flash some witty remark, but for the most part,
he seemed to be living witkliia^Qwn thoughts. During most
of the time he was posing his secretary played the organ a
. mechanical affair but I gathered that his interest in music
was not an artistic one, for the pieces which apparently pleased
him most were the sentimental ones connected with some
event in his own life.

Despite the fame which he had attained, I carried away with
me the feeling that he was a disappointed man. Perhaps it was
his domestic griefs that had embittered him; perhaps it was
his long struggle once more to regain his feet after he had
been overwhelmed by financial disaster, but at all events
it was hard to believe, as this old man with the beetled
brows sat before me, that here was a writer who had made
two continents laugh. It would have been easier to have
imagined him as the author of "War and Peace w than of
"Huckleberry Finn."

His thin, nervous hands constantly twisted a cigar* He
was an inveterate smoker and the edge of his mustache about
his mouth had that yellowish nicotine color, which in those
days was so common but which to-day is as rare as the sulphur
matches which were then used.

When I drew him with a book in his hand, he looked at the
picture for a few minutes, and then quizzically remarked,
"I suppose the book looks better, but a cigar would be more
like me."

His voice was thinner than his leonine head would have
led one to expect and about it was a suspicion of a southern
drawl He spoke slowly and almost weighed his words, and Ms
conversation had none of the wit or sparkle that one would
have imagined. He produced the impression that his humor
was not spontaneous, that It was the outcome of logic and
reason, rather than of sudden inspiration*

Of course, he was past seventy when I met him, and he had
lived a full and sad life. The sun was already beginning to sink
behind the clouds in the west when he posed for me, so perhaps
the brilliance which I had looked for in vain had been dimmed.
Memories appeared to overpower realities for him most of the

lo

time, though occasionally he would apparently tear himself
away from the past.

Into that Fifth Avenue parlor with its Victorian respecta
bility he brought a breath of the spirit of the pioneer South-
west. For notwithstanding a long residence in the land of the
r~ Yankee he seemingly bore a resentment against the effete
cP affectations which to his mind surrounded the culture of the
p larger eastern cities. The artificiality of civilization palled upon
jfl him and he had more respect for the opinion of the man in the
^ street than he had for book knowledge gathered in libraries.

"I remember, 5 he said, "when the play which I wrote with
Warner was first produced. How the critics damned it! But
there was a human quality about Colonel Mulberry Sellers
which the people recognized, and they came to see the show in
spite of what the paid critics said.

"A critic," he drawled, "never made or killed a book or a
Oplay. It has always been the people who have been the final
?[ judges it is their opinion which does the job they are the
arbiters.

"After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that
most writers realize that truth is their most valuable possession
and they are extremely economical in its use."

A great part of the time I was working he sat smoking and
said little. At one of the sittings Robert Reid, the artist, came
in with his young nephew. Reid was well over six feet tall, and
his nephew was as big. Mark Twain got up and took one by
each arm and remarked, "One day the three of us will have
to walk down the Avenue this way and people will say that
Clemens is the cross bar of a capital H."

Much of his conversation was cursory. The most revealing
episode that occurred in all my meetings with him was when

113}

one of the newspapers telephoned asking him for an interview.
At first he refused. Then he relented and said that he would
give it providing the paper would donate one hundred dollars
to some charity. His offer was accepted and he immediately
named an organization which looked after children. It was then
that he seemed most like the Mark Twain whom 1 had pic
tured. It was then that his face lost its grim expression and
the kindliness that was his came to the fore.

It was this meeting, now almost a quarter of a century
behind me, which was one of the factors that turned my life
into the channel in which it has run. But before it did this
years passed years in which I painted portraits and tried to
make my sitters look like what they thought they were, I
think it was Sargent who remarked that a portrait was a
painting in which there was something wrong with the mouth,
Only those who have made their living out of portrait painting
fully realize the depth of the truth in that observation. Unless
three-months-old babies clap their hands and say "Goo
goo" before the canvas, unless pet dogs bark, and If every
friend and acquaintance does not agree in saying the likeness
is perfect, then the portrait must be altered.

Of all the people who sat for me In those early days only one
stands out in isolated memory* That is Mr* Justice Holmes,
I hesitate to put down more than a sketchy outline of the man*
for it has been some years now since I made that drawing.
I have had many sitters since, presidents and prime ministers,
philosophers and mathematicians. And yet out of the whole
number the tall, slightly bent figure looms* I can still see him
greeting me in the second floor back room of his home la
Washington, a courtliness and culture about him that are
indissolubly associated with men who grew up in an earlier day.

I H]

\

Wendell Holmes

I have often felt that the men active in public life in
Europe have a fuller outlook, a more rounded education, a
scholarliness that is absent in our men of public affairs. One of
the few exceptions has been this white-haired, pink-faced old
gentleman. Surrounded by etchings which he loved and which
he had collected, he spoke of art and life. Modernism to this
octogenarian was a most absorbing subject. But though he was
enthralled by the psychology of it, he still got his pleasure from
the lines that Rembrandt and Van Dyke and Whistler had
bitten on copper plates. Yet he did not close his eyes to the
struggles that were going on among contemporary artists for
a new mode of expression. While he respected their efforts,
he acknowledged that he could not understand them. But he
pointed out that it was only through movements such as this
that the world progressed.

"The same thing," he said, "is true of every branch of
human knowledge. The desire to get away from old ideas is a
human trait. So is the clinging to them. Youth seeks to express
itself in new ways. Age clings to what it knew in youth.

"This does not mean that youth is necessarily right or
wrong. Nor does it mean that age is as a matter of course
reactionary. It is the impulsiveness of the young, tempered
by the experience of the old, that makes for progress."

He spoke of his father and he mentioned the "Autocrat of
the Breakfast Table." He recalled how his father had written
that when John and Mary were at the breakfast table there
were six persons present John as he really was, John as he
thought he was and John as he appeared to Mary. The same
was true of Mary.

"I suppose," he said, "in order to get a perfect likeness
of me you would have to make me as I seem to myself, as I

really am, and as I appear to you. I am afraid you have an
impossible job ahead of you."

All the time I was drawing him his secretary was in the

room.

"You know, Mr. Justice," he remarked, "when the portrait

was started it looked like Justice [mentioning the name

of a particularly conservative member of the Supreme Court].
But now it looks like you."

"Well, don t you believe in evolution?" retorted the keen

old jurist.

One of my regrets now is that I did not set down immedi
ately many of the things that he said. However, at that time
I was only drawing. It was not until some years later, and then
almost accidentally, that I also began to write.

{18}

Ill

JUST off the Strand, on Adelphi Terrace, stands a row of
houses built long ago by the Adams brothers. It was in
one of these that George Bernard Shaw lived when I first
met him.

The ground floor of the corner house was taken up by
offices but inside the first thing that struck the eye was a
large sign "Mr. and Mrs. G. Bernard Shaw" while at the
head of a flight of stairs a wooden gate reinforced by iron
spikes prevented further progress and another sign gave notice
that the floor above was private.

Here the visitor, if he managed to elude the wily janitor
who told every stranger that Mr. Shaw was in the country,
came to an impasse, and naturally it was here that I met my
first obstacle. I managed to persuade the maid to permit me to
speak to Miss Patch, Mr. Shaw s private secretary, who
behaved in true private secretarial form. She did not find it
necessary to open the portcullis for she could easily speak
over the top. This she did and said it would be out of the
question even to ask Mr. Shaw to pose in fact, most of his
time was spent in refusing to be a model for any more artists.
Somewhat dejectedly, I left.

I could not melt the stony heart of Miss Patch; it was
vulcanized. I had to get to the great man himself and move
him not by pity but by humor. What would he have done
under similar circumstances? Knowing that modesty is one

of Shaw s salient characteristics, and that his apparent blatant
conceit is nothing but an inferiority complex combined with
the keenest wit and humor, I concocted the following letter
after much trouble. I knew that I had nothing to lose and that
it might just strike the one unprotected spot In the Achillean
armor of reserve. On July i, therefore* I wrote to him as
follows:

"My dear Mr. Shaw:

"Years ago I remember you said that the only reason you
posed for Rodin was because you felt that It was the one way in
which you would gain everlasting fame.

"That is quite true as far as Europe is concerned, but as
for America, with true Shavian modesty I may say that
immortality will not be yours there until I have drawn you.

"That is one of the reasons I came to London to obtain
immortality for you in America*

"And when you think It will cost you only one-half hour
of time that is a very small price to pay/*

When the following note came the neit morning I was the
most surprised person in the world:

"I now have considerable experience as an artist s model;
but my terms about $3,750 an hour are prohibitive. Also, 1
shall not be disengaged for at least a year to come, G. B. S/ 1

I now felt sure that the proper response would bring results,
It was the third of July; the letter had to be timely. It had
to contain in itself a reason for being written; In other words, it
must of necessity be a reply to his note, so, on July 4, I sent
him the following:

"My dear Mr. Shaw:

"Your price for posing is acceptable to me. My price for a
drawing is the same amount.

{201

George Bernard Shaw

"You do not have to be disengaged while I draw.
"I am leaving on the eighth. When shall I come?
"If you could pose this afternoon and sign the drawing
to-day, think what it would mean to the American people
to have two vital documents signed on July 4."

That afternoon I received a phone call; Mr. Shaw s name
could go down in history with John Hancock, Thomas Jeffer
son, and others.

After meeting and talking with him, or rather listening
to him talk, for two hours or more, his surroundings count for
little in my mind. I dimly remember making a mental note of
his dining room, furnished under a decidedly Chinese influence,
with a gorgeous Eastern yellow rug, a wonderful open sideboard
filled with multicolored Oriental pottery, and on the mantel
several Chinese dragons. Behind me was a bookcase, contain
ing, among other volumes, Gibbon s "Rome," Wagner s com
plete works, and Balzac s novels.

On the light green wall hung Augustus John s portrait of
Shaw, which Mrs. Shaw told me she had not liked at first but
now felt was one of the best portraits of him in existence not
one absolutely of the man in flesh and blood, but a monumental
work of him and his aims.

It was in Mr. Shaw s living room, out of the windows of
which one had a long, unbroken view of the Thames, that I
drew him, while he sat on a large chintz sofa and talked.

He had a visitor, an economist from Australia, who was
interested in little theaters. And when the visitor introduced
himself as an economist Shaw remarked: "That s what
I am; playwriting is just a pastime."

He went on: "Of the moderns I particularly like Pirandello
and Strindberg. Their plays are not logical developments of

123}

themes and, after all, I am such an old hand at the business that
a logically developed play cannot possibly contain any surprises
for me. I know what will happen from the beginning and accord
ingly lose interest. But when a play goes along without any
apparent plan and when at first no consecutive development or
plot appears evident, I am at once Intrigued Into discovering
the purpose and outcome. Naturally, If the author Is mad the
play becomes all the better. And as for Strindberg, of course
he was mad. He had an Idea he was a mortally 111 man. I
remember visiting Stockholm and 1 felt that it would be an
act of International courtesy for me to call on him. Accordingly
I dropped him a line telling him I was In the city and that I
would not like to leave without paying my respects. I received
a reply that Mr. Strindberg was too 111 to receive any one.
But the next day, without any further action on my part, a
note reached me saying that he would be home that after
noon. I went. For an hour he was charming. Suddenly he
pulled out his watch, looked at it for a moment and In a
fearful voice said, In twenty minutes I shall be a grievously
ill man.*

"To this day/* continued G. B. S., * C I do not know whether
this was the result of my visit or of his diseased mind*

"Of course, it Is economics that has taken up most of my
time, though and this may seem strange to you music
has always played a large part In my life. Both my father and
mother were musical and I was reared In an atmosphere of
music. In fact, harmony I have always sought. Classical music,
Beethoven and Bach, were so much a part of my Infancy that
it really took me some time to learn to appreciate the lighter
forms of music, and it was only after an effort that I could
find pleasure in the waltzes of Strauss.

(2*1

"Most people don t know that it was an American who
really turned me to sociology. When I was a young man Henry
George came to London and lectured. I was carried away by
both the man and his ideas. His revolutionary theories appealed
to me. And I may say I still see the truth in his Single Tax.

"From George I went to Marx, and his Capital swept
everything from me and I was a Socialist. Of course, I was
young. In those days I was ready to grasp at everything
new. It s strange how men change. At that time I refused to
believe a word of the Bible and was ready to accept every new
theory any scientist offered. To-day Pd rather believe the story
of Jonah and the whale than a fact almost proved by a scientist.

"But to get back to Marx. I was his devout follower and
remained so until Jevons showed me certain fallacies in his
theory of values. Not that I discarded Marx; I accepted him
with reservations, and it was due to the Fabian Society that
his theories were made popular in England. Marx was a
strange chap. I never met him but I have learned much
about his personality from "people who had. One of the most
delightful stories I heard about him was told me by a lady
whose husband had been one of Marx s intimate friends a
fellow-Socialist.

"For years they had been close companions. But one eve
ning, as both were leaving a party, the friend by mistake took
Marx s hat. It fitted him and Marx, who prided himself on
the tremendous size of his head, from that day never spoke to
his former friend."

Shaw s delightful manner, the charm and sonorous tone
of his voice with its faint suspicion of a brogue, his interest
in the subjects on which he spoke, and the amusing twists he
gave to his conversation made it extremely difficult for me to

125]

work. I wanted to drop my charcoal and just listen, but I
could not. Accordingly, in order to finish my sketch, I had at
times to concentrate on my work rather than on his conversa
tion* Various remarks of his come to my mind with the result
that I am unable to remember the exact way in which he led
from one subject to another*

How he came to speak of his religion, I forget, but in some
way or other religion was touched on and he said *

"1 have the same religion as Dean Inge. We are both
Quakers. We don t believe in set prayers. When we want to
talk to God we use the same language as we ordinarily use,
not prayers composed for us by other people, and we do not
need a church in which to hold communion with Him. I remem
ber that some time ago a movement was afoot to afford more
protection to St. Paul s against fire. A meeting was held and
various people attended, some advocating more fire extin
guishers, others special fire brigades. In fact, countless schemes
were devised and discussed. When every one had finished the
Dean had proposed nothing. Some one asked him how he felt
and he answered : Let it burn. "

And then in some unremembered way the subject of human
affection was introduced, and Shaw was asked whether it was
not the one compelling thing in the world.

"Human affection/ said he with a quizzical smile, a ls
the one great curse of mankind, the principal obstruction to its
progress. Take myself, for instance; all my life affection has
been showered on me, and everything that I have done I have
had to do in spite of it."

The sketch was finished and I prepared to rearrange the
furniture, for in order for me to be comfortable Shaw had
removed a picture from an easel that stood In the corner and

I 261

wheeled It out for me to use. The economist by this time had
departed.

I "fixed" my drawing so that it would not rub, and asked
him to sign it, which he did, though he said that he felt that it
was unnecessary as any one could tell who it was without the
name. But I still delayed my going. Shaw had spoken on
Socialism, on playwriting and even on religion, but I wanted
more.

I had been unable to turn his conversation to the subject
of art. Behind him on a desk was the bust Rodin had made
of him years ago the one referred to in my first letter. I
mentioned it again and asked if Rodin had required many
sittings.

"Yes, quite a number," he said, "and the strange part
of it was that in the course of its making that bust went
through a complete development of the history of art. At the
end of the first sitting it was a work of the very earliest Greek
period archaic smile and all From that it embodied the
Greek and Roman styles and at one time it was a perfect
example of the sculpture of the twelfth century, a masterpiece
of that period, and it kept on evolving from one century to the
next until it was finished."

Rodin seems to be one of Shaw s heroes. He showed me num
berless photographs of him, which he keeps around the living
room photographs made by Coburn, whom he had sent
for from London particularly for that purpose. He also showed
the famed "Nude Photograph" of himself and told how it
came to be taken. Coburn and he were discussing Rodin s
"Thinker." He had tried to assume the pose but he could not,
so he undressed to see if he could get into the pose unhampered
by clothes. Coburn snapped him. But Shaw told me he was

{27}

not leaning forward far enough and that the absolute pose
cannot be assumed by anybody.

There were other photographs, some thirty or forty years
old. The thing that struck me was the apparent change in
his skull formation, which I mentioned. He assured me
that it was a fact that as a young man his head was
broad, rather than long, but that in later years his entire
skull had lengthened.

At last I ventured, "And, Mr. Shaw* what do you think of
modern art ?"

"What do I think of modern art? I have been practicing
it seventy years," he replied with a delightful smile, "but
seriously I suppose that there must be something good in it.
I do feel that any number of incompetents are using it as a
cloak for their shortcomings. But take Matisse for instance;
from the surety and beauty of his line I know the man can
draw in an academic way should he so desire. I will acknowl
edge that at first his works seemed strange to me, but I have
looked at them so much that now I see their beauty without
permitting their apparent strangeness to interfere with my
appreciation of the part that appeals to me. I don t think
the goal has been reached, but there must be forerunners to
every great movement. It doesn t matter whether it is religion
or art. Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse may be only prophets or
John the Baptists.

"But the thing you must admit whether you want to or
not look at these pictures often enough, have them in your
home, and they will make you feel that the work of their
predecessors is dull, drab, monotonous and lifeless."

As I was going he asked me if I would leave the drawing
and call for it later, for Mrs. Shaw was out and he wanted

her to see it. Here was the man who had laughed at all human
Institutions anxious for his wife to see a drawing of himself.
There was a simplicity and hominess about the entire
place that did not seem to square with one s ideas of what his
household would be like. It was the same spirit which I after
wards found in the comparatively small apartment in which
Professor Einstein lives.

129}

IV

HOMINESS was more to be expected from the dreamy
German philosopher who remains at heart the simple
bourgeois and does not attempt to startle with an
epigram or surprise by a phrase.

He was no easier to get to than was Mr* Shaw. I had
tried numerous leads, none of which went anywhere. I had
even wired Emil Ludwig who at that time was in Switzerland,
but received a reply that he did not know Einstein well
enough to give me a letter of introduction and suggested that I
see the Professor s son-in-law. I did this and the young man
acted much as a secretary would. He was very discouraging
but asked me to leave a portfolio of my drawings which he
promised to show to his distinguished father-in-law. When
they were returned to me the next morning with word that the
scientist would not pose I noticed that the package had not
been opened.

My chances of approaching the propounder of relativity
seemed very remote as I stood in the courtyard of the building
that houses the printing firm for which Professor Einstein s
son-in-law works. There was no one else to whom to turn who
knew him, and I decided there was but one thing left for me ?
to go to his house direct and try to see him* A man s privacy
is to be respected, but there seemed no other way out, or rather
in. I felt, too, that even if a door were slammed in my face,
it would not be the worst thing that might happen to me,
130}

7."* -"

Albert Einstein

and accordingly I took a taxi to Haberlandstrasse. It is in a
comparatively new part of Berlin, a section built up within
the last twenty-five years. About it no halo of history glows.
It is a residential quarter of the upper middle class broad
streets, well-kept trees and apartment houses, with vine and
awning-covered balconies jutting out here and there in hap
hazard fashion. There is a home-like atmosphere about the
vicinity, a feeling of substance, well-being and contentment,
but it can boast of nothing else. The neighborhood does not
fulfill one s ideal of the surroundings of a man who has over
turned the fundamental ideas of the universe. There is some
thing entirely too tangible about the place; no remoteness, no
suspicion of fourth dimensional incomprehensibility.

Einstein s house is surrounded by the homes of well-
to-do people, satisfied with the world as it is. Even the
statue of St. George and the Dragon which stands tem
porarily beside its broken pedestal in the center of the
small square on which the house fronts, is a Teutonic St.
George wearing a smile of complacency, with no hint of
prophetic vision a smile reflecting the feelings of the people
of the neighborhood.

In fact, the apartment breathes no more of the extra
ordinary than the neighborhood in which it is situated. The
dull-looking porter in the blue denim jacket and apron who
turns the key in the lock and sends the crawling elevator up
to the top floor is like hundreds of other attendants in similar
flats. The polished brass plate above the bell with "Professor
Einstein" on it is identical in every respect, except for the
name, with others in the same building. And even within there
is nothing about the place that differs essentially from the
majority of German homes.

C33]

Had a maid opened the door to my ring I am quite con
vinced that I would never have succeeded in getting either my
drawing or my article. As it was, one of Einstein s daughters
answered it and to her I was able to make my purpose clear.
She was interested in my drawings because she herself is a
sculptor, and she promised to do what she could. When I left
her I felt that perhaps I was on the way to obtaining the sitting.
Next morning, however, when I called up it was Mrs- Einstein
who came to the phone and she told me that she was very
sorry but although the Professor liked my work he would not
give me the time. He abhorred publicity, she said, and It
was this that made him refuse. When I replied that even if
he desired to avoid newspaper notice, I could not believe
that a man credited with having such a kind heart as the
Professor would refuse to see some one who had traveled over
three thousand miles to meet him, she weakened. She asked
me to hold the wire, and the Professor himself came to the
phone. After a little preliminary talk he finally consented
to pose, but I had to promise him not to publish the drawing.

I arrived very early the next morning in fact, owing to
the German method of designating the time, I was half an
hour too early. There was a smell of wax throughout the
apartment and the maid was still going over the polished
floors with a heavy brush.

The library, with the green wallpaper and porcelain stove,
with its built-in bookcases, ornate and filled with novels, his
tories, and two gigantic copies of the Bible; the corner cabinet,
on which stand two statuettes and a half model of a sloop that
Einstein s friends gave him; the desk, primarily a home piece
and evidently used by the entire family none of these
things gives any evidence of being the surroundings of genius.

Nor does the living room reflect anything of the personality
of the head of the house. It is livable and cheerful, but it might
be the home of any one of millions of Germans, for there is
something decidedly Teutonic about it. Its flowered yellow
wallpaper, its family pictures prominently displayed, the
portrait of Frederick the Great with his two dogs, the piano
with its stubby legs, the three violins in cases under it, and
also the heavy wood music stands these things, together with
the Biedermeyer furniture, are characteristic of a nation
rather than of an individual.

It was Mrs. Einstein who greeted me a sweet, motherly
woman, whose attitude toward her distinguished husband is
that of a doting parent toward a precocious child.

"I am so glad," she said, a that you have managed to get
him to pose. He does not want publicity. Last week there were
a few photographs of him in the paper and he was so disturbed
that for two days he did no work.

"Have you ever seen him?" she asked, and before I could
answer she added: "Has he not a wonderful, head ?" And as
she spoke of him there was a suspicion of a tremor in her voice.

"Look at this," she said, and going to the bookcase drawer
she pulled out a thin volume, a collection of Einstein s sayings
and poems which his friends had collected and had bound as a
souvenir of his fiftieth birthday.

There was the sound of bare feet, and, holding a black and
white bathrobe about him, apparently oblivious of his sur
roundings, Einstein entered.

Although he is about average height, his head with its mass
of gray hair appears large for his body. His forehead is not
high but is distinguished by its curious formation, and his
eyebrows grow, not as usual on the upper part of the orbits of

I 351

the eyes, but above, thus giving a perpetual quizzical expres
sion to his face. His mustache remains almost black, as does a
fringe of hair about the back of his neck.

His eyes are large and dark and soft, and in them there
is a note of sadness which remains even when he smiles, which
he does often in a quiet embarrassed way. In fact, about his
entire manner there is a bashful and malleable quality that is
almost childlike, and this is accentuated by his wlfe*s attitude
toward him

Though he loves the outdoors and spends what time he
can spare in the country, his appearance is that of a man who
has passed most of his life indoors. He is physically flaccid,
in fact, almost fragile, and even his handshake, though cordial,
leaves one wondering as to whether there are bones in his hand.

As he stood there, saying he would be ready in a few
minutes, it was easy to understand why his home showed so
little of his personality. It is doubtful if he even knows what is
in it. Detached and remote, he is one of those persons whom it is
impossible to comprehend fully.

Talking, he appears to be thinking of other things; gazing,
he does not appear to be seeing the object at which he looks.
In fact, these peculiarities are so marked as to appear almost
abnormal. His mind apparently works of its own accord along
certain lines, and when his attention Is diverted to something
external, one can almost feel the effort that is required on his
part to interrupt his natural train of thought.

Patting him on the back, his wife told him to get dressed,
and as he left the room she said with a smile: a He is terribly
hard to manage."

In a few minutes he returned. His brown suit needed press*
ing and on his feet he wore, over wool socks, a pair of open-
{361

work sandals. His coat collar was half turned up in the back,
and when we started to go upstairs Mrs. Einstein fixed his
collar and arranged his hair.

As we walked up the one flight of short steps that led to
the top floor, he said: "Remember, I have your word that this
picture will not be printed. You may use it for exhibition
purposes, but I am heartily sick of my portraits being pub
lished. That is all right for a theatrical prima donna who
wants advertising.

"The people are so inconsiderate in their demands. For
months a photographic company was after me to pose playing
my violin. The next thing is that they will be wanting me to
pose standing on my head."

We reached a door, a wooden one painted white, which he
unlocked. At the end of a passage of four or five feet was
another door. This he likewise opened and I was in his study
an attic room about fifteen feet square. Under the sloping
alcove window is a table which stands on a dais as does an
upholstered armchair with an antimacassar on its back. A
round table, covered with a red and white cloth, is littered, as is
the other one, with papers and pamphlets. Two ladderback
chairs, with straw seats, and bookshelves filled with pamphlets
complete the furnishings. There are no pictures on the white
washed walls, no more evidence of observance of surroundings
than on the floor below.

Professor Einstein seated himself in the chair on the dais,
and before I had arranged my materials, he had taken from his
pocket some scraps of paper on which there were figures, and
also a black fountain pen, and, as if he were absolutely alone,
he began jotting down notes. As far as he was concerned, I
was not there.

{371

His legs were crossed and the paper rested on his lap.
In his mouth was a small meerschaum cigarette holder, not
the kind that is used to-day, but one of the old-fashioned type
which holds the cigarette perpendicularly, and which he
removed every little while, holding it pipe-fashion,

The previous night I had been in a chess room, of which
there are a number in Berlin, and, as he sat slowly puffing,
but not inhaling the smoke from his cigarette, now and then
changing a figure on the paper before him, or else twisting
one of the curls on the back of his head, he reminded me of the
men whom I had seen bending over the chessboards, trying
to solve problems which they got from the newspapers.
It was impossible not to feel that he was engrossed in working
out a puzzle and that the ultimate results of the solution did
not interest him at all.

To talk to him would have been out of the question. He
was too far away, and it was not until he looked up and asked
how the picture was progressing that I had an opportunity of
speaking to him and asking him something of the history of
the development of his theories.

"The general trend of my thinking," he said, "was present
in my mind from the beginning, but as I went on the later ideas
came to me gradually. Twenty-four years ago I published my
first pamphlet and two years later I formulated the general
theory of relativity. Since then I have been constantly working
on developments."

In reply to the question as to how he came to work along
the particular lines he did, he replied:

"First I was struck by the fact that experiments showed
that the velocity of light is constant; that it travels at the same
rate of speed whether sent out by a source at rest or la motion.
I 38 I

It was while thinking over this that my first theory of relativity
came to me.

"The experimental fact that the material mass of a body
is the same as its gravitational mass set me thinking along lines
which ultimately resulted in my later work."

According to Professor Einstein an infinite number of
theories can always be devised that will describe natural
phenomena.

"We can invent," he said, "as many theories as we like,
and any one of them can be made to fit facts. But that theory
is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assump
tions. Among the innumerable theories which can be con
structed to fit the facts of science we choose, naturally, the
theory which starts off with the fewest of these assumptions."

His smoke was finished, and as he laid his holder on
the table beside him, without speaking I offered him a
cigarette.

"No," he said, "I have just finished one, and everything,
including smoking, must be done slowly." Then he went on:

"Of course there are several kinds of theories in physics.
Most of these are what I should call constructive, for from
some relatively simple propositions they build up a picture of
complex phenomena. Thus when philosophers say they under
stand any certain group of natural phenomena, they mean
that they have evolved or built from simpler propositions a
theory which explains and embraces the complex ones."

He uncrossed his legs and looked down at the paper in his
hand. With his fountain pen he added several figures. Then
he looked up again and in his soft voice continued :

"The theories which I have worked out are of a different
character. They are theories of principles and are the result of

139}

an analytical rather than a synthetic method. Their starting
point and foundations are not hypothetical constituents but
empirically observed general properties of phenomena, no
matter how complex, from which mathematical formulae were
deduced, formulae of such a kind that they apply to all cases
which present themselves/

I realized that very shortly I would be beyond my depth
and when he stopped I referred to his violin playing.

"Yes/ he replied, "I get a vast amount of pleasure from it.
When I am too tired to read or work I find that music rests me.
Much has been said of my playing but I am sure that I am the
one who gets the most amusement from it."

When the drawing was finished he got up to look at it.
From his expression I knew he was pleased, and among other
things, he said that I might use it anywhere I saw fit, and then
he asked if he might have a photograph of it. Two or three days
later I returned with the photograph. Mrs. Einstein was
entertaining some relatives, some of whom were back on a
visit from their homes in America. Around a small side table
in the dining room they sat and in a few minutes the professor
entered, wearing the same unpressed brown suit, and with the
same far-away look in his eyes. Abs^frjjundedly he ate a
sandwich, and then the subject turned on America and he
spoke of its yastness and of the deep impression it had made
upon him when he had visited it.

The conversation became general and turning to me he
asked to see the photograph. He looked at it for a few minutes
and then got up and left the room, walking much quicker than
usual. Suddenly from the other room came noises, and Mrs.
Einstein quickly arose asking me to come with her. "I know
what he is doing/ she said.

401

As we entered there he was in the library trying to take
down from the wall a tremendous painting of himself.

"I have told you a number of times to take that down and
now I am going to do it." This was said in an excited tone, a
tone that no one would suspect he could use. The calm pro
fessor, the quiet, removed, methodical thinker had disappeared
and in his stead was the temperamental artist.

"And what s more, if I see it around I ll put a knife through

it."

I had to help him but finally he got it down, put it into a
corner and once more with his usual quiet manner he returned
to the dining room.

It was time for me to go and as he saw me to the door I
asked him what he considered the best formula for success in
life. He smiled, that same awkward bashful smile and thought
for a minute.

"If A is Success in life," he replied, "I should say the
formula is^ = JT+ F + Z, X being work and Y being play."

"And what," I asked, "is Z?"

"That," he answered, "is keeping your mouth shut."

As I left him and jumped into a taxi with my portfolio his
last remark rang in my ears. The association of ideas is curious.
There was I driving through the streets of Berlin but I did not
see them. My mind had gone back to a little snow-covered
town in New England where I had heard somewhat the same
thing.

V

GENERAL CLARENCE EDWARDS lived in Dedham, Massa-
chusetts. During the war he had commanded the
Twenty-sixth Division, with which I had been for
some time. While passing through Boston, it was but
natural that I should visit the old commander in the near-by
suburb,

Edwards was a blunt, matter-of-fact soldier with absolutely
no tact. Whatever came into his head was immediately
said, and it was due to this outspokenness that shortly
before the Armistice he was relieved of his command and
sent home. This very fact, coupled with his fatherly solici
tude for his boys, had made him extremely popular in New
England, and when Calvin Coolidge was running for governor
of Massachusetts, he had asked the former commander of
the Yankee Division to accompany him on some of his speak
ing tours.

"On one of our trips," the General told me, a we had to
travel about thirty miles by motor. Mr, Coolidge was in one
car, I was in another. When we reached our destination I
jumped out of my machine and went over to the automobile
in which the candidate for governor and his wife were. Mrs.
Coolidge looked bored.

" What s the matter/ I said to her as a joke. "Has the
Governor been talking you to death ?

10}

Calvin Coolidgf

"Mr. Coolidge looked up at me. It was evident what was
in his mind. Well, General/ he said, the things I don t say
never get me into trouble. 9 "

But Mr. Coolidge never seemed a silent man to me. The
first time I saw him he was spending the summer in the Adiron-
dacks. I had made a hot night journey in a sleeper in order to
reach Paul Smith s the next morning.

The President s camp was six miles or so from the hotel and
its surrounding cottages. One of these had been con
verted into a summer executive office. Here the President
came every morning and here he saw the representatives of the
press two or three times a week. On one of these days I arrived
and I met a number of newspaper men whom I knew. The
general talk was that he had been particularly short with
them. About the entire place was a feeling of repressed
awe, which was intensified when I met Everett Sanders who
told me that he could not possibly ask the President to
pose for me but that I might make some sketches when
he was holding his public talk. Accordingly, I was prepared
to catch him, as it were, on the wing, while he answered
the questions of some thirty or forty men who were covering
his doings that summer.

A few minutes after he had entered the room, he saw me
sketching. He turned to me and said, "Don t do that now.
Wait and I ll see you afterwards."

"Afterwards" turned out to be an hour or more, despite
interruptions by nervous secretaries who entered the room
every now and then, for the evident purpose of bringing the
sitting to a close.

During that time he spoke of art, he mentioned the names
of painters little known to the public, and in every way dis-

played a side of himself that as far as the public was concerned
never existed.

This drawing of the President, however, was not what I
had really gone after. At that time he was first displaying his
interest in fishing and what I wanted was a sketch of him at his
favorite pastime. Moreover,, even photographers had been
banned from the camp, so except for one or two pictures
that had been taken before he had moved in, the public did
not even know what the place looked like.

After I had been working for fifteen or twenty minutes
he left the room to see a senator and told me to wait as he would
be able to get rid of him quickly. On his return I broached
the subject of going to the camp to make some drawings. He
looked at me with a quizzical expression.

"You know I have kept all reporters out of the place," he
said. Then he arose and came over and looked at my drawing.

"Would you like to make a picture of Mrs. Coolidge?"
he asked. "If you were to come up to do that and should
happen to make other sketches, I do not think any one would
stop you."

That afternoon I went there. The President took me over
the place and showed me the various rooms. Then he said that
he was going fishing and led me on to a dock. While he stood
and cast from a bridge I sketched him.

Later, on an eminence that overlooked a lake, I made my
drawing of Mrs. Coolidge. At the time a well-known publicity
seeker was staying at the hotel with his new wife. At every
opportunity he spoke to the reporters who were "covering"
the summer White House and even handed out photographs
of himself and his young bride with the hope that they would
find their way into the papers.

(461

While I was drawing Mrs. Coolidge the newly weds were out
on the lake in a canoe and she displayed great interest in
them.

"Do you think/ 5 drawled Mr. Coolidge, "that if you
persuaded them hard enough, you might be able to get
them to consent to pose for a picture to be published in
the papers ?"

The name of a certain statesman came up and a visitor
who was there remarked:

"You know, Mr. President, he is really a very able fellow.
He went off on a tangent about Socialism but he has com
pletely recovered from it."

"When did he come into money? 5 inquired the President.
His humor is sharp and dry but is always in evidence.
I remember that once when I was drawing him he suddenly
turned to me and said:

"I am afraid I am hard to draw. You know I think I
would be a much better subject if I had chin whiskers like
the Smith Brothers."

He is very particular about his personal appearance. He
is one of those people who even on ff the hottest day appear cool
and immaculate, one who looks as if he had just stepped
out of the bathtub. Despite the fact that he was born and
brought up on a farm, he seems to be more in place
in offices than in rural surroundings, and his well-pressed
double-breasted suit was much more appropriate behind a
desk than when he stood on a bridge with a fishing rod
in hand.

His hands, small and well kept, do not look as if they had
ever handled pitchforks. He is proud of them. He told me that
when he was posing for the portrait by Laszlo which now hangs

In the White House, the painter at the end of one sitting had
said the picture was finished.

"But," explained Mr. Coolidge, "I did not like the hand
and so I sent him a note telling him that I would be glad to
give him a couple of hours more to work on it.

"I got a note back from him thanking me but telling me
that there was nothing more to be done on it."

He told me the story because he admired the artist s
independence. He was amused at his writing that way, not to
Calvin Coolidge, but to the President of the United States,
and expressed regret that many men in public life were not so
sure when they had finished their jobs.

In addition to his humor there is a kindliness and considera
tion that most people do not realize. I have been ushered into
the President s office in the White House and found him
sitting with his feet on the desk. In that office he has asked
me to remove my coat because it was a very hot day, and he
has regaled me for half an hour or more with all the details of
the last sickness of one of his white collies.

All in all I found him to be one of the most human people
I have ever met. He is reserved, yes but it is the same reserve
that one finds among most of the natives of New England.
And with this Yankee quality goes an extraordinary softness
of heart.

He demanded respect, but instinctively one felt that it
was for the office which he held rather than for himself person
ally. Indeed, about him Is an almost old-fashioned point of
view in his regard for the nation. One of the first things he
showed me at his camp was the flag with its marine guard*

Of course, he is peculiar. Who is not? It amused me to
see him take a leather key case from his pocket, open a drawer

|48l

in the desk in his office in the White House, take out a long
black cigar, carefully insert it into a cardboard holder, put the
box back and again lock the drawer. Suppose he has a certain
New England thrift; he has also the same keenness and clear
understanding about things that go with it. It is those very
peculiarities that made him so popular with the men who had
to write about him. Will Rogers has chuckled with me about
them. Yet that shrewd observer of human nature loves him
for his very foibles.

There are a few more memories of Coolidge that remain
vivid to me.

"How is the drawing coming ?" he said to me one time when
he was posing.

"I am pleased with it," I answered.

"Well," said he, "when I do a job and please myself one
person is satisfied anyway and when I try to please other
people the chances are that no one is satisfied."

My last drawing of him was done shortly after he had made
his "Do not choose to run" declaration. No one had succeeded
in getting him to amplify it and considerable uncertainty
existed as to exactly what it meant. As he sat for me we were
frequently interrupted by his secretary entering with papers
for him to look at.

Probing, to find out for my personal benefit for the
President cannot be quoted how he felt on the matter, I
asked him if he would not be glad when his term of office
expired and he could retire to private life.

He looked at me very keenly and for a few minutes said
nothing. Then the Coolidge that the public knows came to
the fore and his answer was "No." But the monosyllable was
full of meaning.

(491

I have always felt that his statement was taken too
literally to please him, that though he did not "choose/* he
could have been persuaded to run. However, perhaps I put
too much store on that one word which he said to me while
he was still in office.

He is such a clever politician that it is hard to believe
that had he really desired another term he could not have
managed to obtain it.

f 50

ppi in "*ffliJlEK.E

I Cooli
JL distir

VI

is but one man who seems almost to approach
Coolidge in political strategy. Yet their methods are
distinctly different. Coolidge is reserved; Al Smith is
effusive. The former president weighs his words; the former
governor "speaks out." Both are acute, but one s wits were
sharpened amid the cracker barrels of the village store; the
.other learned his lessons on the city s streets.

Politics for Governor Smith has been no passing fad, no
relaxation from other affairs. Brought up in poverty, the
welfare of the poor, particularly of widowed mothers and of
orphans, became almost a fixed idea with him. But with the
sincerity of this champion of the unfortunate and oppressed goes
an inborn keenness and a surprising care for minute details.

Some years ago I was with him when a talking movie was
being made and a pitcher of water was placed on the table
beside him. Dr. de Forest, who was making the picture, sug
gested that in the course of the speech he stop a minute and
pour out a glass of water and drink it.

He made the speech before the camera and microphone,
but took no drink. When he was finished he remarked: "Did
you notice I did not pour out the glass of water? Do you know
what would have happened had I done that? When they were
showing the film some one in the gallery who had had a drop
too much would have yelled out: Say Al, ain t you sorry that s
not beer? and that would have queered the film."

When I observed that he had to think of everything, he
replied: "In this line of business nothing Is too small to be
thought of."

This "infinite capacity for details 59 and a genius for quick
appreciation of circumstances are two of the strong attributes
which he brings with him Into business life. I remember one
occasion after he had retired as governor. There was a stack
of letters on his desk to be signed, the ever-present cigar was
in his mouth. When I asked whether he liked business he took
up a round silver lighter and set the cigar going again.

"Sure I like it," he replied. "I like anything that requires
the working out of some problem. It does not matter whether
it is the question of a budget or of amalgamating two or more
state departments or finding the best methods of raising a
bond issue or putting up a big building. So long as there are
difficulties to be overcome, plans to be worked out, I am inter
ested. The harder the solution, the more interested I am.

"There Is no use in going off half cocked in anything. But
after your plans are made, sailing becomes easier. Now, to
my way of thinking, running a family, a business, and the state
have many points in common. There has to be a head to each
of them and problems come up upon which decisions must be
made. But before any conclusions can be arrived at in any walk
of life, a clear understanding of the confronting problems must
be grasped.

"Here I have taken up what Is to me a comparatively new
business and I have to make a thorough survey of It before I can
go. ahead. Previous to my becoming Governor I had been In the
Assembly and I had also been a member of the state convention
for the revision of the Constitution. So I was just called upon to
execute the laws which I had had a part In making."

152!

Alfred K Smith

I asked him once whether he thought politics was good
training for business.

"I can t answer that question, for it all depends on the
individual," he said. "Politics may be for some and for others
it is not. In my long experience in politics I have seen business
men take up public affairs and become tremendous successes.
On the other hand, I have seen them flat failures, and, vice
versa, I have seen politicians turn into successful business
men. That s all personal."

While Mr. Smith had been talking he had been signing
letters, his long cigar in a corner of his mouth. Rarely was it
removed. His voice is harsh, almost gruff, but as he spoke he
looked up every now and then and his eyes twinkled through
the tortoise shell-rimmed glasses which he uses when he reads.

His smile is contagious and his expression continually
changes as he speaks. In order really to appreciate what the
man says it is as necessary to see him as to hear him. That is the
reason his campaign talks over the radio were not successful.

Humorous as he can be, his manner is ordinarily earnest.
One feels that he takes life very seriously. Speak to him but a
few minutes and it is easy to understand why practical workers
for social improvement have gathered around him, why
professors of economics and government have regarded him as
a leader. Intensely practical, he has the faculty of reducing
complex problems to comparatively simple ones, of making
academic questions popular ones.

I asked how the duties of a business executive compared
with those of a governor.

"The business executive has a cinch," he pointed out.
"It s much easier to run any organization by common sense
than it is by law. The head of a business makes up his mind to

155}

do something. He says Go ahead and shoot/ and the thing is
done. But it s a very different thing in public office.

"A certain friend of mine, employed by a big corporation,
came up to Albany while I was Governor and put up an entire
building while the State was digging foundations for one that
was absolutely needed to carry on the Stated business. Why
was that? Because every time he wanted to do something
he did not have to send over to the Attorney General s office
to find out whether he had a legal right to do it. In business
every one is working for the benefit of the concern; there are
no legislators of a different party who selfishly retard measures
for improvement in order to advance their own ends/

A sincere strain of sentiment explains many of his actions.
In his office hangs a large, engrossed resolution which, deco
rated with faded photographs, names him " Commodore " of the
Ned Harrigan Club. Beside this relic of an older New York,
there is an early lithograph of State Street, Albany, and a dim,
framed newspaper clipping with a picture of his mother.

All that is in evidence of thirty years of public service
is a high-back mahogany desk chair with a silver plate on it,
the chair that he used for the years that he was in Albany,
Nothing else gives an inkling of the fact that the man with
the tanned complexion, the hair that is rapidly becoming
white, and the Qpl^blue eyes, Is the man who has had more
stanch supporters and more bitter enemies than any other
man in public life in a generation.

His faculty of remembering the past, with his eyes looking
toward the future, is characteristic of him. As he plans the
latest skyscraper on Fifth Avenue he does not forget South
Street and Dover Street and Oliver Street. As he whizzes up
in an elevator to his modern office, the creaks of the wooden

[56]

stairs that led from the little grocery and candy store his
mother kept in a basement still sound in his ears.

These memories of the past the hardships, the squalor,
the patient suffering of the poverty-stricken, the primitive
conditions under which many of them lived, the constant
struggle for the barest necessities were a mainspur in his
actions to secure the welfare legislation which was passed
while he was in Albany as Assemblyman and Governor; they
prompted him to accept the chairmanship of the Housing
Association of New York.

I have been with him in his office when he has stood at
a window which overlooked the city and pointed out changes
that he thought would occur. It has been dramatic to see this
product of the city speak with an almost prophetic vision
of its future growth. But though he indicated great develop
ments in business structures, it was the improvement in the
living conditions of the poor in which he was most interested.

There was real feeling in his voice as he said one day:
"Here we have the greatest city in the world, with the latest
improvements in every branch of the mechanical and building
arts. We give billions every year for philanthropic purposes.
We spend hundreds of thousands to study crime and delin
quency and disease; yet we do nothing to remove what has
been pointed out again and again as the fundamental cause
of them bad housing. We have foundations for orphanages
and schools and colleges, and do nothing to provide wholesome
homes from which the students are to come.

"Why, we are building new skyscrapers, great factories
department stores, and although the employees go to work
in new subways, or over new bridges and along newly widened
streets, many of them, through the stress of financial condi-

1571

tions, are compelled to live in unwholesome dark rooms, In
unsanitary conditions that are beyond description.

"The people of this city have hearts, and this makes it more
of a surprise to me that for so many years our municipality
has permitted such conditions to exist as obtain in many of
our tenements,"

He resumed his seat. A fresh cigar was in his mouth.
"But," he continued, "after all, that s New York. It s always
on the go and always changing. The novelty of to-day is the
. ash, heap of to-morrow morning. When I think of what I have
already seen in the way of changes, it s almost foolish for me
to make predictions.

"Thirty-five years ago I saw a cow grazing at Nineteenth
Street and Fifth Avenue. To-day there is block after block
of large apartment houses in sections of the city where, when
I was serving jury notices, there were rocks with squatters
living on them. Had any one at that time predicted the changes
that have taken place up to now, he would have been looked
upon as a visionary.

"Yes, New York has changed in many ways since I was a
boy. There s no more swimming in the East River, or hitching
of sleds on the backs of wagons. The old neighborhood spirit
is gone. You can live for years in an apartment and not know
the man who lives on the same floor."

"What about bringing up children in the city?" I asked.

"A great many people have done it," he replied with a
smile. "As a matter of fact, I do not think it is such a bad
place to do that. There is a lot of talk of how much better
off youngsters are in the green fields and the open air.

"About fifteen years ago, if you remember, we had an
epidemic of infantile paralysis. At that time I was In the

{581

Assembly and represented one of the most crowded districts
not only in the city but probably in the entire world. In my
district we had exactly two cases of the disease.

"And the people over in that part of town had a hard job,
for no matter how clean the housewife is, many of the old
buildings are so dirty that there is a constant struggle to keep
the flats clean.

"There has been a lot said, too, about the danger of im
morality that exists in crowded conditions. Well, I would be
willing to back the young people in those crowded tenements
any day against those living in villages and towns."

I have seen Governor Smith under many circumstances. I
first met him when his presidential aspirations were dim and
hazy. I saw him at the Democratic Convention in New York
when John W. Davis was nominated for the Presidency,
and when Smith, entering that hot, sweaty Convention Hall,
proclaimed his allegiance to the party. I was with him when
he himself was running for the highest office, and I have sat
with him after it was denied him by the votes of the people.
Out of countless meetings one little incident comes to the fore.
Perhaps I am somewhat sentimental, perhaps I read thoughts
into things where they do not exist. But it seems to me that
his remark when I spoke of a photograph of one of his grand
children is most revealing of the real man.

"You ought to see him," he said, "a natural blond one
of the finest looking boys you ever saw. Why, a couple of
weeks ago I had him down on the beach and we took a stroll
and would you believe it everybody turned around to look
at him."

I am sure that it never occurred to him that it was he at
whom the crowds looked.

VII

IT HAS often struck me how frequently the public fails to
recognize in the flesh even the most famous people.
I remember distinctly riding on a Sixth Avenue horse
car (which in itself tells how long ago it was) with Chauncey
Depew. He was a senator at the time, and it was on a Christ
mas Eve. He got on with his arms filled with bundles, for life in
those days was simpler in New York, Though his face adorned
a cigar box, hardly one person in the car recognized him.

I remember also walking through the Capitol with Mrs.
Longworth when a very provincial looking woman stopped us
and asked her if she knew the way to the Senate Chamber.

Again another picture comes to my mind. I have had a
number of talks with Professor Robert A. Millikan. Once I had
to see him as he was passing through New York and he wired
me to meet him at the Commodore Hotel There we sat for
fully an hour in the crowded lobby while not a soul paid the
slightest attention to him. In a way, this is not so surprising,
for, eminent as he is, his portrait has not been universally
printed and, besides, he looks like a successful business man.

About him are none of the eccentricities which are usually
attributed to men whose lives are devoted to abstract sciences.
His white hair is closely cropped, his face is smooth shaven,
and no one upon meeting him would suspect that he is the
man who literally smashed to pieces the entire atomic theory,
upon which a large part of modern science Is based. For doing
f60][

Robert A. Millikan

this, by isolating and measuring the ultimate electrical unit,
the electron, he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

His experiments, however, have not been confined to this
little world of ours; the entire universe has been a subject for
him, and it is in his blue eyes that one sees the far-off look of
a poet, an imagination to fathom not only the most hidden
secrets of the earth, but also the mysteries of the stars.

Dr. Millikan was born of New England ancestry and it is
probably that lineage which accounts for the peculiar combina
tion of practicability and poetry that seems to be his prime
characteristic. He is a Coolidge and an Emerson rolled into
one. There is the calm, cool New England thoroughness, and
there is likewise the prophetic, seerlike sensitiveness. This may
be accounted for by the fact that his father, who was a Congre
gational minister, was descended from a long line of farmers
whose lives had been spent in getting a scanty livelihood
from the stony soil of New England, while his mother, an
Andrews, a common name in that section of the country,
came from a family who for years had sailed the Seven Seas.

They met in Oberlin College where both were students,
and when his father obtained a church in Morrison, Illinois,
they married and settled there. It was there that Robert
Millikan and his five brothers and sisters were born.

"We lived there/ he said on one occasion, when he was
posing, "until I was about seven years old, when we moved to
Maquoketa, in Iowa. It was there that I first went to school.
That was about fifty years ago, and it is interesting to look back
and see how much more universal knowledge is to-day than it
was at that time. I went to primary school there, and also to
grammar and high schools. Naturally reading and writing were
both taught well, as was mathematics; but the man from whom

I first learned the rudiments of physics in the summertime, made
extra money by locating wells by means of a forked stick.

"When I was graduated, my parents wanted me to go
through college; in fact, they saw to it that all their children
had good educations, and it was but natural that they should
send me to the college to which they had both gone.

"At Oberlin I was especially good in Greek, but at that
time had absolutely no idea of specializing In physics. 59 It was
then that he told me it was an accident that he had made physics
his life work.

"It came about," he said, "through the instructor of
Greek asking me at the end of my sophomore year whether I
wanted to teach physics. At that time all I knew about it was
what I had learned from the gentleman with the forked stick.
But I had to help pay my way, and that was as good as any
other method. So that summer I gathered together all the
textbooks I could find and studied the subject in order to be
prepared to teach it the following term.

"While there are facts of heredity against which it is
utterly futile to inveigh, on the other hand I am a great believer
in the fact that eventually man gets to love what he is com
pelled to do. I became absorbed in the work. Up to that
time I had read Aristotle on account of my fondness for Greek;
now I read him on account of my interest in physics."

During his last two years at college Dr. Millikan continued
to teach and likewise study physics; then he went to Columbia
and studied there for his Ph. D. and from there, on the advice
of Dr. Pupin, he went to Germany and spent a year at Berlin
and Gottingen.

"Upon my return from abroad," he continued, "I was
appointed to the Chair of Physics at the University of Chicago,

[6*1

where I remained five years, and from there I went to the
California Institute of Technology, where I still am."

I was interested in Dr. Millikan s ideas on religion, and
accordingly I asked him whether his scientific studies had
shaken his religious faith.

"Religion/ he replied, "is one of the most striking possi
ble examples of evolution. In so saying I am uttering nothing
that is in any way heretical, nothing that Is not said or implied
in every theological seminary of importance in the United
States. For no fact stands out more clearly, even in Bible
history, than that religion, as we find it in the world to-day,
has evolved up to its present state from the crudest beginnings.

" Religion, as I use the word, has always dealt with two
groups of ideas, first with one s conception of the meaning of
existence that is, with one s conception of God, and second
with the conception of one s own responsibility in this world.
These two ideas have always been associated in all religions.
But these conceptions of God and of duty change as man learns
more and more and gets farther from the earliest stages of his
development.

"Primitive man finds himself on the one hand surrounded
by human enemies, who kill and enslave him, to whom if they
are stronger than he, he is obliged to surrender the best that he
has. On the other hand, he also finds himself surrounded by the
forces of nature, which seem to him as capricious as his human
enemies.

"Under these conditions, what does he do? The only thing
possible for a man in his stage of development. He personifies
nature. He sees a spirit in the storm, a god like his powerful
enemy in the thunder, a nymph in a stream, a Pan in the woods,
and every mysterious happening in nature he attributes to the

[651

caprice of these spirits, or if he happens to be a believer in one
god, to the caprice of one Great Spirit.

"He begins to appease Nature, to try to get his god or gods
in a favorable mood. To do this he begins to sacrifice.

a Then comes the first forward step in the evolution of
religion. Somebody arises, somewhere, somehow, who begins
to do a little reflecting on his own account. In the Bible it was
Abraham who began to wonder whether Nature was after all
just a powerful cruel vengeful brute, whether the real God
was a being who could be propitiated by the sacrifice on the
part of a father of his only son. And he answered *NoP and de
cided then and there to break with the past.

"The Bible says, God spoke to Abraham/ How he spoke
we know not. I cannot explain that fact. But the amazing
thing is the fact that a mind to hear God has got here at all.
* Created out of the dust of the earth this is the Bible phrase
and science can find no better one a mind that begins to
think for itself. Where do our ideas come from ? Science does
not know. All that we know is that we are here and that new
conceptions lead us on to better things. And so with the aboli
tion of human sacrifice the first stage in the evolution of religion
is passed.

"Time goes on, millions of people have lived in the world,
and though they no longer believe in human sacrifice, their
conception of God is still extraordinarily manlike. Their God
is a being who takes pleasure In the smell of the sacrifice of
beasts, a being who can condemn whole families and nations
to destruction."

Dr. Millikan arose from his chair; he put his hands in his
pockets and walked up and down the small room in the hotel
in which he was staying. Then he continued :

"And then a divine event occurred divine just the same
as the last. A new idea comes into human thought and life.
It came in a limited way through Mohammed, in a much
larger way through Buddha, in a big swelling tide through
Jesus a new conception of God.

"Jesus struck the most mortal blow that has ever been
struck at all childish literalisms, when he changed the inter
pretation of the Jewish scriptures, the anthropomorphic con
ception of God prevalent up to his time, and saw in God no
longer a powerful human being, but a being whose qualities
transcended all human qualities; when he cried *It hath been
written . . . but I say unto you ; when he taught God is a
spirit, when he said The kingdom of heaven is within you 5 ;
when he for the first time in the history of the Jews conceived
a God who was not interested in Israel alone, but whose sym
pathies, whose benevolence stretched out through all the
world; when he also changed man s conception of duty, for
this must always change with the change in the conception
of God, and when he focused attention on the Golden Rule
rather than on sacrifices and burnt offerings."

I interrupted to ask whether science played any part in
the development of religious ideas.

"About fifteen hundred years after Jesus/ 5 he replied,
"another new step begins to be taken. If one is to connect this
step with any one name, it is with the name of Galileo that we
must associate the introduction as a ruling principle in life
of the scientific mode of thought.

"Remember, he lived in an age when people altogether
naturally followed the teachings of Aristotle with respect to the
relations of force and motion, but Galileo, like Abraham, began
to question the correctness of the conventional belief. That is how

he came to make the famous experiment at the Leaning Tower
of Pisa, as a result of which the formula which had been accepted
for two thousand years could be accepted no longer.

"But not content with disproving, he sought to replace
the old erroneous conception by a correct one, and did so as
the result of a lifetime spent in patient research.

" Jesus had gone a long way toward destroying or refining
man s primitive idea of God. Galileo s method, worked out
through the following centuries, took a step in the same
direction. It began to show a universe of orderliness and of
beauty, a universe that knows no caprice, in a word, a uni
verse that works through God.

"Here was another divine event in the evolution of man s
conception of God, and as an inevitable consequence, of his
conception of duty. The monasteries of the Middle Ages
testify to the old idea of God and duty; the insistent activity
of a Maxwell, a Pasteur or a Kelvin to find out the laws of
nature and to turn them to the amelioration and enrichment
of human life, testifies to the new.

"The new God was the God of law and order, the new duty
to know that order and get in harmony with it.

"Of course," he continued, "the thoughtless and undis-
cerning are divided into two great groups. One is the conven
tional crowd which passes on without change, and the other
is the red mob, the devotees of the next, easiest and cheapest
philosophy, the philosophy of knock.*

"Religion is affected by it. There are immense crowds that
hang behind, that cannot break from the past, and there are
others who want to break completely with it, who call it a
pack of lies. Neither of them has any conception of what it is
all about.

"It seems to me there are but two possible points of view
to be taken with respect to the entire question of religion.
One is that of the dogmatists, and the other is that of the open-
minded seeker after truth.

"Personally, if I were compelled to be a dogmatist, it
would be easier for me to be a fundamentalist than an atheist,
for I believe with Voltaire that if God did not exist it would be
necessary to invent Him.

"Charles Darwin, against whom some religious dogmatists
rage, said, No man can stand in the tropic forests without
feeling that they are temples filled with the various productions
of the God of nature, and that there is more in man than the
breath of his body.

"Fortunately I am not obliged to be either a fundamentalist
or an atheist, for there is another kind of religion a religion
which keeps its mind open to new truth, which realizes that
religion itself has continually undergone an evolution, that
as our religious conceptions have changed in the past so they
may be expected to change in the future, that eternal truth
has been discovered in the past, that it is being discovered
now and will continue to be discovered. That kind of religion
adapts itself to a growing, developing world. It is useful in
such a world, while both kinds of dogmatic opinion seem to
me useless.

" Such a religion will be with us so long as man hopes and
aspires and reflects upon the meaning of existence and the
responsibilities it entails."

|69|

VIII

IT is hard enough to get the Englishman on his native
heath. It is doubly hard when he happens to be a scientist
who comes to this country for short stays in many
cities.

I had thought it was difficult to see Bernard Shaw, but at
least I knew where he was to be found. When Sir James Jeans
was here, I could not even locate him. Telephone calls and
frantic interviews with his publishers failed to unearth him.
It was only when some one suggested that I try sending a
wire in care of his brother-in-law, Senator Bingham, that I
managed to get on his trail and obtain his consent to give me
an hour just before he sailed.

Now at last I sat with him in his hotel room. As he talked
about intangible things, the magic of his words made them
seem more real than the gaudy furniture and silken walls of
his Louis XVI drawing room. Puffing clouds of smoke from
his briar pipe, he pointed out that for three thousand years
man has been attempting to find an answer to the mysteries
of his being and his surroundings; three million years hence
man may still be on the quest.

As I sketched and he spoke, it was inevitable that the
pictures of two others workers along the same lines whom
I had also drawn should come to mind: Professor Einstein
in his attic room in Haberlandstrasse in Berlin working on
equations which have shaken the beliefs of years; Professor

70

Sir James Jeans

Millikan at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
delving into the mysteries of cosmic rays.

There is a remoteness about Einstein that is almost mystic.
Though Millikan s eyes are turned toward the heavens, his
feet are firmly planted on the earth. Jeans, the Briton, com
bines the poetry of the German philosopher of mathematics
with the rationality of the scientist of New England descent, and
Pegasus always accompanies him on his mathematical flights to
the farthest realms of the universe. Though his handshake is as
unresponsive as Einstein s he has not the abstraction of the
dreamy-eyed professor, and despite the fact that he is as keen
as Millikan, he has not the latter s businesslike manner.

In appearance Jeans is typically British, rugged and solid,
and mingled with his evident tenacity of purpose is something
that recalls gardens filled with flowers, thatched roofs, and
wide stretches of countryside. Into dull but learned institutions
he brings with him the air and joyfulness of the huge rhodo
dendrons that surround his home "in Dorking. He is a simple,
unostentatious man about whom a note of boyishness still
lingers.

Of Scotch descent, he was born in Lancashire; when he was
three years old his family moved to London. After entering
school he expected to make the study of the classics his life
work. But a new era of discoveries in science was dawning,
a decade which he has called greater than the period begun
by Galileo or that which Newton inaugurated. It was the epoch
which saw the isolation of the atom, the discovery of radio
activity and cosmic radiations and also the Einstein theory of
relativity.

Perhaps it was the ancient philosophers who first interested
him in science; perhaps, like Millikan, who had also intended

to become a classical scholar, he first read Aristotle for his
language and later became more absorbed in his theories; or
again, perhaps it was the rumble of the fall of Victorian mate
rialism which resounded in his ears. At all events, before he was
graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, he had determined
to give up Latin and Greek in favor of mathematics and science.

While still a fellow at college he began his teaching career.
Over a quarter of a century ago he came to this country to
occupy the chair of applied mathematics at Princeton at the
Invitation of Woodrow Wilson, then president of that uni
versity. He was here for five years and married an American
woman, the niece of Donald Mitchell who, under the pen
name of Ik Marvel, wrote the "Reveries of a Bachelor "
and "Dream Life/ 5 books that were extremely popular in the
sentimental ^eighties.

However, when his alma mater called him, Professor Jeans
returned to Cambridge and taught mathematics there. Later
he was appointed secretary of the Royal Society, but he has
resigned from that post and is now spending all his time on his
own scientific problems.

"It is but a natural step," he explained, "from applied
mathematics to astronomy, but what many people do not
understand is how a man who is an astronomer can find ample
occupation outside of an observatory. If I am asked where
my observatory is, my usual reply is Mount Wilson, for as a
research associate of that observatory, a position which I value
very highly, I have access to all of the data collected there.

"The day is gone when the astronomer s work is carried on
only at the eyepiece of a telescope. Naturally, observations
must be made, but these must be recorded by men who are
trained for the purpose and I am not one of them. Photo-

graphs are taken from which valuable knowledge is obtained,
but many of the astronomers of to-day are mathematicians
whose work consists of handling mathematical equations
rather than telescopic instruments.

"For instance, Percival Lowell accurately predicted the
existence and position of the planet Pluto long before it was
actually discovered. It is possible that he was not quite correct
in his estimates of its weight, but that will not be positively
known for perhaps fifty years, when its position will be such
as to make it possible to determine that.

"To take another example, Professor Einstein is not an
observing astronomer and none of his work has resulted from
any observations which he himself has made. His contribution
to our changing ideas of the universe has been the working
/out of mathematical problems. Nature s great book is written
in mathematical language 5 these are Galileo s words and they
are so true that in my opinion no one except a mathematician
need ever expect fully to understand those branches of
science which hope to unravel the fundamental nature of the

universe."

As he has explained in his books, Professor Jeans holds
that the Great Architect of the universe begins to appear
to be a pure mathematician a controlling power which has
something in common with our own minds, though, so far as
we can at present see, it is without emotion, morality, or
esthetic appreciation. I asked him how this conception
affected his feelings concerning the universe.

Sir James smiled and drew from a sheaf of papers one sheet.

"Here," said he, "is a poem that I heard but a day or so
ago. It is by Walt Whitman and it so impressed me that I
made a copy of it. It answers your question:

"When I heard the learned astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before

me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide

and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with

much applause in the lecture room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars"

Sir James s voice is deep, and as he read he put the expres
sion of an actor into the poem.

"The mathematician," he continued, "does not only see
nature through the mathematical blinders which he has
fashioned for himself; indeed he can often find a real note of
poetry and reverence in his abstract studies of the universe.
Moreover, astronomy is a science in which exact truth is
stranger than fiction and about which one could hardly be
prosaic if one tried.

"Of course, scientific ideas have radically changed. In a
radio talk in England I pointed out that fifty years ago the
universe was generally looked upon as a machine. It was held
that the final aim of science was to explain all the objects
in the world, including living bodies, as machines, as mere
jumbles of atoms which would perform mechanical dances
for a time under the action of blind purposeless forces and then
fall back to form a dead world.

"Modern science gives but little support to such mate
rialistic views. When we pass to extremes of size in either
direction to the cosmos as a whole or to the inner recesses
I 761

of an atom the mechanical interpretation of nature fails.
We come to entities and phenomena which are in no sense
mechanical. To me they seem less suggestive of mechanical
than of mental processes. The universe seems to be nearer a
great thought than to a great machine. Such is the view I
feel inclined to take at present, while fully conscious that at
any time the pendulum may swing back again as our scientific
knowledge increases."

Asked if this meant that the universe is one of thought, he
replied: "I would say, as a speculation, not as a scientific fact,
that the universe and all material objects in it atoms, stars
and nebulae are merely creations of thought of course, not
of your individual mind or mine, but of some great universal
mind underlying and coordinating all our minds. The most we
can say is that scientific knowledge seems to be moving in this
direction. For myself I find almost any system of idealistic
philosophy preferable to the materialistic and mechanistic
views held two generations ago; but who knows how things
may look two generations hence ?"

I inquired if this were not a rather uncertain stand. He
got up and looked for his tobacco to refill his pipe; then he sat
down again and replied: "Yes, it is; and there is a reason. We
on earth have been thinking seriously about these things, for,
shall we say, three thousand years. After three million years
our descendants will still probably be thinking about these
same things. If they make equally good use of their time
they ought to know a thousand times as much then as we
know now. Yet even then, so far as we can foresee, human
life on earth will only be in Its infancy. Our race cannot expect
to understand everything in the first few moments of its
existence.

{77}

"Our ancestors of a century ago read their origins in the
Book of Genesis, with 4004 B.C. printed in the margin against
the account of creation. To-day we trace our origins back to a
far greater antiquity. We believe that the earth is merely a
tiny fragment of the sun, which got splashed off, almost by
accident, something like two thousand million years ago.
For hundreds of millions of years it remained uninhabited,
until at last life arrived and, after passing through many forms,
culminated in man. The upward ascent was a devious one;
life followed many dead ends before finding its final road which
led to man. We know that man is an absolutely new arrival on
earth and has possessed and governed it for less than a thou
sandth part of its existence.

"The early Christians believed that the world would end
in their lifetime; their founder had said so, and they devoted
their whole attention to the living generation. To-day, few,
even of our religious teachers, expect the world to end in our
time. For more years than we can imagine, it is likely to remain
in much the same physical condition as now, and so will
provide a suitable home for the human race.

" Whatever our views on a future life in another world, we
recapture the old Jewish concept of an immortality in this
world or something which is effectively as good as immor
tality enjoyed not by us but, through us, by our posterity.
Our problem is no longer merely to muddle through for a few
more generations. We see ourselves as the architects of a
tremendous future, with science giving us the power to build
for good or eviL

"I do not worry overmuch about abstract philosophical
problems, nor do I trouble much about questions such as
finding a logical or rational basis for ethics or morality.

Sayings of Christ It is better to give than to receive 5 and
What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose
his own soul ? take one into regions where logic and science
are at present unable to provide any guidance.

"We of the present age know very little almost nothing;
we are rather pioneers setting out to explore a new country.
We have the thrill of ever-changing views; now and again we
reach a ridge or summit which opens up new and unexpected
vistas; of necessity our point of view* must change. Those
who come after us will live in a very different world, which
they will understand far better than we understand our world
to-day. They may find it far more wonderful than anything
we can imagine; on the other hand, it may prove unspeakably
dull. ~

" In either event, they will not know the thrill of the pio
neer. And, unless human nature changes vastly in the mean
time, we may be sure they will regret the good old days in
which we are now living. They will think of our age as the
golden age, the glorious morning of the world. And I, for one,
do not regret the fate that has cast my life in it."

As I left him the porter was taking out his luggage to have
it sent aboard a ship which would reach England in less than
five days. The telephone had rung and Sir James was speaking
to some one in California. Outside, the streets were crowded
with motors, and the plane from Boston passed overhead.

His words, "the glorious morning of the world," were
fresh in my mind and I could not help wondering what its
midday would be like.

I 79}

IX

ONE encounters many religions. Scientists, explorers,
business men and artists have talked to me of their
beliefs. Yet ordinarily one does not expect to find
dogmatic fervor in a diplomat. Perhaps the fact that this
diplomat is a poet as well explains the apparent incongruity.
I am thinking of Paul Claudel as I write this, a Frenchman
whose conversation is as whimsical as Shaw s without the
Irishman s striving; whose aphorisms are as unusual as Wilde s
without their artificiality; but beyond, and as a basis for all,
is Paul Claudel s almost childlike trust in a Greater Being,
a devoutness which accepts without questioning and casts a
charm of simplicity over him. But the French Ambassador s
belief neither warps nor twists; it has its foundations in the
apple tree covered slopes of Picardy where he was born and it
found itself on Christmas Day eighteen years later in Notre
Dame, when in an instant his heart was touched and he be
lieved believed so firmly, so convincingly, he himself said, that
no reasoning or vicissitudes could shake or even touch that
belief.

It was in an artificial, amorous and agnostic Paris that
Claudel found his faith the Paris of Zola and the younger
Dumas, of Gerome the painter and Bernhardt the actress;
a Paris in which Banville a Horace and Maecenas combined
wrote his criticisms, and in which Verlaine sat at the "Soleil
d Or" or before the doors of "Frar^ois Premier" and sipped

I 80 I

\

Paul Claudel

his absinthe with Rimbaud at his side. It was here also that
Claudel, a boy from the Aisne. studied at the Ecole des
Sciences Politiques.

Veiled and occult as his writings are, the man in his
personal appearance has nothing of the esoteric poet. Of
middle height, with a tendency toward heaviness, his florid
complexion, gray mustache, and broad but not over-high
forehead give no inkling of the faculty that has produced
free verse comparable with that of Chateaubriand and
Rimbaud.

Nor in his clothes does M. Claudel display any of those
affectations so characteristic of poets. A stiff collar, a plain
four-in-hand tie, and a conservatively cut suit, all go to make
the Ambassador look more like a healthy French bourgeois
than the diplomatic representative of a great European
nation and the author of dramas of mystery and poetry of
imagination.

Indeed, it is difficult to accept M. Claudel as either a
diplomat or a poet, for he at once displays a sense of humor so
keen and so incisive that it is impossible to imagine him taking
even himself seriously a seemingly necessary requirement in
the profession of either a poet or a diplomat. But his humor and
his conversation are subtle. He glides almost imperceptibly
from one subject to another; he states facts in so unusual a
form that they seem almost fantasies; and he so presents
fantasies that they seem to be facts. He mixes truth with
romance, and does it in a language in which he is not altogether
at ease, thus showing that it Is the power of his ideas and not
the play of his words that captivates.

"My first diplomatic post," he told me as he sat in a room
high up in one of New York s towers, "was as vice consul in

I 83 I

Boston; and after a few years there, I got my first taste of the
Orient. For fifteen years I was in China.

"And, incidentally, speaking of China reminds me of one
of the strangest portraits that was ever made of me. It was done
by a native artist. He sat facing me, and surely and quickly
with a brush loaded with water color he drew one-half of my
face; then he deftly folded the paper in half and the wet paint
was transferred to the other side of the paper and completed
the portrait. It was Oriental efficiency, but it was more than
that it was evidence of that love of conventionalization that is
so characteristic of Chinese art."

From China M. Claudel was sent to various European coun
tries, then to Brazil. Later he became Ambassador to Japan,
where, as in China, he learned the language. Incidentally, he
wrote two Japanese ballets, collaborating with a native
musician in writing the incidental music and with an artist In
designing the settings.

"Too few people," he said, "know anything about the
Japanese art of to-day. Hokusai and a number of his contem
poraries are well known, but they are dead, and the great
artists who are working there are not appreciated In the West.
They still retain the old method of drawing that gives such
charm to the older pictures; but from the West has come a
certain influence that has made itself felt and introduces a new
element into their works.

"Those artists of the East have a clear Idea of art; they
realize that it is not imitative, that it must be the expression
of an emotion an emotion that in a sense may result from a
rational idea. What they put down on their paper they put
down quickly, but they do not begin until they have thought
out carefully what they are going to do.

C84I

"I think this is true of most good art. The actual result is
achieved quickly, no matter how long the tortures of creation
have previously endured."

As he was speaking, the telephone rang, and he answered it;
but though he speaks English well and understands it pej^ectly,
he had difficulty In finding out what the person at the other
end of the wire wanted, and asked me to talk. It was a photo
graphic news agency that wanted to take a photograph.

M. Claudel refused to pose he said he hated photographs,
and inadvertently I thought of Al Smith who, when I told him
I wanted to make a drawing of him, said: "What good are
drawings anyhow ? Photographs are better."

"That is the trouble with the world to-day," the Ambas
sador continued, as he resumed his place in the chair. "We are
all becoming too mechanical in our ideas. The advantages
that we gain from our great mechanistic inventions make us
lose sight of the real beauty and worth of those things that are
not purely utilitarian and labor-saving.

"If I want to see what the men and women of an earlier
period looked like, I do not get out a lot of photographs. I can
gain more knowledge of a man s character from a drawing or
painting or bust of him than I can from all the photographs of
him that were ever made.

"Do you know the work of Carpeaux?" he asked. "Have
you seen any of his portrait busts ? He did that group of dancing
girls to the right of the entrance of the Paris Opera House, and
the bust of Garnier, architect of the building, is also by him.
His busts give you a better impression of the people than any
photographs; they embody the spirits of his subjects.

"You know," he continued, "they show, too, that our idea
that the height of the forehead is a token of intelligence is not

altogether right. The eyes, the nose, the mouth or the chin can
show mental capacity as well as the brow.

a Most statesmen, for instance, have long noses/ 9 he went
on. "But I suppose that is very lucky, because most of them
cannot see further than the length of them, so that a statesman
with a short nose is handicapped by nature. 95

He chuckled.

"But, seriously, there is a strange fact that always im
presses itself upon me whenever I look at the portraits of any
number of men of one particular epoch; and that is, that for
some reason or other there is a certain resemblance among
all of them.

"Do you remember how many men looked like Lincoln
during the period in which he lived ? You do not see any to-day.
It is the same about other periods in the world s history. There
is always a predominant type.

"Have you ever noticed the spirit of Bismarck that is
present in most of Lenbach s portraits I mean those of other
people? That fact interests me. The reason for it does not.
If it is because at that time God felt that that type of man was
essential for the welfare of Germany, that is beside the ques
tion. The same thing that is true of all the men painted by
Lenbach is just as true of any other period of the world s
history. How many old Roman busts have you mistaken for
Julius Csesar? Don t you recognize an epochal resemblance
among all the Dutchmen painted by Hals or Rembrandt?
And assuredly all the men drawn by Ingres have something
in common in their looks."

I asked how he accounted for this.

"I do not know," he replied. "And, moreover, as I said
before it does not interest me. That is the trouble with the age

186}

in which we live. Scientists are ruining the world searching for
causes. An artist has no desire to find them out. He is contented
with the results.

" When I look out of this window and see the sun glowing on
the huge piles of masonry that rear upward into the sky, I
am satisfied with the majesty of the scene. The reasons for
which the buildings were erected, their cost and their housing
capacity do not interest me. Nor do the causes that were at
work to produce a fine painting hold any attraction for me.
A scientist looks at a painting, and for him it is certain earth
or chemical colors dissolved in water or oil, and laid on a oiece
of canvas; his eyes do not see the soul of the picture/

As he spoke about these things I could not understand
why he had given up the greater part of his life to diplomacy.
I mentioned this to him. He smiled.

"You Americans also have had authors who did the same
thing. There was Irving and also Hawthorne, and in France
we have had many men who have combined literature with
government work. There are Chateaubriand, Lamartine,
and Morand, to mention only a few of them.

" After all, art and by art I mean painting, sculpture,
music, literature and the allied crafts as well in a way binds
all people together, and makes for a better understanding
among the various peoples upon this earth; so that even those
artists who did not go in for diplomacy have done their part in
cementing friendships and smoothing away miscomprehen

sions."

[871

X

PAUL CLAUDEL S words had seemed strangely familiar
to me as he spoke of peace. They recalled for me another
Frenchman and a warm summer day in Paris three
years before. The bookstalls on the walls of the quay were
all open and doing a lively business; the floating baths in the
river below were crowded; and as I passed the Chamber
I noticed a throng of serious, stiff-collared Frenchmen, inter
spersed here and there with tourists, waiting for admission to
hear the proceedings of the Deputies. A soldier directed me to
the almost hidden, steep staircase in the courtyard which
leads to the waiting room of the then Minister of Foreign
Affairs, the office of Aristide Briand.

This room is bare save for a row of chairs along one wall
and a table with periodicals, in the center. I had come in from
the bright sunlight and it was a few minutes before I discovered
the source of the low rumble that I heard as I entered. In the
shadow, at the head of the table, sat, or rather reposed, an
attendant. As gently as possible I tried to waken him. I moved
a chair but the rumble continued. I coughed. I dropped one
of the magazines on the table. There were no results. Undis
turbed, he continued to sleep. At last, becoming desperate,
I shoved the table. This had the desired effect and, waking, the
attendant smiled guiltily, assuring me that it was very warm.

When I explained that I had an appointment with M.
Briand he stretched himself, got up in a leisurely way and

Arlstide Briand

went to the closet in the corner of the room. From this he took
out a tail coat edged with gold braid, on the front of which
hung a number of medals. Carefully he brushed it. Then he
removed the worn garment he had on and got into the gorgeous
one that he had taken out of the closet. With a knowing wink
he left me alone, but returned in a few minutes and ushered
me through a labyrinth of halls into the presence of the Min
ister of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic.

Although he comes from Brittany, there is something of the
southern Frenchman or even of the Spaniard about Briand s
appearance. His wavy black hair, now mixed with gray, his
brown, crinkly mustache, his dark skin, with decided redness
in his cheeks, through which tiny blood vessels can be seen,
all tend to make him resemble a portrait by Velasquez. As a
matter of fact, there is a certain resemblance between him
and the portrait of the Admiral by that painter that hangs
in the National Gallery in London.

His prominent eyebrows are not mates, one being con
siderably higher than the other, and from beneath them gleam
two dark blue eyes that are so deep in hue as to appear black.
A deep cleft between his eyes and a mustache, drooping at
the corners, give a formidable expression in repose, though
when he is speaking this expression rapidly changes and his
face is suffused not only with kindness but also humor.

To his personal appearance he apparently pays little atten
tion. In fact, there is a story current in Paris that when he was
Premier he went on a walking trip in Brittany and was arrested
as a vagrant. At Geneva he was the most carelessly dressed
man in the Assembly.

No less vital a personage than Clemenceau, Briand
radiates a note of sincerity that seemed lacking in the older

man. Compared with him Poincare looks flabby and soft.
Poincare is more interested in theories than in humanity.
And it is humanity that appears to be the one thing in which
Briand is completely absorbed. It is for humanity that he has
acted the part of the peacemaker of Europe. He has great
political ideals coupled with indomitable courage, but he is
politician enough to realize that at times those ideals must be
compromised, not abandoned, for the sake of peace.

As a young man Briand worked as a journalist. After
service on several papers he finally became editor of La
Lanterne. In those days he was an ardent internationalist,
and although some of his ideas have changed since then,
nevertheless to-day one discerns in his appeals for the unity
of nations the same ideals that he preached and wrote about
in his early years. At Locarno, turning his back on Chamber
lain so that he might look directly at Luther and Stresemann,
he said: "Our people have fought against each other with
equal heroism. Has not the time now come for us to work
together for European peace ?"

He likes to talk about his early days; his law studies,
his contributions to the anarchist journal Le Peuple, how he
founded L Humanite with the Socialist Jaures. Those were
wild days days of studying, writing, and founding labor
unions; nights of card playing, when if luck was against him
he would take off his shoes and put them on the table, hoping
that they might bring him better fortune.

In speaking of that period he told me a rather amusing
story of the time he was connected with La Lanterne. One
column of that paper was reserved for scandals involving the
Catholic clergy. It happened that one day, through the care
lessness of the man in charge, there appeared under the head-

ing, "A Contemptible Padre/ a story of how a priest had
rescued two little boys from drowning. That oversight cost
the editor his job.

"But," said Briand, "it was an accident that it was ever
discovered. For I am an old enough newspaper man to know
that the thing that counts in a newspaper is the headline, not
the text beneath.

"That is the great trouble with the press," he continued.
"Very often the hastily written words of an incompetent
reporter will sway public opinion. I remember after Locarno,
the English, the German, and, yes, the French papers also,
all acted in practically the same way. In Germany there were
headlines saying that the Germans had been imposed upon;
here in France I was looked on as a dupe, and in England it
was said that I had put Sir Austen in my pocket. Of course,
Sir Austen wittily replied that my pocket was not large enough
to hold him; nevertheless, there was chance that these hastily
written articles might do irreparable harm.

"What the papers should do is to spread a feeling
of better understanding among nations that rather than
enmity."

It must not be assumed from these remarks that Briand is
a visionary. To see him slouching in his chair, one shoulder
considerably higher than the other, his eyes peering from
under his mismated eyebrows, and the butt of a half-smoked
cigarette drooping from his mouth, would soon dispel any such
idea. He is a very real person, keenly alive not only to the
better qualities of humanity but also to its weaknesses. He
knows that men are neither as good nor as bad as they
are painted. Accepting the world as it is, he is confident
that it can be made better. With the Nationalist he

has no more sympathy than with the red-flag-waving
Internationalist.

"The Nationalist," he said, " declares that Germany is a
horrible, bloodthirsty country whose sole desire is our destruc
tion and whose very industrial plants are constructed for the
sole purpose of furnishing military supplies. Accordingly, we
must irritate that dangerous country and make it hate us more.
England is trying to ruin us and, therefore, we should be on the
worst possible terms with her. Italy is a nation of mandolin
players and we cannot take them seriously, while as for
America you can imagine what they say of her.

"It sounds like a joke, doesn t It? But that is the pith
of their remarks. They, however, are not a bit more ridiculous
than is the rabid Internationalist who wants to wipe out all
boundaries and is willing to commit any atrocity so that the
lion and lamb may lie down together.

"There is good and there is bad in all of us, though I will
acknowledge that it is a little harder for me to see France s
faults than those of another country. But that is because I am
a Frenchman.

"There is only one thing that wipes away boundaries. Look
around you/ 3 said he, pointing to some Gobelin tapestries. (Is
it any wonder that Claudel s words called Briand to mind ?)
"You know who designed them Rubens. The originals are
in the Louvre. He was not a Frenchman, but his work is as
dear to us as to the people of his native country. And now let
me tell you a secret. After one of my mqst strenuous days at
Locarno I returned to my hotel utterly exhausted. An old
friend of mine was there waiting for me. I knew that he played
the piano, and I felt that I must hear some music. Shall I tell
you what I asked him to play? Wagner s Walkiire. "

{[941

When I left Briand that day in his office on the quay I
did not know that I should see him again amid very different
surroundings within a few weeks.

There was a council meeting of the League of Nations at
Geneva. Into a glass-walled room, that at one time might have
served as a conservatory, pressed a crowd of hot, perspiring
newspaper men and a host of intense women intent on improv
ing the world. So numerous were they that they hardly left
room for the delegations of the nations of the world: Chamber
lain, diplomatic and suave; Stresemann, blunt and uncom
fortable; Scialoja, captious but humorous; Briand, bored to
death. For two days, hunched in his chair, with his cigarette
perilously near his crinkly mustache, he said nothing while the
council listened to reports on "The Settlement of Greek
Refugees," "The Traffic in Women and Children," "Methods
to Make It Easier for States to Apply Economic Sanctions,"
and other similar subjects.

The dowagers in taffetas, with yellow badges on their
bosoms, sighed: "Marvelous!" Flat-chested females took notes
in loose-leaf notebooks. The correspondents wrote columns on
how the world was becoming a better place in which to live.
But Briand developed eye trouble and left.

Did that mean that he was not interested in the League of
Nations ? Assuredly not. But he realized that it was not there
that he would have an opportunity to play his part of the
peacemaker. He waited.

Then came the Assembly Meeting and he saw his chance.
Above all other things a public speaker, Briand intuitively
senses the feelings of his audience and puts them into words. I
shall never forget him as he arose in that meeting. There was
an expectant hush as he began his address. His voice, resonant

and under perfect command, rises and falls at will, so that in
fact he has been called "Old Baritone" and "Gypsy Cellist/ 5
Using that voice to the best of his ability, and speaking, as he
does most of the time, without notes, he made another plea
for the World of Peace.

"I desire," said he, "to make an act of faith in the name of
my country and to say that we have faith in the future of our
work of peace. We are prepared to persevere. We have suffered.
France has been crucified in the past. We cannot forget our
sufferings and we are determined that we shall not allow such
sufferings to take place in the future."

XI

BRIAND had spoken to me of peace with all the emotional
fire of a Frenchman, It was in more measured language
but with no less depth of conviction that the president
of Columbia University once expressed similar views.

"To-day the whole world is thinking what that old prophet
Jeremiah long ago called thoughts of peace. The mind of the
world has been turned from a backward-looking and forward-
fearing mind to a forward-looking and backward-fearing mind,"

These are the words of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, As he
spoke, he was posing for me in his office on the second floor of
the library of Columbia University. There, in the middle of a
large room, the windows of which overlook the Hudson, at his
desk sat the man under whose guidance and direction Colum
bia has grown to be one of the two largest universities in the
country.

The Morningside section of New York is a city in itself. It
has its own essential characteristics and in many ways it is
entirely different from the rest of the city. But it has none of
the sleepy atmosphere of most college towns. The subway pours
out its hordes there as it does in other parts of the city; the
surface cars clang their bells just as loudly and the automobiles
whip by at the same speed.

To the north of the university rises the tower of the new
Riverside Church, a tower which would have taken years to
build in Oxford or Cambridge.

97 1

The pulsing throb of the metropolis is not halted by the
aggregation of buildings of learning; they are a part of it. The
golden Alma Mater with outstretched hands bids welcome to
her students and her alumni and alumnae to a campus where
Pan plays his pipes to the accompaniment of electric riveters
and she bids them to pore over tomes no longer dusty but
vacuum cleaned.

Just as the university of which he is the head typifies
a combination of present-day life and all learning, so does
Nicholas Murray Butler stand for the man of learning taking
an active part in the life of the times.

There is nothing of the absent-minded professor about this
well-groomed man as he sits in his office. Former presidents of
King s College look down on him from their highly burnished
and ornate frames, and on a bookcase stands a head of Victory.
They are but his background, and are in shadow; he looms out
of them, not inseparably detached, but more prominent.

There is a certain fumbling attitude about most college profes
sors. Though Masaryk has attained the Presidency of his native
land, on meeting him one feels that he is still looking for a piece
of chalk to demonstrate some problem on a blackboard. About
John Dewey there is a careful hesitancy. Even Woodrow Wilson,
after eight years of the presidency, still remained a teacher.

But this Is not so of Dr. Butler. It would be impossible
to imagine this former Professor of Philosophy going out
forgetful of the fact that he had no hat; in fact, one would be
certain that his hat, were it not a silk one, would be a. derby.

In other words, he is not the dreamy scholar who, secluded
in his library, does not see the actual present. With scholarship
he combines executive and business ability. He is living in a
rapidly changing world and his eyes are open to the changes

{ 98 I

Nicholas Murray Butler

that are going on about him, and although he has been con
nected with the university during practically his entire life
time, he has never lived, so to speak, within the campus; he has
never permitted the college walls to obstruct his view of what
has been going on outside.

For this reason, in addition to being the head of Columbia,
Dr. Butler has taken an active part not only in city but also in
national and international affairs. On the other hand, in these
days of specialization, he does not believe that a man can suc
ceed by turning first to one thing and then to another, but
that, though his interests may be diverse, he must stick to his
chosen work.

In speaking of a certain man who had attained some
prominence in various lines of endeavor, he said:

"Had he only stuck to what he started out to be, he would be
-much more successful to-day. He came to New York too late in
life. This city is the graveyard of village reputations. Men com
paratively well known come here and are lost in the crowd.

"On the other hand, it Is quite a different thing for the
country boy," he continued, "for as Cardinal Newman said
years ago, a city is by its very nature a university."

"Naturally the city draws to itself men and women of all
kinds. It is the home of great collections of art and science and
it affords abundant opportunities to come under the influence
of the best music and the best literature of our time. The great
city, and especially New York, is intensely cosmopolitan and
contact with its life for even a short time during the impres-
sionableness of youth is in itself a liberal education.

"It is this same rubbing of elbows, as it were, of the various
peoples of the world, that will go far toward making the dream
of a lasting peace real/

101

"It would be impossible to think of a war being declared
to-day," he continued, "in the same way that it was fifteen
years ago.

"The revolutionary psychological change among men
began while the war was still in progress.

"Post-war unhappiness, problems and perplexities halted
it for a while, but when Briand, Stresemann, and Chamberlain
had their momentous meeting at Locarno, the beginning of the
end of the old order was in sight.

"There remained the carefully stimulated naval rivalry
between the two great branches of the English-speaking
family. Hired trouble-makers and, I might add, unscrupulous
newspapers did what they could to make the era of interna
tional war and its dark and costly shadows last a little longer.
They did this by playing upon the credulous ignorance of
public men and public opinion. But these actions have now
been laughed not only off the stage but off the front page as
well."

The winter sun was quickly going down behind the Pali
sades on the other side of the Hudson. It threw an orange glow
over his strong features. He appeared rapt In thought for a few
minutes and then turned abruptly around.

"After Locarno/ 5 he said, "came Washington. The Prime
Minister and the President, face to face and in kindly confi
dence, crowded into four days 5 conversation and understanding
forty years of formal diplomatic procedure. Those three
foreign statesmen with their associates at Locarno and Mac-
Donald and Hoover at Washington have done the business for
which a weary world was waiting with bated breath.

"The change that has taken place in the way that interna
tional business is conducted can best be shown by the amazing

f 102 I

contrast between meetings such as these and those of former
times.

"Just about seventy years ago, on a bright summer s day,
one of the chief personalities of Europe left Geneva; he left in
disguise, bearing a false name and armed with a false passport.
That was Count Cavour, Prime Minister of the government
of the Kingdom of Piedmont. Secretly, and, I might say, on
tiptoe, he made his way to Prombieres in the Vosges. It was the
height of the season when he arrived, but instead of going to
any of the fashionable hotels he took quarters in a small
chemist s shop. There amid the smell of drugs and surrounded
by blue and red and green bottles he waited until a summons
came, and in the dark he was escorted into the presence of the
powerful reigning monarch, Napoleon III. These two men
of high place and vast responsibility did not confer together;
they conspired as to how they might bring about a great war.

"That was only seventy years ago, but there was no legislative
debate, no popular appeal, merely two high-placed and powerful
dictators, with all the arms and apparatus of two governments,
together with the peace of Europe, in their four hands.

"But two generations later a very short time in human
history a Prime Minister of State, who wields the vast and
responsible authority accorded to him by a great people living
under free and democratic government, starts across the sea.
He dons no disguise, he carries no false passport. His own
countrymen acclaim his going. The daily press of the world
records his every act and word. His very voice is carried right
into the homes of millions, when in six days time he reaches
the welcoming and hospitable shores of another land.

"The enthusiasm of genuine affection is showered upon
him, both for himself and on behalf of the great people for

1 103 I

whom he has come to speak. He goes to no upper story of a
chemist s shop, but to the White House, and then, as the
personal guest of the President of the United States, to a
simple cabin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, that there,
quiet and undisturbed, they may speak together of the great
issues and the little ones which divide peoples and which bind
peoples together.

"This is no conspiracy to organize war. It is a conference to
build peace. There is the difference.

"Public confidence has succeeded in displacing secrecy,
conference has routed conspiracy, and the authority of free
peoples and their public opinion is underneath, behind, and all
about what the Prime Minister and the President have done/

I asked what part the Paris peace pact would play in
avoiding wars.

"On August 2, 1928," Dr. Butler replied, "the civilized
world through its organized governments formally and
solemnly condemned recourse to wars for the solution of
international controversies, and the several governments
renounced war as an instrument of national policy in their
relations with one another. They further agreed that the
settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever
nature or of whatever origin which may arise among them shall
never be sought except by pacific means.

"This declaration, applauded from pole to pole and the
whole world round, is of so stupendous Importance that it is
even now most Imperfectly understood.

"In his haste, the Psalmist said, C A11 men are liars. Unless
all men and all governments are liars, national policies will,
without delay, be adjusted to the new international life that
has been so gratefully brought into being.

1 104]

"Gone is the fear for national security; gone is the argu
ment for compulsory military service and huge standing
armies; gone is the plea for the protection of sea-borne com
merce and a navy as powerful as any in the world; gone is the
haste to build bombing planes and to store up vast supplies of
poison gas; gone is the whole gospel of preparedness for a war
which is promised never to be fought gone are all these unless
all men and all governments are liars !"

It was dusk. The pink sky with its purple clouds was
luminous behind the massive buildings in which lights began
to appear. The unfinished tower of the new church loomed vast
and graceful and tall.

"Then," I asked, "you think the last war has been
fought?"

Dr. Butler looked serious, and then, in the half-darkness,
he replied :

" They have no pact to sign our happy dead,
But if, God, if we should sign in vain,
With dreadful eyes, out of each narrow bed,
Our dead will rise again!"

105

XII

THOUGH Dr. Butler has never held political office, he has
for years taken an active part in public affairs and has
even ran for the vice presidency. But not many men in
political life have been drafted from our colleges. Although in
Europe the college professor and the writer are often engaged in
political activities, in this country, with but few exceptions, the
political leaders have come from other professions.

Wilbur L. Cross of Connecticut is one of those exceptions,
for Dr. Cross had no sooner resigned as dean of the Yale
Graduate School than he was nominated for governor. Natur
ally the election of a college professor to the governorship
immediately calls to mind the career of another Democrat.

Yet there is little in common in the personalities of the
Governor of Connecticut and the late Woodrow Wilson. The
former President was a little more cosmopolitan in manner, a
little more given to theatricalism than the deliberate, slow-
going Yankee who still likes to use the homely language of the
country in all his conversation.

Tall, almost awkward In his movements, and with a quiet
shuffling walk that is characteristic of men who have spent
their lives in libraries, Dr. Cross, in distinct contrast with
Dr. Butler, at first impresses one as a scholar rather than a man
of affairs.

There is nothing formal about him, nothing that smacks
either of a desire for effect or regard for the impression that he

1106

is making. Everything that he does, from lighting his cigar to
dipping his steel pen in the inkstand, is done without haste,
but no matter what is done one feels instinctively that it is done
thoroughly.

Although a tyro in politics, he has managed to hold his own
against the seasoned politicians. His easy-going manner has
irritated his opponents, and his classical allusions have
confused them. His presumable innocence of political wiles,
however, has proved misleading and a source of strength, and
men who have pulled wires all their lives are puzzled by this
professor of English who, after an academic career of almost
half a century, made a three-minute speech at a clambake and,
as a consequence, became a candidate for governor.

But his acts as governor might well have been predicted from
his characteristically individual campaign for election. He mixed
stories of " settin hens" with quotations from Chaucer and, while
his listeners understood all about the former, they thought the
latter was a farmer "living out Wethersfield way." The shrewd
ness of much that he said pleased his audiences. They liked his
manner and his nickname, " Uncle Toby,".which he had acquired
at Yale, even if they did not understand its allusion to [the
candidate s admiration for Georgian literature. And because he
had edited Stevenson s " Travels with a Donkey," they thought
he had written an important history of his party.

However, the inhabitants of Connecticut have always been
keen. They quickly saw that here was a candidate who was not
trying to sell wooden nutmegs, nor could he be sold one. They
respected him for both his honesty and wisdom. And, accord
ingly, when the votes were counted on election day, the sole
survivor on the Democratic ticket was this benevolent,
humorous, white-haired professor.

f 1091

Although he laid aside the cap and gown to take up the
reins of government, a man cannot easily abandon the
habits of a lifetime, and so into the towered Capitol at Hart
ford he has brought with him the restfulness of the elms of New
Haven. Sitting in the Governor s room, with its golden oak
furnishings, its paintings of Putnam and Buckingham, and a
relentless electric clock whose hands jump noisily every few
minutes, he, by his very presence, has apparently transformed
the room into a library. His desk is as cluttered as was his
office of the Yale Review, but although the volumes of literature
which covered it have been supplanted by law books, a literary
air still surrounds the Governor. Formality is foreign to him,
and the unaffected manners of this Connecticut Yankee are
in direct contrast with those of the brass-buttoned, gold-
braided messenger who, big and bearded, resembles an African
monarch and supplies the pomp and circumstance that sur
round the gubernatorial chair.

But it is not only he who provides a contrast. The uni
formed police, the clerks rushing through the tiled halls, the
air of officialdom in the huge building dominating the hilltop,
all make the Governor appear more unassuming. The difference
between these surroundings and those of Yale where he seemed
to fit so perfectly into the almost colonial atmosphere of the
college town, prompted me to ask how he regarded the change
in his occupation.

He leaned back in his chair and smiled. "There are not so
many differences as one would imagine," he said. "Now let s
see, as dean of the Yale Graduate School I had to deal with
thirty departments of study all the way from the fine arts and
literature through the natural, social, and physical sciences to
engineering and clinical medicine. I met men very unlike in

I HO I

nature, from the hard-headed engineer engrossed in figures to
the temperamental artist ready to fly off at a tangent at any
minute. One must be politic, to say the least, even in a college,
in dealing with such varied types.

j^" Since I have become governor, I have had to transact
business with about the same number of major departments
of state, running from banking and insurance into labor,
aviation, and highways. It is again largely a question of
temperament in different professions.

"Of course, the men one runs across in a college have all
been brought up in about the same way; the majority of them
come from the same type of families. Most of them are young,
with hopes and aspirations that have not been dimmed or
altered by contact with the world, and all are eager to make
a name for themselves. As governor I come in contact with
different kinds and classes of people, not all actuated by the
same motives. In this way a governor s field of observation
is broader and for that reason more interesting than that
of a college professor. He rubs elbows with the world, but in a
capitol more elbows are threadbare than in a college/

"It is unusual, however, to find a scholar entering politics,"
I remarked.

He smiled. "Yes, I suppose it is. In this country the term
politician has taken on a distinctive meaning. Often it is used
as an epithet of opprobrium. Perhaps that is because there
have not been enough scholars in politics to give it a good name.

"In Europe this is not the case. Many professors enter
public life. Here we have an idea that law is a particularly
fitting prelude to public office. Why this is so I do not quite
understand. For to-day, owing to the rapid changes in social
ideas, the duties of public office are becoming increasingly

complex, and a large part of the work is extraneous to a
knowledge of law. Great social, moral, educational, and eco
nomic movements now animate the public as never before.

"All about us we see these movements at work, in the
churches, in labor organizations, In chambers of commerce,
in both business and professional clubs and always in colleges
and universities* As a matter of fact, many of the latest theories
in sociology and economics have been born within college walls.

"Of course," he continued, "while not many teachers have
gone into politics, a number of statesmen, after they had made
their names in politics, felt that they were progressing when
they became teachers. I have one in mind who preferred to go
down in history as the father of a university rather than as
President of the United States.

" Speaking seriously, however, it is a fact that in the uni
versity affairs politics rarely, if ever, enters; while in state
affairs it is always in the background.

" When a man enters public life it is a foregone conclusion that
he will become embroiled in disagreements. However, there are
disagreements in other professions, too. In the administration of
college affairs everything does not always run smoothly, but the
differences arise from an honest variance of opinions. In politics
they often spring from opposition of political parties, so that
instead of partnership in government we have partisanship.

"But it seems to me that the people are becoming con
vinced that government is likely to be good in so far as it is
separated from politics in a narrow sense. I believe in the two-
party system. I believe in it so much that I felt that the Demo
cratic party needed building up, and so I said Fd run for
governor if they would let me make a few changes in the
organization."

From his vest pocket the Governor took a cigar and lighted
it deliberately. For a few minutes he seemed wrapped in
thought. Then he continued.

"When you come right down to brass tacks, the principal
business of government is to further and promote human
strivings, and in state house as well as in college one en
counters them. Who learns more of them than the in
structors at institutions of learning ?"

"How long," I asked, "have you been connected with such
institutions ?"

"From the time I first went to the little red schoolhouse
on the hill in Willimantic, which was a good many years ago,"
he answered. "When I graduated from the high school there
I had to work my way through Yale, Then I began to teach.
For a time I was a member of the faculty of Sheffield Scientific
School; then I became dean of the graduate school, and while
still filling that post I was appointed editor of the Yale Review.
Each time I made a change my friends told me that I was
making a mistake, that I should stick to what I was doing.
But I have different ideas. I do not believe a man should
continue doing precisely the same kind of work too long. He
must progress ; that is the law of nature. To keep on doing the
identical thing for years tends to fossilize any one.

"Up to the time I became governor, although my work
was always along more or less the same lines, it had slight
variations. For instance, before I received the nomination I
had retired from my position in the University and had deter
mined to go to Europe to deliver a series of lectures on English
literature at a number of universities there; instead I am now
here in Hartford as head of the State."

I asked him how he became interested in politics.

"You must not forget/ 5 he answered, "when I was a boy
there were no movies or radios. Men s thoughts naturally
turned to politics as a diversion, and in the long winter nights
instead of listening to Amos V Andy or watching Charlie
Chaplin, men congregated round the red-hot stove in the store
at the crossroads and engaged in political discussions.

" I can remember the vitriolic arguments which took place
when Greeley and Grant ran against each other and when the
boys who were Republicans dressed in blue and those who
supported Greeley wore tall gray hats. Those were the days of
flowery orations, of torchlight parades, of debates, and brass
bands. It is not surprising that a youngster growing up in
such surroundings should become interested in the affairs
of state and, as soon as he was able to vote, that he should
affiliate himself with one of the political parties, usually the
one to which his father belonged. I think politics followed
paternity more closely in those days.

"When Cleveland declared that public office is a public
trust, it made a deep impression not only on me but also
on the rest of the students. I became so enthusiastic and
vociferous about it that my classmates nicknamed me the
Senator, and although Frank Brandegee actually became
one, I still am called by that title by many of the men whom
I knew at college.

"So you can readily understand that although I have
been a teacher most of my life, I have nevertheless always
retained an interest in politics. But it was not until I resigned
from the graduate school that I felt free to enter politics
practically."

But public life has not separated him from his literary
work. He is still editor of the Yale Review. He still reads every

article before it is accepted and he goes over the proof. I asked
him how he found the time to do this.

"By getting up early in the morning," he replied. "I
have discovered that a tremendous amount of work can be
done before most people think of getting out of bed. Then there
are Sundays also, when one is not likely to be disturbed and
when a great deal can be accomplished.

"It would be difficult for a man who has always devoted a
great part of his time to reading to be compelled to give that up,
so that even now I continue to re-read my old favorites.

"The writers of the eighteenth century have been those
whose works I have most thoroughly studied, and the develop
ment of the English novel has always held a great interest for
me. As soon as I have a little more time I intend to bring my
book on that subject, which was originally published over
thirty years ago, up to date.

"In the meantime, as I sit here in my office every day I
meet characters who seem to have walked out from the pages
of books I have read. Tom Jones and Roderick Random,
Tristram Shandy, Major Pendennis and Micawber to men
tion but a few are still roaming our streets. Here I am having
a most wonderful time renewing old acquaintances and meeting
again, after a lapse of years, old friends whom I last knew in
some favorite novel."

XIII

INTERVIEWS do not always turn out the way one expects.
Once I had gone to Washington especially to get Senator
Borah s ideas on Russia. I did not get them. But instead
I obtained a much clearer picture of the man than I would
have, had he spoken on the subject that I wanted.

When I first saw him he said he would think the matter
over and the next morning he called me up and said, "I don t
believe I can say anything about Russia that is not already
known but if you care to come over and hear my ideas on liter
ature I ll be glad to tell them to you."

There is another side to this "lone wolf" from the stern
political aspect which the public knows. And yet the first
impression that Senator Borah gives is the remarkable likeness
that he bears to his portraits. There are people whose faces
are familiar in pictures and yet, when seen for the first time,
an uncertainty arises as to their identity, and there are many
people of whom no two photographs are alike; but not so Mr.
Borah. His square head, his dark eyebrows almost meeting
above his short nose and shading his penetrating but kindly
eyes, his long upper lip and firm mouth, his strong chin, with its
well-defined cleft In the center, his thick hair parted in the
middle and allowed to grow rather long at the back all are
unmistakable.

Mr. Borah s coloring Is as characteristic as his features.
His eyes are blue. Their black pupils give them a vividness of

{116}

C /3

William E. Borah

expression and a surprising degree of intensity. His hair is dark
brown with a trace of gray above the ears, while his complexion
inclines toward the ruddy and betokens health and strength.
His voice, though not deep, is mellow, and as he speaks,
one feels that he has given time to the study of elocution, for
he knows the value of a change of tone.

Had he not gone into politics it is possible that he would
have become either an actor or a minister. Some people appear
to belong only in their own epoch; others seem out of place,
while there is a third group that can be imagined in any
period. With all his native Americanism, Senator Borah is
one of those who might have been at home in the Forum at
Rome; he might have been one of the Puritans who left England
for these shores; it is easy to picture him boarding the ships
that carried the tea into Boston Harbor, or as a contemporary
of Webster, or a member of Lincoln s Cabinet.

In his character the fanaticism of the preacher is com
bined with the emotionalism of the actor. Imbued with the
righteousness of an idea, he clings to it irrespective of party
principles, no matter how it may harm him politically. He
feels deeply and shows his feelings ; there is no Yankee reserve
or reticence about him. His moods change rapidly, not because
they are not intense, but rather on account of their intensity.
I saw him change in less time than it takes to tell from sincere
sorrow over the loss of a friend to an earnest discussion of
foreign affairs, although it was evident that his grief was just
as deep as his interest in the condition of Russia.

His humor is sharp and sarcastic, but it carries no lasting
sting. Once when I saw him Mr. Coolidge s attitude toward
accepting another nomination was still uncertain. I asked
whether he thought the President could be persuaded to run

f H9 I

again, and he answered with a twinkle in his eye: "That pre
supposes that some one is going to try to persuade him. 59 And
again, when it was suggested that the Russian peasant had
little to say in the conduct of the Soviet government, the
Senator remarked with a smile: "About as much as our
farmers have in ours/ 5

To understand Senator Borah it is necessary first to
remember his start in politics. Born the year the Civil War
ended, he was brought up in a county in Illinois which was, as
he puts it, "a hotbed of politics, where one year the Demo
crats polled a tremendous vote and where the next year the
Republicans had startling majorities. 9 The result was that
before he was old enough to vote Borah was a seasoned political
orator. In those days there were no independents. Feelings
ran high, factional fist fights were not Infrequent, and a voter
was either a Republican or a Democrat. Even the Mugwump
was unborn. Reared in this atmosphere, he of necessity allied
himself with a party, although at heart and by temperament
he is not a party man.

A Democratic president is attacked by members of his own
party in the Senate, and Borah, a Republican Senator, thun
ders out a defense in the Senate Chamber. President Coolidge
appoints a member of the Morgan firm Ambassador to Mexico.
There is much criticism, but Borah, the foe of big business,
approves of the selection.

"I eliminate personalities In determining policies/ 9 says
f the Senator. "The individual means nothing to me. In fact, I
Swill travel with the devil if he Is going in my direction/

Of all the men in Washington in the public eye, Borah is
probably the least conspicuous in the social affairs of the
capitol. No man of his prominence attends fewer dinners.

Outside of horseback riding he is supposed to have few recrea
tions, but there is another Borah who is almost unknown to
the public a side he has managed to conceal.

Most of his evenings are spent in his library. It is there
that he finds rest and relaxation. Naturally, as Chairman
of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he has a vast amount
of reading to do, but aside from this the Senator employs
his leisure in reading for enjoyment.

"At the risk of being called an old fogy," he began,
"I still follow Carlyle s example and each time a new book is
published I read an old one. And right now I may as well
confess that I am vitally interested in novels. To my mind
the majority of modern novels might better be classified as
textbooks of physiology and psychology. I read solely for
pleasure; I am interested in people, but I do not care for the
dissecting table. When I tell you that one of my favorite
novelists is Hawthorne you will see that I do not shrink from
morbidity. As a matter of fact, Hawthorne s morbidity appeals
to me; but after all it is, if I may so call it, a healthy morbidity
clothed in an almost poetic form. It is all right to call a spade a
spade in a book on sewers, but for my part I am not interested
in sewers as a literary subject.

"My other favorite novelist is Balzac. I like Dickens and
Thackeray, but Dickens I find given a little too much to
caricature and Thackeray a little too English to appeal to a
Middle Westerner. But Balzac s characters are real. They
are French, it is true, but they are human beings first. I feel
their humanity rather than their nationality. Take Rastignac
and his friends, who are found in a number of novels why,
I know a crowd of young chaps right here in Washington
whom Balzac might have been describing when he wrote of

1 1211

those Frenchmen. Then there is the Country Doctor. Dis
regarding his monarchistlc ideas, I know scores of doctors out
west who might have served as a model for him, striving as he
did for human betterment."

"Do you also read poetry?"

"Oh, yes,** he went on, "but here again 1 am old fashioned.
I suppose I ought to tell you that I am interested in free verse,
but I am not. The three poets whom I most admire and whose
works I read and reread so often that I can quote pages from
them are Shakespeare, Milton, and Dante. So you see, in
some things I am not as radical as I am painted. Whatever
I can say of any one of them would seem very trite, but how
true and applicable are many of Shakespeare s characteriza
tions, and how well some of them fit some of our public men
to-day!

"There are two more writers whom, if I am speaking of my
favorite authors, I must necessarily name; they are Emerson
and Swift."

As he mentioned the latter I involuntarily smiled, for I
immediately recognized a resemblance in outlook on life
between the Dean and the Senator. He noticed my expression
and grasping almost intuitively the reason for It, he continued :
"Yes, other people have felt the same way as you, but I am
flattered at the comparison. After all, even if he was somewhat
of a cynic, whatever weaknesses and frailties he saw in human
nature and in governments he tried to cure rather than
increase. And his imagination and quaint humor permitted
him to point out those weaknesses in a manner that entertained
at the same time that it instructed.

"As for Emerson, nobody knows the amount of inspiration
and comfort that I have received from his essays. Many a

f 122}

night, after a terribly trying day in the Senate, when every
thing has seemed to go wrong, when I have doubted even my
own convictions, I have gone home and after dinner have taken
up a copy of Emerson and turned to his essay on Self-reliance.
It has put new life into me, made me look at things in a
very different way, and often when I have been on the point
of giving up, that work has kept me sticking to my guns." \

1 1231

XIV

I THINK that Emerson has been mentioned more often by
people who have posed for me than any other author.
The effect that this sharp-faced old New Englander has
had upon succeeding generations appears to be deep and
lasting. In a way it was not so surprising that he should
influence the Senator from Idaho; what did startle me was
the day I saw a copy of his essays lying open upon the desk
of Georges Clemenceau.

I had received a letter the previous evening saying that
M, Clemenceau would pose for me the following morning at
nine-fifteen and I did not know exactly what to do, for I had aft
engagement with another French statesman. I was particularly
anxious to draw Clemenceau; so I decided it would be best to go
to his house, explain matters, and ask him to fix another time.

At an early hour, with portfolio and charcoal, I jumped
into a taxi and told the driver to take me to 8 Rue Franklin.
We drove In the direction of Auteuil, past the statue of Ben
jamin Franklin, and finally entered a rather narrow Street
filled with apartments and shops; by no means a smart street,
and so distinctly Parisian that it was the last place in the
world Imaginable as the residence of one who was supposed
to love the countryside. Number 8 is one of those typical
French apartments with a small courtyard and a concierge
and several baby carriages whose noisy occupants cast doubt
on the statement that France s birthrate is declining.

1 124

Georges Clemenceau

Here Clemenceau lived. One expects some sort of homage
to be paid to fame; and I confess that when I asked the
concierge (at the moment busy with her baby) which floor was
M. Clemenceau s, I was somewhat startled when, without
raising her eyes, she told me it was on the ground floor in the
rear.

I was ushered through a dark hall into Clemenceau s
library. Here I was in the room in which he spent most of his
waking hours, a room which, if inanimate things can reflect a
personality, must more than any other be representative of
Clemenceau himself.

The room seemed to be cluttered with things of all sorts,
so crowded that the memory of it brings to mind no in
dividual objects but a jumbled mass of furniture and bric-a-
brac. On three sides were bookcases, the tops of which were
filled with vases and statuettes, and above these, photo
graphs, drawings, and prints. In the middle of one wall was
the inevitable white mantel and mirror so characteristic of all
French rooms, and here all sorts of knick-knacks had accu
mulated. A sofa took up the remaining side, while in the center
was a large kidney-shaped desk piled high with papers, books,
and pieces of African pottery; A number of chairs helped fill
the remaining space and aided in furthering the crowded effect.

With the exception of two sketches by Monet, the pictures
appeared to have been selected for their subjects rather than
their artistic worth. But beside the mirror and in one of the
most prominent places hung a large water color drawing of a
woman with red hair, a profile with delicate features not
French, I thought, and immediately I began to wonder if
perhaps it was a drawing made long ago of that Stamford girl,
Miss Mary Plummer, who afterward became Mme. Clemenceau,

| ml

but with whom her husband had not lived for some time pre
vious to her death.

I imagined him sitting at his desk and looking up at the
picture as he was writing and living again the years in America
when he taught French in that young ladies* boarding school
in Connecticut. The entire room evidently belonged to a man
living with his memories. Things were there not for themselves,
but for the associations connected with them.

As I look back now, I realize that all these impressions
were crowded into a space of time much less than it takes to
record them, for I had hardly seated myself on the couch when
I heard the patter of feet and two strange little gray dogs
trotted in. Short and squat, with long hair covering their eyes
and hanging over their mouths, they were appropriate heralds
of the short little gray man who came in after them.

This was Clemenceau! Dressed in gray gray slippers on
his feet, gray silk gloves on his hands and a modification of the
poilu s hat, likewise in gray, on his head. All of this grayness
accentuated the darkness of his skin and gave it a ruddy hue
which scoffed at almost four score and ten years.

The active little dogs were no more vigorous than the
vital little man who followed them.

Before I had a chance to say anything he began, "You are
twenty-five minutes late; I wrote to you to come at a quarter
to nine and now it s ten after. I do not like to be kept waiting.
The sand runs too rapidly through the glass."

I explained that his letter had said a quarter past nine and
I had another appointment at nine-fifteen, but that I would
come at any other time he would name.

"There is no other time ; I have arranged to give you this time,
you are late, but I will pose for you now otherwise not at all."

f 128 I

Clemenceau spoke in English, very good English with a
French accent a rather sharp incisive speech with a rising
inflection as he finished each sentence* But his manner gave a
note of finality to what he had to say, so that I immediately
felt there was no use arguing about what time his letter named
or in endeavoring to change the hour of the appointment.

I accordingly told him that I would draw him then and
there and the Tiger drew in his claws and purred. He literally
purred, for with the slightest suspicion of a grunt of satisfaction
he dropped his gruff manner and became a charming, benef
icent old gentleman.

He tried several places in the room in order to get the
best lighting, he made sure that I was comfortable, and when
everything was arranged satisfactorily he began to pose.
Unlike many other busy men I have drawn, he gave me his
undivided time and neither read nor wrote as I made my
sketch, but, seated at his desk with his hands clasped in front
of him, he looked straight ahead of him into space. The light
from the window fell directly on him and brought into strong
relief the well-modeled head. The light was not compli
mentary; it did not soften the wrinkles, nor did it blur the
marks of age. But after all, it was the right kind of light in
which to draw this rugged old Frenchman, most of whose life
had been spent in fighting.

Though we were in the heart of Paris, none of the noise or
bustle filtered into the high half-lighted room in which Clemen
ceau sat.

Neither of us said a word. I wanted to speak, but he seemed
so engrossed that I hesitated. As I drew I tried to read some
of his thoughts, for politician though he was, his face was no
mask and his expression changed and seemed to betray what

I 1291

was passing In his mind. At one time the faintest suspicion of a
smile appeared to cross his face, while at another I thought I
detected the trace of a watery film over his eyes. Once I was
almost sure that he was living over the days in Montmartre,
when, as a young doctor, he had treated, gratuitously^ the
poor of the neighborhood. I saw him go through the fearful
strain of war again, and later, when a peculiar look of sadness
came over him, I was certain that he was wondering why
the one gift that he had really wanted had been withheld from
him by the French people. Like the Romans, they had caused
to be placed in each schoolhouse of the nation tablets recording
the fact that Georges Clemenceau was deserving of the
thanks of the Republic; but the thing that he wanted was the
presidency and this had been denied him.

Suddenly catching hold of himself, he turned and smiled
a half-guilty smile, as if he felt that I had overheard his
thoughts. And in that eloquent silence I am sure that I had.
But the spell was broken and I knew that whatever he would
say could not be half so revealing as the reflections of his
inner moods which crossed his face as he sat there in silence.

One of the little dogs that had been asleep on a newspaper
that was lying on the sofa got up and shifted his position.
Clemenceau looked at me as if he felt that he had given enough
of his time. I took the hint.

"The drawing is finished. Will you sign It? 9 I asked,
showing it to him and at the same time offering him a piece of
charcoal.

Putting on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, he looked at
it a few minutes, and then muttered to himself, "C*est moi"
But instead of taking my charcoal he used his pen, saying, "I
can handle the pen better than the crayon."

f 130 I

I left with the decided impression that Clemenceau was,
like Mark Twain, a very lonely man, and in spite of his fame
not an overhappy one, for about him there was a note of
inexplicable sadness. Almost all of his intimates had gone.

"At eighty-six/ he had said to me, "one does not make
new friends and the old ones have gone to keep appointments
jthat cannot be broken."

But although Clemenceau has now gone to keep those
appointments, he is in but one sense of the word dead. To the
men who worked with him or fought against him he is almost
still alive. There was something so vital about the grim old
warrior that it is hard for them to realize that the roar of the
Tiger has been forever hushed.

1 131 I

XV

I HAVE noticed that the country breeds a certain freedom
and unrestraint. Men who are cautious in the city will
speak their minds freely and become more friendly when
removed from urban influences. Although I have met Winston
Churchill only once, our encounter was at his country house,
and as a result of that visit, I feel that I came to know the
man much better than many others whom I have seen more
often.

Chartwell Manor is in Westerham, a little Kentish town, with
a quaint Wren-inspired church steeple, heavy-walled cottages,
and air redolent with flowers.

The drive from the station is past gardens and through
woods gardens filled with larkspur and hawthorn and gigan
tic rhododendron bushes, and woods damp and earthy, with
heavy elms and beeches and oaks. There are not many cars on
the roads; more often a horse-drawn wagon that serves as a
home for a roaming family moves slowly over the dirt pathway.
There is a sleepy air of indolence about the section, and plod
ding horses seem much more a part of the place than scurrying
motors. One feels a remoteness from the present and a
loneliness that has made the North Downs region an ideal
setting for the opening scenes of numberless romances.

Indeed, as I drove through this typical English country I
had a feeling that it was on exactly such a road that Kipling s
traveler pedaled his bicycle as he suddenly came upon that

1 132]

Winston Spencer Churchill

house in which "They/ those more than human children,
played and were loved.

A sharp turn and, seemingly out of nowhere, appears the
Churchill home. Its grayness, its ivy, and its hungry moss all
proclaim a static condition, a slow growing out of the earth
that makes it as much a part of the place as the trees around it.
There is not a note about that jars, that does not belong.
Accentuating the unity of the building with the landscape, the
flagstones that are before the main entrance do not stop at the
vestibule, but continue right over it into the main hall.

An Admirable Crichton ushered me in, but before he would
go to Mr. Churchill he wanted to make sure that I had an
appointment. "For," said he, "Mr. Churchill is down at the
lake and I do not want to get him all the way up here unless he
expects you."

I assured him that I was expected, and so he went, while
I waited in a small reception room furnished with that English
chintz-covered furniture so characteristic of country homes.
On the walls were a portrait of Nelson and some paintings that I
first thought were by Sargent. French windows opening on a
stone piazza occupied almost one entire side of the room, and
through them could be seen a broad expanse of rolling- country.

As I was taking in my surroundings I heard quick footsteps
in the hall, and then into the room strode Winston Churchill.
Somewhere Richard Harding Davis whom in many respects
Mr. Churchill recalls wrote that although, strictly speaking,
a soldier of fortune was a man who for pay or for love of adven
ture fights for any country, in a bigger sense he is a man who
in any walk of life makes his own fortune. As my host stood
before me in a baggy soiled suit and battered hat, and as I
looked into those clear, blue eyes and remarked the high

f 135 I

forehead, the stubby nose, the thin upper lip and the heavy
lower one, the face covered with light freckles, I felt that he
fitted this description perfectly.

A seventh grandson of the original Duke of Marlborough,
he has in him undoubtedly something of the spirit of that old
adventurer and military genius; but Winston Churchill is
not what he is because of this old bewlgged victor of Blenheim,
nor because he is a son of the late erratic Victorian statesman
and the beautiful American, Jennie Jerome. In the walk of life
in which he was born he has made his own way. His forebears
were often an obstacle rather than a help. Had he not been
Lord Randolph Churchill s son it is doubtful whether there
would have been a question in the House of Commons when, as a
young subaltern, he ran away and joined the Spanish Army.
Every one thought he was in a mess, instead of which, having been
awarded a medal for gallantry by the Spanish Government, he
left the army and became a newspaper correspondent.

Almost at the very beginning of the Boer War he was
taken prisoner, after a thrilling skirmish in which many of his
companions were killed* For almost any man this would have
been the end, but not so for Churchill, to whom every tragedy
seems, by a strange quirk of fate, to bring a happy denouement.
Within a few weeks he had managed to scale the prison walls
and escape, and after a lapse of silence, when every one thought
he had perished in the South African wilderness, he turned up,
by luck, in the house of the one Englishman in a hostile
village. Again, as a combatant and also as a correspondent
he found laurels in an undertaking which at first had promised
to lead nowhere.

It has been the same all through his life. He went to Africa
with Kitchener, and in a book that he published after that

1 136 I

campaign he attacked the commanding general unmercifully.
Once more every one thought that he was done for, but
within a year he was defending "K, of K." against still more
violent attacks in Parliament.

When he was thirty-one, some one said of him, "He has
ridiculed those in high places, he has insulted his cousin and
patron, the Duke. Without political friends, without the influ
ence and money of the Marlborough family he is a political
nonentity." Yet at thirty-two he was Under-Secretary for the
Colonies and one of the most popular of the younger men in
England s public affairs.

To-day there is the same enthusiasm about him, the same
devil-may-care laughing at conventions as there was thirty-five
years ago when he returned from Cuba and discovered on his
first night in London that the Empire Music Hall had closed its
bar. Arising, he made a speech, and the audience was more
entertained by the wit and charm of the handsome sandy-
haired boy, with his aura of romance, than by the paid
entertainers. He called upon the crowd in the hall to storm the
barricades, which they did, and once again glasses clinked and
corks popped.

I made my drawing in his library, a room filled with
Georgian furniture and dominated by a portrait by Orpen of
the master of the house, and there he spoke of those early
escapades and laughed over them.

"It is hard," he told me, "to find time to do all the things
that I want to, and now that I am living here I fortunately can
do some work that interests me.

"Those little paintings in the other room are some copies
that I made of sketches by Sargent, Come on upstairs and see
the drawing that he made of my mother,"

f 1371

He arose and led me to his bedroom in which there was a
four-poster bed and a desk. Over the desk hung the well-known
charcoal sketch that has been reproduced so often.

{e There is more color in that/ 5 he remarked, "than there is in
any number of paintings that I have seen. Is there anyone except
Sargent who would have dared to put that heavy outline against
the light side of the face ? And yet how perfectly it models/ 9

When he had started to pose again, I asked him how his
present life compared with that as a Cabinet Minister.

"There is one thing that appeals to me strongly now,"
he answered, "and that is I am my own master. I am ac
countable to no one for what I do, and the success of what
I am doing depends solely upon my own efforts. When a man
is in the Cabinet, no matter how strong he may be, he is bound
to take into consideration public opinion. He may advocate
measures that he firmly believes are for the public good, and he
may see them work harm through the failure of someone else to
carry them out properly. But the blame falls on the proposer s
head, not upon the dullards who did not understand.

"In this life of ours I am sure there is but one way to find
any true happiness, and that is to get some fun out of work, ;
irrespective of the results. The artist or even the dauber who
gets a thrill out of putting paint on canvas, the man who is
enthralled by trying to write a sonnet or a play, or even the
little craftsman who gets real pleasure from turning a lathe
any one of these men, can he make but a bare living, is getting
paid for doing something from which he derives joy.

"Now look at our poor millionaires, worried to death over
their affairs, and getting no pleasure from their work. After they
have been successful, they spend their lives endeavoring to learn
some way of obtaining happiness by spending their money.

f 138}

"While in public life there are many recompenses to the
cares of office, nevertheless there are many heartaches also.
Here I keep busy doing all the things I want to do. I can write,
paint, or lay bricks, whereas in other places I have often had to
do things I did not care about/

When my drawing was finished he took me downstairs and
showed me some large still lifes that he had painted. They were
pitched in a high key and formed marvelous decorative spots
on the walls.

"Now I ll show you some more of my work," he said, and
we went out on the terrace.

"See that wall," he indicated. "That Is my doing also.
You cannot imagine the amount of fun I had in building
it, for apart from the actual pleasure of seeing it grow, I
think that I planned out a couple of books while I was laying
the bricks. 55

Then we went to his studio, a one-story affair about two
hundred feet from the house.

"I got some new ideas from a painter friend that I am
working out now," he said as we entered the room, which was
lighted from the north, and had little in it except a table, a
chair and countless canvases.

"A painting," he explained, "consists of two essential
elements form and color. If you go out to paint a landscape
and try to embody both, the light has changed by the time the
form is looked after. So this is the idea. I go out and when I
see what I want I snap it with a camera, at the same time
making -a rapid sketch, disregarding the form largely but
endeavoring to put down my impression of the color.

"Then I have a lantern slide made of the photograph. I
darken the studio and put the slide into this lantern and then

It 139 I

project the picture on the canvas and paint it in monotone. In
this way I have the form. Then with my color sketch before
me I put the color in the picture/

He was like a boy of eighteen as he described the process.
He darkened the room and did everything just as if he were
painting a picture. He showed me any number of his canvases,
some done by this method, and some more spontaneously,
and when I suggested that I preferred the latter, he declared :
"So do I at present; they are not quite so mechanical."

From the studio we walked over the grounds and he
pointed out some lakes he was literally moving to improve the
landscape. When I remarked that he had numerous interests,
he replied: "These are my toys, and I believe that as long as a
man can play with toys, that long will he remain young. When
you meet a man who can derive no enjoyment out of doing
something, you can make up your mind that that man is old)
no matter what his years are."

As I was leaving I expressed the hope that I would have
an opportunity of meeting him again in London before I sailed
for America. I was in the motor by that time, and I noticed
that he had picked up a paint box which was in the hall as he
came out to say good-by.

"I fear not," he replied. "It Is a marvelous time of year
to paint here in Westerham, I go down to the city only when I
must, and then I come back as soon as I can. Moreover," he
added with a smile, "there are a great many walls that must
still be built on the land."

I drove off, and as the car turned into the road I caught my
last glimpse of him. A silhouette on a hilltop, the sun behind
him, he stood looking out across the fields.

140]

XVI

MANY laymen still have the idea that artists are
irrational beings whose works are produced with
no sense of rhyme or reason. As a matter of fact,
the names of two men, both leaders in their respective arts,
immediately come to mind Henri Matisse and Ignace
Paderewski, both of whom I found tremendously sane and
methodical.

About no one in modern art has a greater controversy
raged, nor has any one had a greater influence in directing its
trend along certain lines than Matisse,

It was on his first visit to this country that I saw him. He
was on his way to Tahiti, that island made famous by another
French painter, Gauguin, and it was by accident that his name
was discovered on the passenger list of the lie de France. No
sooner was he landed than he was whisked mysteriously away
and remained in seclusion for the short time that he was here,
preferring, as he himself said, to remain "incognito," so
that he might enjoy the privilege of seeing New York without
distraction*

Indeed, it required more detective work to discover where
he was staying than it did to find Sir James Jeans, and it was
infinitely harder to get him to pose. He finally made an
appointment to sit for me at a gallery, where some of his
paintings were on exhibition. It is small, gray and modern and
reminds one of the little intimate show places on the Left Bank

in Paris, rather than of the more pretentious salles that face
the column in the Place Vendome.

It is comparatively easy to interview an authority on a
subject about which one knows nothing. His statements, no
matter what they are, call forth no mental reservations on the
part of the interviewer. On the other hand, here I was waiting
for a man who had almost literally brushed away all the
conventions of the art upon which I had been reared, and before
whose canvases I stood in perplexed wonder.

I was puzzled by his pictures. To me they appeared signally
dead and drab compared with the sunshine and the people on
the street. I was standing before one which revealed three
figures, each drawn in a different scale, and amply filling a
large canvas. Six eyes suggested by six gobs of dark brown
paint glowered at me, as if shaming me for lack of under
standing; hands were neglected and bodies slighted.

Suddenly the door of the gallery opened, and Matisse
walked in. His vitality and alertness seemed to me in sharpest
contrast with the figures on his canvas. He wore a brown overcoat
and a bright yellow muffler which repeated the color notes
in his tawny hair and beard. His head is massive, his features
large, and he wears glasses with lenses so strong that it is prac
tically impossible to see his eyes behind them. He is quiet and
reserved, and there is nothing of the poseur about him; in fact,
it would be easier to imagine him bending over a microscope
in a physiological laboratory of a German university than
setting the art world agog over his paintings.

We went into a little room in the rear of the gallery, and
as I followed him there it was like going with some old family
doctor into his office. There is a certain deliberate, scientific air
about him which one does not ordinarily associate with an

1142]

Henri Matisse

artist, especially a French artist. He inspires a feeling of con
fidence and immediately conveys an impression of deep
sincerity and earnestness. In his presence one must of necessity
be ashamed of not liking his paintings, so evident is his devo
tion to art, so intense is he in his work.

He had just visited the Metropolitan Museum, and hardly
had he seated himself upon a great gray corduroy sofa, which
was placed immediately under a skylight, than he began to
talk of the pictures there. He mentioned Rembrandt, Manet,
and Cezanne.

I asked him whether he liked Rembrandt.

He smiled condescendingly at me.

"Like Rembrandt?" he said inquiringly. "Of course, I do.
Two years ago I made a trip to Amsterdam that lasted six
weeks just to study him and some of the other Dutchmen.

"He was one of the great modern painters of his day. He
painted light.

"Many people talk about modern art as if it were a sepa
rate and distinct thing in itself, as if it were a sudden break, a
new mode of expression, rather than an orderly and rational
development of what had gone before.

"A direct line of descent can be traced from Rembrandt. I
mention him because you spoke of him, but in reality it begins
with Cimabue and Giotto, goes down to Cezanne and those
who came after him. There is no hiatus, no sudden jump,
everything is orderly and progressive.

"Every art is a reflection of the time in which it was
produced, it is the logical result of its own surroundings. The
gray skies of Holland are reflected in its pictures just as the
sunshine is reflected in Italian pictures. But in addition to
the geographical conditions, the surroundings and thoughts of

the people as well as their activities all have their effect on
the canvases of their painters.

"When I sailed up the bay and saw the skyline of New
York, when I went up to the top of the Woolworth Building
and got a glimpse of the city, I felt that all of these things must
of necessity influence the painters. Here is a different civiliza
tion from that of Europe. I have seen any number of photo
graphs of New York and countless cinema pictures, but no
one can grasp its majestic grandeur until one sees it. Its
vastness is beyond all comprehension. The avenues appear
to have no ends, they seem to go on to infinity, while the
tremendous buildings are awe inspiring.

"Now compare conditions such as these with those of fifty
or a hundred or more years ago, and you will understand why
such an apparently radical change has come over painting.
It is the age in which we live which differs more from preceding
ages than the painting of to-day does from that which has
gone before."

His manner became that of the scientist. His suit was
brown, his tie was brown and his shirt was tan; beside him
on the sofa were his overcoat and muffler, the latter the only
spot of color in the room. Coolly and dispassionately, like a
naturalist dissecting a specimen, he analyzed the present-day
tendencies, while through a crack in the door I saw a group of
art students, who, by their very gestures, showed they were
discussing " moods " and "nuances." Their idol seemed wonder
fully sane and keen as he removed his thick glasses and polished
them with a light brown handkerchief as if preparing for a
further examination of the object under observation.

"A few days ago," he said, "I was in Paris; in a few more
days I shall be in the South Sea Islands. Think of that and

f 1461

compare it with the period when a journey from France to
Italy was a matter of months. Overhead men are flying,
on the streets they are rushing around in automobiles, the
wheels of industry are humming all about. Is it any wonder
that these things are reflected in what is being painted ?

" Swiftness and celerity are the dominating characteristics
of the day and they must find their expression in its art. But
though this is a mechanical age, that does not imply that
emotion must be absent in modern painting, sculpture, or
music. Indeed, it means, if anything, that there must be
more emotion, and the artist of to-day, surrounded by ma
chines, must have more emotion to express.

a By mechanical means an image is now fixed on a photo
graphic plate in a few seconds an image more precise and
exact than it is humanly possible to draw and so with the
advent of photography disappeared the necessity for exact
reproduction in art.

" Cezanne no longer painted an individual apple, he painted
all apples. Van Gogh s Postman 5 is a portion of humanity."

"Does that mean," I asked, "that you do not use models ?"

"I most assuredly do," he replied. "It means that I no
longer believe in a literal rendering of what is before me. A
camera can do that better than I.

"It means that, as well as the object, an emotion must be
expressed and that with the aid of a model a certain amount of
surface must be made interesting by means of a design; that
an arm is not only an arm, but also a component part of an
entire canvas, which must have as much beauty in one part
as in another."

As he spoke it was easy to understand why he rarely goes
out, and why it is that, in his little studio in Nice, with colored

draperies on the wall, high model stand and a low seat for
him to sit upon, he finds his greatest joy in life.

His talk was straightforward, there were no evasions,
no confusion of terms, no mysterious allusions to metaphysics.
Sitting there with the strong light beating down on his fore
head a forehead heightened by his receding hair there
was not a trace of the iconoclast in either his appearance or
his conversation. A statistician could not have been more
precise, an academician more apparently conventional.

Knowing that at one time he had painted very academic
pictures, and remembering particularly a still life of a candle
with some old, brown, leather-covered books, I asked how he
had happened to change his style so completely.

"Because I could not help it," he replied. "I started
out in life to be a lawyer. In fact, I was twenty-one before I
seriously began to study art. That is just forty years ago. I
studied under academic masters and I painted academic
pictures.

"I married, I had three children and I had an arrangement
with a dealer whereby he took all the still lifes which I painted
at four hundred francs apiece. It was not very much as things
are now, but it meant a livelihood for us all.

"One day I had just finished one of my pictures. It was
quite as good as the previous ones and very much like them,
and I knew on its delivery I would get the money which I sorely
needed. I looked at it, and then and there a feeling came over
me that it was not I, that it did not represent me or express
what I felt. There was a temptation to deliver it, but I knew
that if I yielded to it that would be my artistic death.

"Looking back at that time I realize that it required
great courage to destroy that picture, particularly as the hands

1 148 1

of the grocer and the baker were outstretched waiting for money.
But I did, and I count my emancipation from that day.

"It meant," he continued, "suffering and deprivation,
but then who has not suffered ? Why, think of it, I bought a
painting by Cezanne for three hundred and fifty francs.
To-day, if I wanted to sell it, I could get one million francs for it,
but the picture is no better now than when it was painted.

"I shall never forget the first time I saw it and inquired
its price. Much as I wanted it I did not feel that I should spend
that much money. It was called "The Bathers, and it showed
some men in a river. Shortly after that I went down to Tou
louse to see my family, and I went for a walk on the river bank.
There in the water were a number of sofdiers from a near-by
cantonment, swimming. The sun on the water, its movement,
and the actions of the swimmers brought back but one thing,
and that was Cezanne s painting. I felt as if I had already
viewed the scene, and I realized that an art that was so great
that nature seemed but a reflection of it must be something
worth while. I could not afford that picture then, I did not
have enough money to pay for it all at once, but nevertheless
I bought it. 5

"And in what does its greatness lie?" I inquired.

"In its color, its design, its swiftness and sureness, and
its sincerity," he replied. "Every piece of that canvas is a part
of a perfect whole. It was done quickly, but that is immaterial.
People say that my canvases do not look finished. I consider
that a compliment, for then I know that I have well concealed
the labor and the effort, that I have stopped when the seance
was over, and not turned a labor of love into one of torture."

I showed him my drawing. He said it resembled him, which
in the light of his former remarks I did not consider very

1 149]

complimentary. Then 1 asked him to autograph it. He hesi
tated. He feared, he said, it might be mistaken for one of his,
so taking my pencil I signed my name first, whereupon he
put his under mine.

I left him standing in the middle of the little room, the
top light playing strange pranks on the heavy lenses of his
glasses, and as I walked down the gallery filled with modern
paintings, through my head ran those lines by Kipling:

And each in his separate star
Shall paint the Thing as he sees It
For the God of Things as They are.

{ISO

XVII

A HOUGH Paderewski is surrounded by an air of romance
which harks back to those days when kings sought
musicians favors and painters served as monarchs
emissaries, nevertheless his approach to art is also sane. Many
pianists have come and gone since those days in the early
nineties when a young, slim, ascetic Pole startled Paris, Berlin,
and London by his magic artistry, but the glamour that
surrounded Ignace Paderewski at that time has not been
dimmed or lessened. In fact, if anything, there is about him
an added glory, for, putting aside his art, he closed his piano
for five years in order to serve his country as its first premier.

And yet no one typifies so much as he the mauve decade.
He is a contemporary of the Yellow Book and Aubrey Beard-
sley; Burne-Jones drew his haunting profile and used it in
several paintings, and young women put down their copies of
Du Maurier s "Trilby," shocking book, to hasten to St.
James s Hall to hear him play. Kipling was at the height of
his powers and Sherlock Holmes was still solving the "Study
in Scarlet"; Oscar Wilde was the smartest playwright in
London, Gilbert and Sullivan were crowding the Savoy Theatre
with their operas, and Anthony Hope was a young genius.

To-day, Paderewski, nearing seventy, is the same popular
figure, the same force in the world of music that he was forty
years ago when, as a young man with flowing auburn hair and
low white collar and soft tie, he carried all before him in Europe

and America and became the musical sensation of the dying

Victorian era.

Many changes have come about. Mechanical music has
been developed, radio has been discovered, jazz has beaten
its way over three continents, but none of them can drown the
clear-cut tones that this artistic descendant of Chopin and
Liszt brings forth from the piano. It is a personality, expressed
not only in his music but in his every action, that has risen
above all else and that persists. This is the secret of his great
ness. The piano has always remained for him only a means
whereby he might express himself. Indeed, even the composi
tions that he plays become subservient to his interpretation

of them.

I had an appointment with Paderewski at six-thirty one
evening and when I arrived an armchair, a cup, and a pot
of tea awaited his coming. He was a few minutes late, and as
he rushed into the room, apologizing for having kept me
waiting, little did he appear to be a man who had almost
lived the allotted three score and ten.

His once auburn hair is silver, but about those small
keen eyes, almost hidden by the heavy lids, were the Interest
and enthusiasm of youth. His high but sloping forehead is
his most characteristic feature; domelike, -it dominates the
remainder of his head, and in comparison with it the lower
part of his face seems small. His mustache and goatee still
retain their reddish hu<? and help to give him a leonine appear
ance which is further accentuated by the height and formation
of his cheekbones.

There is nothing of the faraway musician about him. He
is neither removed nor remote. His manner has nothing of
pose or abstraction. When he speaks he is vitally interested

1 152]

^ r "

%. *, i s!v

\\

I

Ignace Paderewski

in his subject, and one immediately senses that he is no one
sided artist whose knowledge and thoughts are limited to
his art. With a magnetism that compels, an enthusiasm
that enthralls, he speaks on all subjects. His English is
perfect and he has the aptness for coining phrases that belongs
to the writer, so that he plays with language as with a musical
instrument.

It was the traffic that delayed him, he told me as he sat
down before his tea. The chair was a large one, but he did
not recline in it. He poised on its edge, as if he were playing
the piano, and as he spoke he continually moved and gave
emphasis to his words with gestures.

I mentioned the drawing of him by Burne- Jones.

"He made three on that day. None of them was entirely
finished, but the next morning he sent me the one that you
probably know. I was always most anxious to be drawn
by Sargent, but, although we made a number of appointments,
they were always broken by one of us."

He spoke about a painting which Zuloaga had done of
him. He referred to the character in people s hands, and
as he did so he raised his own. It was not the thin nervous
hand one would expect to see. Firm and powerful, its
fingers blunted at the ends, it expressed strength and force.
It was the hand not only of the pianist but also the Prime
Minister.

I referred to modern art.

"Art," he replied, "has been on an orgy. Some few years
ago it went wild for color. Line was forgotten in a mad desire
for vivid -hues. To-day music is still in the state that painting
was in some years back. Color is the god before which all
modern composers are worshiping, but they forget there

1 155 I

are other gods than that- They have blinded their eyes,
if I may so express it, to the beauty of the simple lines of the
classicists and endeavor by effects of color to attain beauty
without line. Light and shadow and the glow of color are
wonderful, but they must have outlines to bound them,
otherwise they are formless masses. And then, too, while
I have been speaking of painting and music in similar terms,
after all color is not music.

"Indeed, music is not the handmaid or slave of any other
of the arts. It should not be made subordinate to poetry or
painting, a mere decoration; It should have its own form,
its own meaning, its own raison d etre"

I asked him to what he attributed these tendencies in
all the arts.

He leaned farther forward in his chair. His soft, loose collar and
his white four-in-hand completed the picture of the romanticist.

"We are living in a strange age. Economics and inven
tions and discoveries have held the public attention for some
years. I do not underestimate the value of these things.
They may make for physical comforts, but with them they
bring attendant evils that kill creative genius in art. For
genius is a tender plant which will not thrive in all soils or
surroundings, and the quiet and peace that are essential to
it have been driven out by the haste and the desire for change
and challenge that mark this era.

"Individuality and originality are being killed by the
increasing necessity, I might almost call it, for collectivism.
The day of the lonely craftsman has passed. One man
rarely produces any finished product to-day. It is the result
of many hands, and while perhaps better automobiles may
be produced in this way, surely better poems or paintings

1 156 I

or sonatas cannot. And it is this spirit which is pervading
everything.

"For great art, though it is the creation of one man, is
the product and the result of the time in which he lives.
Bach could not have written his works in a skyscraper any
more than Michelangelo could have decorated one of the
modern temples of industry."

The shades were but half down and the tall lighted towers
of the city could be seen. They rose majestically into the night
sky, but they appeared to be resting on the open piano which
stood before the window, crushing it. From the street came the
drone of the heavy traffic, thousands rushing through the
streets. Suddenly from the sky came the whirr of a plane.

He heard it, and continued:

"But despite all, men are not happy to-day. Throughout
the world, in politics as well as in all the arts, there is an
anxiety to get away from existing conditions.

"In art there is a striving for originality. Men are endeavor
ing to create something new. Nothing new was ever created
consciously. True originality has its foundations in the soul, not
in the mind, and when there is an effort to create something
different it is usually a failure. Beethoven or Schumann or
Chopin did not try to be original. They were original.

"However, this craving for originality, this desire to
get away from old forms, this pulling down of the old-time
gods is typical of this period of the world s history.

"Men feel the same dissatisfaction in regard to politics.
Throughout the world there is an undercurrent of unrest.
For years the so-called parliamentary system in government
had been looked upon as a panacea for all ills. It was felt
that when the man in the street was represented in a legislative

1 157 I

body then that man had something to do with making the
laws and with the management of his country.

"But ideas in regard to this are changing. People are
beginning to see that this system is not altogether what it
promised. Indeed, it has been my experience that in most
bodies of this kind a tremendous amount of time is wasted
in useless and futile talk. Hours are used up in listening to
speeches of no import or value. In times of economic distress
long discussions in parliaments only irritate. A hungry man s
appetite is not appeased by words. What he wants is food.
And when he sees that the words do not give him food he
becomes dissatisfied with that system of representation which
does not provide him with necessities, let alone comforts.

"It is this spirit of dissatisfaction with things as they
are that has caused both the artistic and political restlessness
throughout the world to-day."

He stopped for a minute and took a gold-tipped cigarette
from a silver case. He inhaled deeply and continued.

"As a matter of fact, it is only when a nation is enjoying
not only comforts but luxuries that a great art develops.
Contentment, mental and bodily, and leisure must be present.
For although the individual artist may not be prosperous,
it is when a country is passing through an age of luxury that
art flourishes. When Greece was mistress of the world under
Pericles its masterpieces of art were produced. Italy at the
height of her power during the Renaissance gave us her
greatest works."

The drawing was finished. I left. As I was walking down the
hall of his suite I heard the tones of his piano. Stopping, I lis
tened. He was playing a polonaise written years ago by another
romantic Pole; the poetic outburst of a national feeling.

1581

XVIII

A RUDDY-FACED man in the sixties, with dark brown
hair and reddish beard rapidly graying; sunlight
falling on stucco walls; paintings by Arthur Davies;
purple chrysanthemums; poetry recited as if it were a prayer
these are some of my memories of AE.

It was in the early morning that I made a drawing of him,
and it \pas well that it was so. There is, something of the earth
breath of early morning about him, something that transports
and invigorates, a quality of sympathetic exuberance.

There he sat, comfortably at ease in a Windsor chair, his
kindly blue eyes twinkling behind his gold-rimmed spectacles
as he told of his plans for improving the conditions of the
agricultural folk of the world so that the countryside would
become a place from which nobody would willingly emigrate.
For he believes that the great danger which threatens all
modern states is the absorption of life in great cities.

It is difficult to say exactly what George Russell is, for one
cannot call a man an economist when he has written some of
the best known poems of his time, nor can one limit him by
calling him a poet when he has exhibited paintings of recog
nized genius, and also edited one of the most influential papers
in his native country.

"I wanted to be a painter," he said as he puffed at his
pipe and the smoke, blue and light, curled about his head in
fantastic shapes, "but my family was poor. Art meant a long

1 159]

course of study in schools, it meant that during that time I
would have to be supported, so I gave up the idea. Indeed, I
did not take up painting until I was forty. What I did was to
go to work in an accounting office.

"But I do not think that I could have been very good,
because I did not see the dry, uninteresting figures on the page
before me. As I look back at that time now I can remember
how I would sit for hours with my eyes on the ledgers and I
would be miles away in my fancy, hiding in caves filled with
sprites, climbing the tallest of the Himalayas, fighting with
dragons, or searching for the banshee.

"How I ever stood the work the length of time that I did I
do not understand. But in the evenings, sitting by the light of a
lamp, I would let my imagination have full play. I became a
poet, or at least I began to write poems. I did not have the
technical skill to draw the pictures that I saw In my mind, so
I described them in words.

"It was through my poetry that I became an economist,
for I published a book of poems which Sir Horace Plunkett
saw. At the time he was the head of the Irish Agricultural
Society, and it was he who grafted a slip of poetry upon an
economic tree. I do not know whether he expected a hybrid,
but my books on that subject are not economics in his sense
of the word, nor are they poetry in my sense."

It was at this period that George Russell became AE. For
the accountant dreamer wanted to hide his poetic yearnings
under a pseudonym, and signed his poems Aeon, but unfor
tunately his handwriting was none too legible, and the type
setters on the papers to which his first efforts were contributed,
unable to read the signature, printed only the first two letters of
the nom de plume.

f 1601

"So you see/ 3 he said with an impish glint in his long,
oval eyes, that at times looked as if they might have been
Pan s, "I was labeled AE, which some people seem to think
means agricultural economist/*

And then, apparently forgetting my presence, he began to
recite a poem, a poem of the earth and the man who tills it.

"That was the first poem in the book, the one that
prompted Sir Horace to invite me to join his society.

"You may think it is strange that a poet should be
asked to aid in an economic movement. But I do not think
it will seem so incongruous if you will stop and think for a
moment.

"In the history of my own country it has been the poets
who have given vision, imagination, and warmth to all of its
political history. In fact, some of them have died for it. After
all, it is only one man in about every hundred who can see
just a little more than the other ninety-nine. They are the
poets, the artists, the writers, the statesmen, and the philos
ophers of this world. They must be the leaders of any move
ment that takes place. They are the people of vision.

"It is to interest such men as your Robert Frost, Vachel
Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg in this movement that I have come
to your country."

I asked him to explain exactly what this was.

"Up to the present there has not been much deep thought
given to the life of the country man, the man who is compelled
to live far from urban civilization. This is evident if we compare
the quality of thought which has been devoted to the problems
of the city, state, or the constitution of widespread^dominions,
from the days of Solon and Aristotle to the time of Alex
ander Hamilton, and compare it with the quality of thought

{1631

which has been brought to bear on the problems of the rural
community,

" Yet it is on the labors of the country man that the entire
strength and health, Indeed, the very existence, of society
depend.

"The disease which has attacked the great populations
both In Europe and here is discontent with rural life. Thou
sands of farms are overgrown with rank weeds, and the young
people who should be working them In many cases are living
In great cities in fetid slums and murky alleys where the devil
has his mansion.

"The details of our modern civilization are all wrong. In
wide areas of all countries there are stagnation and decay.
This is especially true of the rural districts. It is so general that
it has often been assumed that there was something Inherent
in country life which made the country man as slow in mind as
his own cattle."

AE got up. Although he is not very tall, he is built on large
proportions. Without being ungainly there is that massiveness
about him that Boswell makes us attribute to our mind
pictures of old Samuel Johnson.

"But this is not so," he continued. "There is no reason
why as intense, intellectual, and progressive a life should not
be possible in the country as in towns*"

"Why does it not exist?" I asked.

"Because," he replied, "the country population is not
organized. Because a new social order must be created, and
that is what we are trying to do.

"It Is the business of the rural reformer to create the
rural community. That is the precursor to the creation of a
rural civilization. But it is not enough to organize farmers in a

district for one purpose only in a credit society, a dairy
society, a fruit society, or a cooperative store. All these
are but beginnings, but if they do not develop and absorb
all rural business into their organization they will have little
effect on character. No true social organism will have been
created.

"The specialized society only develops economic efficiency.
The evolution of humanity beyond its- present level depends on
its power to unite and create true social organisms.

"It is our object to unite the average men or women in
the fields and to convince them that the noblest life will be
possible for them. For if you do not provide for people the
noblest and the best they will go in search of it. Unless the
countryside can offer to young men and women some satis
factory food for soul as well as body it will fail to attract or
hold them and they will go to the already crowded towns.
The lessening of rural production will, in turn, affect produc
tion in the cities and factories, and the problem of the unem
ployed will become keener.

"The problem, however, is not only an economic one, it
is a human one also. Man does not live by cash alone, but by
every gift of fellowship and brotherly feeling that society offers
him. The final urgings of men and women are toward humanity.

"It is one of the illusions of modern materialistic thought to
believe it is not possible for as high a quality of human life
to exist in the village as in the great city. It is one of the aims
of the rural reformer to dissipate this idea and to prove that
it is possible not to concentrate wealth in country com
munities as in cities, but to bring comfort enough to satisfy any
reasonable person and to create a society where there will be
intellectual life and human interests.

1 1651

"Now, 99 he said, "you have heard enough of my aims.
Let me see what you have done. 95

I showed him my drawing, and he asked me whether I
had not made him look too kindly. "For remember/ he said,
"after all, I am an economist. 95

He recounted his first meeting with Shaw. It was in the
Art Gallery in Dublin, and he did not recognize G. B. S.;
indeed, he mistook him for a retired Indian Government
official. "But/ 9 he added, "when he began to speak my
respect for government officials began to rise. 39

He recalled Yeats, who, he said, kept on rewriting and
polishing his poems until they were ultrarefined and lost their
original strength. He declared that it took a Keats to rewrite a
poem seven times and have the last version better than the
first.

His secretary entered the room and broke the spell, for
Mr. Russell had an appointment at a broadcasting studio.

All three of us rode up the Avenue. The poet gazed
through the windows of the taxi at the marvels of our greatest
thoroughfare. He spoke of the color and the crowds and the
sunlight.

"It is magnificent, 99 he remarked, "but think of the
glory of a day such as this in green fields and wide spreading
pastures. 99

There was a note of incongruity in riding up Fifth Avenue
with this man who was surrounded by an aura of outdoors. Into
the heart of civilization, into the very vortex of the mechanistic
age, he brought the simplicity of farms and fields and flowers.
It would have been better to have walked with him over
grassy meads, to have heard him speak in the shadow of a
great tree.

{166 1

XIX

SUCH a setting vividly recalls Ramsay MacDonald. For
though I have also seen him in Downing Street, the resi
dence of all Britain s prime ministers, it is not in official
surroundings that one gets the clearest picture of Labor s former
premier. No matter where this tall, gaunt Scotsman may reside,
a "wee sma town" near the northern tip of Scotland, a little
fishing village set among the hills Lossiemouth, his birthplace,
will always be home to him.

It is a dour place, this Lossiemouth; there is a sadness
about the long sweeping hills that even the bright yellow
broom flowers cannot dispel; there is a melancholy song of the
sea as it washes the sandy shores, and as the wind plays in and
out among the hillocks the wail of the banshee can be heard.

The houses, too, are drab and the little streets of low
granite huts all seem in keeping with the severity of the natural
landscape. Nor are the inhabitants themselves a joyous lot*
Even the clothes of the younger people lack color and the
little children s frocks are black. Cottet might have painted
his Breton fishing village figures, with their sad eyes and
somber garb, in this little northern town where in midsummer
the lingering twilight continues until nearly midnight.

Lossiemouth rejoices in the reflected glory of a native son.
It is not a demonstrative gladness. That would be impossible
among those tanned, furrow-faced people whose knotty hands
show the constant toil that is necessary to win a living

167]

from the stony soil and treacherous sea. Mingled with the
pride over the honor that has come to their fellow-townsman,
there is also a feeling of contrition for the way a large propor
tion of them treated him during the war. For popular as Mr.
MacDonald is to-day just so unpopular was he when he
preached pacifism to a fighting country,,

MacDonald of Lossiemouth, in many ways, is a very
different person from the occupant of Downing Street. There
are necessary formalities that go with the office of prime
minister which for a man of MacDonald s temperament are
unusually irksome. In order to be free from these he must
travel sixteen hours northward where he can forget for the
time being that he is the real head of the greatest empire
in the world and live again the life he led before he entered
politics. ,

The house he occupies in this town is one that he built for
his mother not far from the one in which he was born and not
very much more pretentious. There is nothing to distinguish
it from any of the others on the same street. There are no
butlers and no guards about. I entered the little gate in the
wall that has not even a bell to announce the coming of a
visitor, and before I was aware of it I came upon a porch at
the side of the house away from the street and overlooking a
stretch of waste land covered with the ever-present broom
plant.

Here under the shelter of a wooden roof are a rough table,
several old morris chairs, and a bench built along one side of
the wall. This serves as a dining place in pleasant weather
and here the Prime Minister does some of his work. The
house is small and there are no spare rooms. In fact, his
modest bedroom, with its mission bed, its family photographs,

1 1681

Ramsay MacDonald

and pitcher and basin on the wash table, also serves as an
office, and a large flat-topped desk placed in the center of the
room leaves space for only two chairs.

Dressed in tweeds, his wavy white hair blown by the
breezes that come across the fields, his complexion darkened by
exposure to the weather, the Premier is a distinctly outdoor
type. His features are clean cut, and his dark eyes which peer
from beneath heavy brows have a note of sadness in them,
for in his expression are traces of the hardships he went
through as a young man.

There is the faintest suspicion of the Scotch burr in his
speech and this probably accounts for his shyness of foreign
tongues, and his refusal to pronounce certain names and words
in any but a way that is natural to him.

Seated at his desk in his room in the little house at Lossie-
mouth, it was evident that he was wholly engrossed in the
subject at hand, whether it was an answer to a letter that he
was dictating or some little detail of his early life that he was
recounting.

This is true of whatever he does. Riding through the
countryside on his way to the golf links near Forres he appears
to put aside completely the cares of office and to have no
thoughts but of the region through which he is traveling.
And no one knows more of the legends and stories of the
place, no one is more stirred by the beauties of the landscape;
for in him there is the spirit of the poet, too, as any one who
has heard him read "When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom d"
can attest.

And so it is not strange that he is a good golfer, for when
he settles himself for a stroke there is only one thing in his
mind and that is his game, and nothing can distract him from

1

it. It is this power of concentration that has made it possible
for him to accomplish the tremendous amount of work that
he does.

While he was posing for me two secretaries were constantly
coming in with letters, the door of the room was open and
other members of his household were continually going up
and down stairs, but he did not object. When he spoke to
me, so far as he was concerned I was the only person in the
house; when he was dictating to one of his secretaries, 1
am sure he did not realize that I was there.

It was difficult to believe as I sat opposite him in a room
so small that I had to rest my portfolio on the edge of his
desk and had to get up to allow a secretary to pass, that this
man, so simple and unaffected, with no sign of "pomp and
circumstance," was filling the office once held by the romantic
Disraeli and the classical Gladstone, and conducting the affairs
of Great Britain from this tiny room in a remote village.

Concerning the political future of the world, the Prime
Minister is optimistic. In speaking of the League of Nations,
he said that he believed that its Influence would depend upon
the moral and political power the small states of Europe
acquired.

"If they can really exert an influence at Geneva," he said,
"it is possible that in the future we shall have something
corresponding to a United States of Europe. But if this does
not happen, if they do not obtain that influence and the larger
powers continue to dominate and use the machinery of the
League to carry out their own policies, things will be less
hopeful and more confused.

"For the powers will naturally try to maintain peace, but
they will be Inert and act as an older generation does toward a

{1721

younger one, telling them what to do and imposing their own
will, and that does not make for a condition of stability."

One of Mr. MacDonald s intimate friends, in speaking
about him, said: "The trouble with him, if you can call it a
fault, is that he is too much of an idealist, and he trusts people
too much."

He trusts people because he loves mankind and believes in
the rights of the individual. He sees the whole world being
apportioned into vast economic fields controlled by powerful
syndicates which recognize no boundary lines other than those
of markets and which will hold in their keeping the lives of
millions of human beings.

"What may be called social materialism is growing
vigorously," he said, "and during the coming years it will
become increasingly a problem for those who care about
individual liberty.

"The self-determination of nations has been the watchword
since the beginning of the war; now the cry for the self-deter
mination of individuals will replace it.

"Individuality and personality are supplements of nation
ality."

That Mr. MacDonald is strongly an individualist is not
to be wondered at. Born in the part of Scotland that has always
been radical, it is not strange that the spirit of democracy
is strongly developed in him. When he was a child the large
farmers were turning the people off the land and the hatred the
Scotsman has for landlords was taking firm hold.

"We boys looked down practically from the moment of
our births upon the people we called c swells and regarded
ourselves as quite as good if not better than any of them,"
the Prime Minister said.

f 1731

After his schooldays he had to do something to make a
living, for his people were poor, and with farms all about him
it was natural that he should turn to agriculture. He went
right into the fields and though the work was hard and tiring
he did not mind it.

"For a man," he said, "is never the worse for hard muscular
work. Those plowmen were a fine lot. Every one of them
knew his Burns as well as his Bible, and nearly all of them com
posed songs of their own and these fields in the springtime were
alive with whistling and singing as we dug our furrows."

His schoolmaster did not approve of his continuing as a
farm hand, so he went to MacDonald s mother and between
them they arranged for him to return to school at half fee
and he became a pupil-teacher.

After holding this position for some time young MacDonald
gave it up to be secretary to a man in Bristol, intending
to go to the Royal College of Mines, for in those days he was
much interested in science.

"But," he continued, "the Bristol experiment was a
failure and off I set for London.

"I knew but one or two chaps of my own age, and I spent
my days looking for employment, for when I arrived I did
not have even the traditional half-crown* I obtained a job at
ten shillings a week addressing envelopes, but it was only
temporary work and I have known what it is to walk through
the streets of London with nothing in my pockets, debts
hanging over my head, and nothing to do."

At last he obtained a permanent position as invoice clerk
in a warehouse. Though his salary was only fifteen shillings a
week he said he lived like a fighting cock, saved money and
had a holiday in Scotland, besides which he helped to support

his mother and also paid his tuition fees at the City of London
College and Highbury Institute.

It was not easy to do these things on his meager salary.
It meant that he had to buy his food where it was cheapest;
his oatmeal, which to a Scotsman is a necessity, was sent to
him from home.

"Tea was too much of a luxury for me to afford/* he
explained, "but you know that hot water is really quite as
good as tea from the point of view of food, and it tastes quite
good after you have grown used to it."

For a time his mind was divided between science and
politics, but an illness which used up what little he had saved
compelled him to take a position as a private secretary,
and there he soon realized that he could not go on indefinitely
with two divergent interests. It was essential that he make a
choice so he decided to go into politics and journalism.

There were hard years before him, and as he recounted some
of his experiences he seemed to live them over again. His
voice is rich and dramatic and he uses it like an actor. When
he is speaking he emphasizes a point by a gesture of his right
hand on the thumb of which he invariably snaps his pince-nez.

At the head of the government to-day, he does not forget
those early trials, nor does he forget his boyhood friends,
many of whom still live in the old town.

I met one of them, a country storekeeper who had called
to get his daily order. I was leaving the house and he volunteered
to show me some of the older part of the town, including the
hut (for it is not much more than that) in which MacDonald
was born.

Later, sitting among the fruit and vegetables of his store,
he reminisced.

1 175 I

"Yes, sir," he said, "I remember the Prime Minister as a
boy. We went to school together. His people were farm folks
and lived down below; mine lived up here near the top of the
hill. They were sailors. Many were the fights we boys had, for
there was constant warfare between the hill boys and the
farm boys.

"It happened, however, that Jimmie and 1 went to the
same school. I don t call him that now, but I know he wants
me to. When I see him, he puts his arm around my shoulder
and asks me how things are going, and to see the two of us
together you would never think he was the Prime Minister
and I the greengrocer who sold him vegetables.

"As I look back on those times now I should say that
Jimmie s dominant trait was his love for his mother, and even
on those days when we had sneaked off from school he would
constantly keep his eyes on the position of the sun, so that
he would not be late in returning home."

176

XX

I HAVE preserved no order in writing these memories, nor
have I attempted any classification. Indeed, it is but
rarely that a man in a certain profession will bring to
mind another in the same calling. Perhaps it is because they
are both Italians that I think of Benito Mussolini in con
junction with Arturo Toscanini. I doubt it, however. I think
it is the difference in viewpoint rather than the identity of
nationality that links them together as far as I am concerned,
Toscanini refuses to permit patriotism to influence his musical
judgment, Mussolini holds patriotism above all else.

And yet in America I doubt very much that II Duce would
have gone into politics. In this country he might have been
an actor or an impresario or even a sensational financier.

Emotionally, he is essentially Italian; still in Rome he
has not done as the Romans do. The result is stupendous. Into
a city without sidewalks in many streets, where bicyclists
ride in the evening holding lighted candles in their hands,
where restaurants send their waiters to nearby fountains to
get water, where forums have become the breeding places of
cats, where the ruins of antiquity are millstones around the
necks of the people, into these surroundings this strange man
from the country, unawed by traditions, has introduced
modernity, but with it all the trappings of the Renaissance.

We in America gloat over our democracy when former
newsboys ran for president; but in Italy a man sprung from a

1 177

similar origin has become a dictator, and little is said of that
side of his history by the Italian people.

Remarks on that score are chiefly confined to old ladies
with chignons and black velvet ribbons around their necks,
who have made Italy their home for years because Elizabeth
Barrett Browning wrote her sonnets there; who sit in the
cheaper restaurants and, fearing to mention him by name,
speak of the mysterious Mr. X. and whisper in Oxonian
accents that "this thing is as bad as Bolshevism."

And still this thing, this Fascism, started out as a movement
of youth. Even the most radical of them all, the leader of the
left wing, the thundering Farinacci, is a big overgrown boy of
thirty-five or forty who, laughing, plays a game of matching
fingers at lunch.

Youth has gained control of a government and is making
the most of it, borrowing from here and there and realizing
that the people like a certain amount of theatricalism in the
government, but, never forgetting "the grandeur that was
Rome."

Although youth is in control, it has not discharged age.
I found this out when I went to keep my appointment with
the Prime Minister at the Chigi Palace.

At the head of a flight of broad marble steps covered
with a runner of thick red carpet, I entered one of those over-
decorated rooms in which it can easily be imagined that
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries any number of
plots were born. Its painted pilasters and columns, its ceiling
on which birds and flowers are arranged around medallions
of gods and angels, a marble bust of some early cardinal or
pope with a sort of marble halo around his head, all speak the
language of another age.

f 178 I

I

Benito Mussolini

There I was met by an old man well past seventy. The
tips of his shoes turned up and his Prince Albert coat hung
below his knees. Suspiciously he looked at me over the tops of
his silver-rimmed glasses and, although I explained that I
had an appointment with the President, as II Duce is called,
it did not allay his misgivings.

He wanted to know what I had in my portfolio and when
I opened it and he saw that it contained nothing more dan
gerous than some sheets of drawing paper, he shuffled off to
inform the proper authorities that I was there.

In a short time my name was called and I was ushered into
Mussolini s office. It is a tremendous room about forty feet
square, and in one corner, placed diagonally, is a large table
with a lamp on it. Behind the table, staring, his right hand
raised in salute, stood a man. As I entered, the first thing I
saw was the white of his eyes, glistening and making his
pupils seem intensely black and beadlike. The stare was so
intense that it might almost have been the look of a fanatic.
It dominated everything in the room.

Not until later did I notice the marble floor with its thick
oriental rugs, the two globes one celestial and one terrestrial,
each over five feet in diameter a table on one side with a
model of a Roman galley, and its companion piece against the
opposite wall with a photograph of Sir Austen Chamberlain,
and also the old tapestries that hung against the brocade.

These things made no impression; they were absolutely
effaced by the dominating personality in the corner. Though
not nearly so tall as his pictures make him appear, by sheer
intensity and vital force he dwarfed the immensity of his
surroundings. As a skilled artist by a clever manipulation of
perspective manages to center the entire attention of the

1

onlooker on one figure, so on entering the room all the lines of
perspective appeared to vanish in this one comparatively small
figure behind the table. There was nothing in the room but him.

It was dusk outside. The stream of automobiles on the
Corso kept up an incessant din. The lights in the room were
on and made shining high lights on his swarthy skin; they
struck his forehead, high and well-formed; they shone along
the side of his nose; they accentuated the darkness where
his face was shaved; and they made his winged collar gleam
inordinately white.

Despite the squawks of the horns on the motor cars,
despite the electric lights and the braid-bound morning coat
and the starched collar, there was more of the feeling of the
Renaissance about him than there was of the present. It was
fitting that his office should be in the ancestral home of a
family that had given the world two popes.

The hand that had been raised in salutation dropped sud
denly and, as I advanced toward the table, it was stretched
across to grasp mine.

"I am not going to pose for you/ 5 he said as he sat down and
busied himself with some papers, but there was a suspicion of a
smile in those dark eyes as he spoke, " so sit down and get your
things ready."

Before him was a portfolio one of those leather affairs
without which no Continental writing table is complete and
in the middle of the table was a green bronze inkstand. Except
for these things, a pen which stuck in the stand, and the lamp,
the large table top was clean

For a few minutes he concentrated upon the papers before
him; then he looked up with a smile. "Life is very short," he
said, "and there is so much to do.

f 182 1

"Life is work," he continued. "You see, my methods and
the power that the Fascist! have won have brought to me a
tremendous responsibility which means that I have to work
about sixteen hours each day.

"But I have always worked hard. I had to. When one s
father is a blacksmith, it goes without saying that one must
work to live. I studied to be a teacher and taught for a while.
Then I went into exile in Switzerland and had a very hard
time, in fact I was a mason there. Then I came back to Italy
and began writing for a Socialist paper."

Mussolini s English is good, but his sentences are short.

"Then the war came," he went on, "and from it and its
after effects I learned many lessons. Books are good to read,
but in my experience I find that there is but one book that
teaches a man. That book is life.

"The war began in August, 1914, and within two months of
that time I was no longer a Socialist. I saw that their theories
were not my ideals. But I needed experience to learn that les
son. It was through the war that Fascism had its beginnings."

I asked him how that was.

"That is a long, long story. It means going into too many
things, recounting long days of strife and nights of work, of
telling .about the articles that I wrote for my own paper in
order to show the people of Italy that they were being deceived,
that the old democracy was a shell and that a new system of
government was necessary for us to regain our feet.

"Bolshevism was sowing its seeds here. Strikes were becom
ing numerous; our money was worth little; and while the
stated causes of agitation were always economic, in truth
they were political and the aim was to undermine the state s
authority with the idea of establishing Soviets.

1 1831

"That ever-growing band of patriots, the Fascists, firmly
held their places during strikes, realizing with true patriotic
zeal that the real sufferer in all these disputes was the Italian
nation.

"At last we got Into power, and the world knows what has
happened."

From a glass that stood beside him he sipped some water;
his black eyes flashed.

"I took over the direction of the state when it was at its
lowest ebb. There was a six-million-dollar deficit. Inflation and
printing presses created an illusion of prosperity. My policy
changed all this, for the Fascist financial policy was a sound
one.

"Civil life had to be reorganized, the school methods had
to be changed, public services had to be improved, and old
bureaucratic methods done away with.

"For six years now I have given up every personal thing
and devoted all my energies to effecting these improvements
for Italy."

Suddenly Mussolini stopped speaking. He stared at me
darkly, almost sinisterly, with the expression f a man who
is trying to frighten a child. I endeavored to conceal a smile.
He saw my efforts and began to smile himself. There is some
thing childlike about him, a desire to produce theatrical
effects, but beyond this is a tremendous sense of humor, and
a certain lovable quality that is hard to describe.

From nowhere, apparently, some one had appeared. Words
so low as to be almost inaudible were exchanged and Mussolini
arose. He stood very erect behind his desk and rubbed his
hands together. Slowly over his countenance spread that
terrifying stare directed toward the door, but I noticed there

f 1841

was a sidelong glance to see the effect upon me. Some one
entered, his hand went up in salute, and the stare became
more intense, almost a grimace.

It had the desired effect, for the visitor, evidently abso
lutely awed, tiptoed toward the table. It was with difficulty
that he found his voice and began to speak. Mussolini beckoned
him to sit in a large red chair at the opposite side of the table
but he himself remained standing. Then began a remarkable
performance.

The visitor spoke; for what seemed an interminable time
he kept up a continual stream of talk but the President said
nothing. His expressions, however, and his actions were more
eloquent than any number of words. There was hardly an
emotion that was not portrayed by the silent party in those
ten or fifteen minutes of the one-sided conversation. During
that time Mussolini showed anger and pleasure, disgust,
hatred, satisfaction, and impatience. He showed these feelings
not alone by the expression on his face, but by his entire body.
From an imperious Caesar he changed to a rollicking Falstaff ;
the eagle of imperial Rome became a slinking cat, and with
feline movements and grace almost slid over the table that
separated him from his visitor; suddenly the claws were
stretched out as if ready to scratch, and as suddenly they were
drawn in.

The interview was ended. The visitor arose and as he
walked toward the door, Mussolini drew himself up to military
attention and appeared to concentrate upon the back of his
caller s head. The look was intense, as if he were trying to
extract every thought from it. As the stranger reached the
door he turned and up went his hand. Mussolini s did likewise,
and as the door closed he turned with a half-smile and a sigh,

I 185 I

like an actor who appears before the curtain for applause,
and then resumed his seat*

As If there had been no interruption he took up his con
versation where it had been broken off.

"I have given up everything for the state/ 5 he continued.
"Except for a horseback ride in the morning and occasionally
a little fencing, I have not had time to devote to any other
exercise of which I am very fond. My reading has been confined
to political papers and works, though it was my usual habit
before entering public life to indulge myself in reading poetry
and, as an Italian, I suppose it is unnecessary for me to tell you
that Dante has always been my favorite as a poet. Even my
violin playing has had to suffer, and it is difficult for me to
find the time to play my favorite arias of Verdi and Puccini."

I asked him why it was necessary for him to give so much of
his own time to the government now that it was running
smoothly.

"Because I realize," he said, "that I dominate the party,
and it is because I realize this fact that I have the ability to
keep the party alive.

"I suppose you wonder why it is necessary to continue it
in the same form that it existed when it achieved its victory.
History will give you the reason. Force is necessary to make
a revolutionary movement legal. New and unforeseen things
continually arise. The Fascisti followed me during the trying
periods almost blindly. To disband the party and retire would
seem impossible to me.

"One of our principal duties is the formulation of a new
Italian method of government. In order to do this I have
remained at the head of a party that was formed for this
purpose, and by my will I have kept the party intact with the

{186}

same ideals with which it started out. I have seen the political
prophets who predicted a short life for Fascism and a return
to old principles put to shame, and to-day the party remains
untouched by attacks.

"In fact, in order that our aims should not be changed from
their original purpose, we have closed our ranks to newcomers,
for as soon as the rest of the people in Italy saw that we were
successful, they wanted to join. What the admission of too
many strangers among us would have effected was uncertain
and for that reason we now take no more new members,
although we have what we call the Avanguardia which,
together with an organization of boys and girls, selects and
educates the youth of our country in the principles of Fascism."

Gathering all his papers together in his portfolio, he arose.
Silently, his secretary appeared with the evening journals.
Mussolini took them with his portfolio under his arm and,
putting on his hat and tapping its crown, he turned to me and
said:

"It s half-past eight. I am going home."

"Tired?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "I am never tired. Now I am going home
to work."

1 187

XXI

BOUT Maestro Arturo Toscanini there is an element of
myster7. He has built around himself a wall of reserve
that few can scale. He feels that he should be judged
by the music that he produces and that his personality can be
of no concern to the public. Apparently, to his mind, even the
applause that greets the performance of the orchestra under his
direction is accorded to the music rather than to him.

His shunning of publicity has given rise to numberless
stories about him, some true, others not. He never uses the
same baton twice; he does not go to a barber shop; his daughter
cuts his hair many such anecdotes are current. Whether
they are true or false makes little difference to him. He leads
a simple life, the center of a circle of friends who weigh his
every word; who perhaps remark that the maestro is in a
good mood to-day, for he smiled, or with awe say that the
maestro is in a fury, for the rehearsal did not go welL

There are, in reality, two Toscaninis. One the public sees;
the other his friends know* There is the frowning maestro of
the rehearsal room, the Napoleon of the orchestra, who leaves
his men exhausted yet admiring. He demands almost super
human efforts from them, but, as one of them said after a
particularly arduous rehearsal, "By the time he gets through
he will make musicians out of all of us." This is the short,
dark-complexioned man with graying hair that is thinning
on the top of his head, whose every muscle is taut and whose

f 188

Artuto Toscanini

every nerve is tense as he walks quickly to the conductor s
stand in the middle of the stage. When he appears the men
whom he has urged and coaxed and reprimanded arise. It is
their mark of respect for a great musician.

Before him there is no music stand, nor any music. He
knows by heart the score of every piece he directs. Under
his arm he carries his baton as one carries a riding crop. His
back is to the public. The applause seems to have little effect
upon him. He waits, turns and bows, but apparently his mind is
far away. His bow is quick and jerky, his attitude is that of a
man who is interrupted in some important work. Again facing
his orchestra, he waits for a moment, taps the music stand
of the cellist who sits before him, and, as if saluting with a
sword, brings the tip of his baton up to his head; he closes
his eyes and then for a second appears to remove his every
thought from anything extraneous. Another tap, more authori
tative than the first, and the concert begins.

Toscanini draws melody from his orchestra. The baton in
his right hand commands, but his left hand wheedles the tones
he desires. That left hand is a study; thin and shapely, with a
long thumb that starts very near the wrist, it performs an
entire symphony by itself. Tenderly it hushes the strings;
commandingly it calls for volume from the brass; it goes to
the heart when it wants melody; and, closed into a fist, it
compels thunder from the drums.

As Toscanini directs he appears to be playing every instru
ment in the orchestra. The violins have a leading part, and the
delicately held baton moves as a bow through the air over
imaginary strings. The trombones take up the strain, and
his cheeks puff out until he seems to be actually blowing upon
one. Or perhaps there is a choral part in the piece, and immedi-

1 191 1

ately he sings, not loudly but as if his voice were one in the
chorus.

When the performance is finished the salvos of applause do
not move him. He points to the orchestra and signals that it
is they, not he, that deserve it. Floral tributes are tabooed
by him. a They are/* says he, "for prima donnas and corpses.
I am neither."

That is the Toscanini the public knows; the man whom,
twenty years ago, the directors invited to conduct opera at
the Metropolitan. They went to see him at La Scala at Milan,
to try to induce him to come over here. In him they did not
find a temperamental musician whose head was in the clouds.
For, temperamental as he is, he never forgets the demands
of his art. He is well aware that although upon the conductor
rests the responsibility for the artistic merits of the perform
ance, nevertheless he must have an efficient and cooperative
personnel behind him. The fact that Mahler conducted at the
Metropolitan was one thing that made him decide to come, but
before he gave his assent he insisted that not only the director
but also a number of the others at La Scala should be engaged.

To know the other Toscanini it is necessary to meet him
away from the scene of his work. Surrounded by his friends,
he is an entirely different man from the one who steps before
the public, baton in hand. Among them he relaxes. In his
home in Milan an artistic and musical coterie finds him a
gracious host and a charming companion. In the United States
although he keeps out of the public eye, he nevertheless has
his group of intimates whom he frequently sees and to whom
he speaks freely.

To them he is the simple, unaffected Italian whose parents
were so poor that he went to a school at Parma where not only

f 192]}

education but living was free. It was there that he studied
music and learned to play the cello. The discipline at the
school was so strict, Toscanini recounts, that one day he was
discovered playing the piano and was severely punished for
it, because the cello was the instrument he Was expected to
study.

At nineteen he was cellist in an orchestra in Rio de Janeiro.
The opera "Aida" was to be performed, and the conductor
was booed by the audience. Toscanini s fellow-musicians,
realizing the young man s ability, proposed that he should
direct the opera. "From then on," Toscanini often says, "I
have been a conductor, though I have not forgotten my first
love, the cello."

Although he has given a large part of his life to the con
ducting of operas, he has expressed to his friends a preference
for symphonic music.

"For," he says, "in the directing of symphonic music there
are not so many extraneous things with which to contend.
My orchestra is, as it were, one instrument upon which I play.
In a short time the men who work with me begin to know what
I want and they help me to obtain the results that I desire. But
in the opera house many other things arise that are in conflict
with music, or at least are outside its domain.

"There are, first of all, the peculiarities I call them
that rather than another name of the singers. Then there are
the numberless questions of scenery and stage management.
Many conductors feel that these things are outside of their
province, but I feel very much as Wagner did, that for an
opera to be a work of art it must be a unified whole. To achieve
that end, one man must direct the entire production. The
general tone of the scenery plays a part in an opera, as well

ft 1931

as the general tone of the music. Wagner, if you remember,
not only composed the music of his dramas, but also wrote
the libretti and made plans for the scenery. He went even
further; he designed an opera house for the productions.

"To Wagner I am indebted for much; I often wonder
whether many musicians realize the tremendous fund of
knowledge there is to be found in his writings. I think that I
can honestly say that whatever I am to-day as a conductor I
owe largely to what I learned from him.

"What Wagner was to Germany, Verdi was to Italy. He
represents the highest point in the development of the music
drama in his native country. But aside from his musical
genius he stands for everything that is fine and noble in man.
Italy could well be proud of him as a citizen had he not written
one bar of music."

Great is Toscanini s admiration for these two masters;
so great indeed is his respect for Wagner that he has refused to
conduct "Parsifal" because he believes that that opera should
not be produced outside of Baireuth, except in a church.
But his veneration for these composers is exceeded by his
worship of Beethoven. In him he sees the superman. The
majestic loneliness, the frightful deafness borne with patience,
and the deep humility of the man increase his admiration for
Beethoven as a musician. To Toscanini the nine symphonies
are the apotheosis of all music. In conducting them he feels
that in such works man approaches the divine, and that in
them is the essence of all religions.

"Many eccentricities," he said, "are being introduced
at the present time in the craze for novelty in invention,
and many old forms are being modified and exploited as some
thing new. Only recently the question arose as to whether a

1

department of jazz should be inaugurated in a conservatory
in Germany. Now, I feel that there is not a well-trained musi
cian in the world I mean one trained in the so-called old
school of music who need be puzzled by the peculiarities of
jazz. Even the much vaunted saxophone has been used for
certain effects in the regular orchestras for years.

"Personally, I am interested in jazz as a matter of fact
I have been from its very beginning. It undoubtedly has an
element of novelty and has added something to the treasury
of music. The unexpected in it appeals to me. But there is a
great deal of jazz music that is absolutely worthless. I have a
number of gramophone recordings of an excellent jazz band,
and I have just bought a number of new disks."

Toscanini has expressed strong ideas on permitting patri
otism to play any part in musical judgments.

"Music," he said, "may be written by a German, an

Italian, a Frenchman, or an American, but to me that is

unimportant. It is either good music or bad music. The

nationality of the composer has nothing to do with its merits.

The same thing may be said about classical as opposed to

modern music. Music is not like wine; it does not improve

I with age. Nor, on the other hand, is it like an egg that can be

I, spoiled by being kept too long. Occasionally, of course, the

true worth of music is not appreciated until years after it is

written. There is good old music, and there is bad old music,

just as there is good and bad new music.

"The most essential requisite in listening to music is an
open mind. When I hear a composition for the first time I
try to put myself in the position of the average untrained
listener. After all, music is not written for the enjoyment of
professional musicians, but for cultivated lovers of music.

1 195 I

I know many musicians who, while hearing a piece for the
first time, analyze it in every minute detail. This is a mistake.
It is analogous to the act of a critical painter who, on looking
at a canvas, examines minor technical details without first
getting an impression of the work as a whole.

"Do you know, I believe that there is such a thing as
crowd understanding that the public often grasps the merits
of a particular composition which escape the ear of the pro
fessional musician.

"The Americans have one great advantage over the people
of other nations. This is the meeting place of the entire world.
Italians and English, French and Germans, all come here and
bring their traditions with them. Those who remain here and
become citizens still retain their traditions. This interchange,
this mingling of different ideas and ideals is a marvelous thing
for music, for although music must be universal in its appeal,
nevertheless it is undoubtedly influenced by various elements.
You could no more imagine Wagner having written Aida
than you could imagine Verdi composing The Meistersinger.*

"But in America there is no one single dominating element
at work. I notice this in the orchestras here. When I conduct in
Milan I am at the head of an organization that is composed
entirely of Italians. Here I have men with me from all four
quarters of the globe. I get the best from all countries and not
all from one country.

"The same thing is true of the American audience. It is so
conglomerate in its make-up that no one type of music will
satisfy it. This makes for varied programs, which in turn tend
to create a cosmopolitan taste.

"Naturally, the hearing of great works of music improves
the taste of any people. But of course one cannot present only

196

works of the most exalted standards. There are not enough of
them. However, I give nothing in my programs that I do not
consider worthy of being heard.

"Although America now hears all that is best in music, that
does not guarantee the foundation of a school of music. Gods
have been born in stables and musicians have sprung from
what would seem to be the most unfavorable surroundings.
Geniuses appear in the most unlooked-for places and at the
most unpropitious times."

1971

p^-W-^HE

I me
JL arc

XXII

rain was coming down in torrents one Sunday
morning when I drove down Unter den Linden and
around to the Stresemann house in Friedrich Ebert
Strasse to make a drawing of the Foreign Minister. It was
dark because of the storm, and the lights in the house were a
pleasant contrast to the cold, dreary grayness outside. As I was
ushered into the library, the lighted lamps, the round center table
and the tall bookcases seemed more than ordinarily " gemiitlich."
In the few minutes that I had to wait before I saw Dr.
Stresemann I examined the contents of the bookshelves. One
entire case was filled with the works of Goethe ^and books
pertaining to him, and the other was largely taken up with
works, memoirs, and lives of Napoleon. On the table were
more books, among them a life of Hoover in German and a
small volume of extracts from speeches and letters of the
First Consul, also in German.

Certain passages in the latter book were marked, two of
which seemed pertinent and indicatory of the owner s own
thoughts. The first was a letter sent to Friedrich Wilhelm III
of Prussia. "Were I a beginner in the art of war," it ran, "and
did I need fear the tricks of luck on the battlefield, then this
letter to your Majesty would be unnecessary. But your
Majesty will be defeated, and without a warning you would
endanger your own freedom and the very existence of your
own people. 5

1 198

Gustav Strescmann

The source of the second quotation was not given, but
there were two pencil marks on the margin calling, as it were,
double attention to it. "A statesman, 5 * it said, "is not created
to be sensitive; he is a person who stands entirely alone and
whom the entire world opposes."

It was a sparkling room, so filled with lights and furniture
that memory of it is an impression of a mass of lights shining
like jewels rather than of definite objects. However, the
spirit of it is distinctly French, tinctured by a Teutonic
influence and this is accentuated by a colored print of a painting
of Napoleon, which overpowers a print of Frederick the Great
hanging near it. The French Emperor is not depicted as the
victorious conqueror; it is a picture of him as a family man,
holding the King of Rome in his arms, while seated by the
family hearth is Marie Louise. The entire room was one which
Menzel might have painted, and how he would have reveled in
flicking the brilliant high lights on the polished furniture and
the glowing lamps.

Among these surroundings the Foreign Minister in his
black clothes of modern cut was somewhat of an anachronism.
He was distinctly a present-day type and essentially Teutonic.
Augustus John painted him and, by exaggerating the modeling,
produced a caricature, but in no way gave the impression the
man himself produced.

His head was round and the planes merged one into the
other. Very blond, with light blue eyes, his complexion was
inclined to pallor and seemed paler in contrast with the redness
of his full lips.

His English was good, though it had a trace of foreign
accent. At the meetings of the League when he had a
paper prepared he invariably read it in English; on the

I 201 I

other hand, when he talked extemporaneously he used his
mother tongue.

After speaking with Dr. Stresemann for five minutes one
felt his chief characteristic was his optimism. It was that
trait which carried him through the troubles and the trials he
underwent during the last six years of his life> for it was but
that length of time that he was in the eyes of the world.

The thing ahead was always the thing that interested him
most, and like the majority of his countrymen who since the
war seem to have put sentiment behind them, he seemed to be
in no way guided by the past. It was the future that interested
him. To use his own words, his policy was "marching forward
over the graves."

His disregard of tradition played an important part in his
career. In many cases this almost proved disastrous to his
political future but he never allowed the desire for office to sway
his opinions, nor did he ever conceal his beliefs for the sake of
political preferment.

He was born in Berlin, the son of a restaurant keeper in
very moderate circumstances. His father made great sacrifices
to send him through the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig
where he specialized in economics and politics. First elected to
the Reichstag in 1907, he served there, with but one year s
interruption, until 1923, when he became Chancellor and
began the policy of reorganization that made him the great
post-war statesman of Germany and linked his name with
Briand s as an apostle of peace.

The chancellorship was too uncertain a position for
Stresemann, and the German nation could not afford to
permit so valuable a man to hold so transient an office. Accord
ingly, he was appointed foreign minister. Chancellors came
f 202 I

and went, but he continued to wield his influence for the
reorganization and reconstruction of his fatherland. He
effected the security pact with France, negotiated the Locarno
Treaty, and obtained the entry of Germany into the League of
Nations, while in all the conferences incident to the adoption
of the Young plan his guiding hand was felt.

Germany s future, he believed, lies in the capability of its
citizens for hard work. "There is no sham about them, but a
deep-rooted sincerity and a desire for advancement," he said.

The American and German people have many character
istics in common and to this fact Dr. Stresemann attributed
the resemblance that Berlin bears to large American cities.
In our people he saw the same energy, push, and adaptability
that he recognized in his own.

That break with tradition which has always been so evident in
American methods he saw as a post-war attribute of Germany.

"It has been demonstrated in a growing measure," he said,
"that the German policy of peaceful reconstruction and
conciliatory collaboration has nowhere found sincerer recogni
tion than in the United States. In fact, American collaboration
stands at the beginning of Germany s reconstruction. America
was first among former enemy powers to come out for the
principle of constructive economic common sense and fair play
for Germany, and to make possible the first fruitful negotia
tions between the Reich and her former opponents.

"It is due to the decisive attitude of American statesmen
and financiers that these negotiations were brought to a
positive conclusion and that the reparation problem was
removed from the sphere of political passions and ambitions
for power and raised to the level of an impartial examination of
economic viewpoints.

f 2031

"On the other hand, Germany s thoughtful attitude
regarding the solution of the question of safety on the Rhine,
which is the central point of European discord, and its position
in negotiations attending the adoption of the Locarno Treaty
did not fail to impress America, which is highly interested in
the pacification of the European economic body. Nobody can
doubt what role America is destined to play in developments
of the near future.

"That Germany and America have entered into relations of
sincere friendship and are following well-defined common aims
must be considered one of the pleasantest results of German
foreign policy and a promising indication for the future."

Dr. Stresemanri s admiration for America extended even to
his private life. As he was speaking of the drawing which I had
made of Mrs. Stresemann, and saying that he thought I had
made her look like an American woman, she entered the room.

Looking at the portrait of her husband, she said that she
thought I had done enough, and, turning to him, she con
tinued: "And I think you had better go upstairs now and rest
a little before dinner,"

"But I am not tired," he replied. (How like Mussolini s
words !)

"You never know when you are tired; go up and rest
anyway," she answered.

He got up and, with a smile, said to me: "I think you were
right; I do believe she s more American than I had realized."

Though I have seen Dr. Stresemann making fervent
addresses in the Assembly of the League of Nations, I shall
always remember him best not as the man of international
affairs, but as the home-loving German in his house in Berlin.

f 2041

XXIII

MMOST vivid memory of Elihu Root is of him
walking into the old-fashioned living room in his
home on Fifth Avenue. A spirit of early New York
pervades that home* Although he lives in an apartment,
he has so transformed it that it seems to be one of those
brownstone houses which were characteristic of the city
when horse cars jangled and gas lamps lighted the streets,
when presidents were made or broken on the red leather
lounge in the corner of the marble-floored hall of the Fifth
Avenue Hotel and governors selected before the bar of the
old Hoffmann House.

The walls of his living room are covered with steel and
copper engravings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The dun-colored paper, the mahogany bookcases filled with
volumes bound in calf, and the furniture all reflect the solid
comforts of a period when people impressed their own person
alities upon their homes. It is a room that is evidently lived in
and its symmetry would not be marred by a misplaced maga
zine, nor its comfort sacrificed for conventionality.

Black-framed, white-matted prints of the wigged jurists
of England, French actors in Watteau costumes, a tiger by
Delacroix and an old Jew by Rembrandt, all looked down on
me as I sank into a great chair before an obviously much-used
fireplace. Outside the morning sun hit the bare trees in the
park across the avenue, tinted the white marble Museum of

205 I

Art pale orange, and made the room which reeked of substan
tiality seem somewhat somber.

Like another famous lawyer, Mr. Root seems to have
discovered Florida s fabled fountain. In many ways his manner
and attitude toward life are reminiscent of Justice Holmes.
Into old-fashioned surroundings both bring the spirit of
eternal youth. The Supreme Court justice is the more humor
ous of the two. There is a twinkle in his blue eyes that is lacking
in the sad eyes of Mr. Root. About both of them is that simple
courtliness which Thackeray delighted to describe. In the
case of Mr. Root this likeness to one of the novelist s characters
is heightened by his appearance: his silver bang and his sparse
side whiskers recall pictures of Victorian days. As he walked
briskly into the room and stood there, erect and vital, it was
hard to believe that this was the year 1931.

This alert man, so many of whose contemporaries have

passed to the great beyond, seemed time defying. Atlas-like, he

appeared to be carrying another age upon his shoulders, but

it did not bear him down. Into the room he brought memories

of Grant, of Tilden, of McKinley, of Cleveland, and a host of

others who by this time are almost legendary; and here was he

who had known them all and who had worked with many of

them, strong, active, and absorbed in world affairs. For him

the sun had presumably stood still, not for a day, but for years.

He took me into his study. It is a small room, in the corner

of which stands a mahogany roll-topped desk cluttered with

papers and books. The impression that it left is rather blurred,

for my attention was riveted upon him as he sat with the light

from two windows falling upon his head, and his surroundings

out of focus. I can remember the blue cover of a copy of

"Moby Dick" and three pictures hanging above the desk.

1 2061

JRoo*

One was an engraving of a jurist of the Georgian period; this
was flanked on one side by an enlargement of an old daguerreo
type the portrait of a poetical looking man of middle age
with chin whiskers, his head resting on his hand and on the
other by a large photograph of Lord Bryce. I mentioned the
pictures.

"The engraving is a portrait of Lord Mansfield," he said,
" Chief Justice of the King s Bench during the American
Revolution. Lord Bryce you probably recognize. It was sent
to me by Lady Bryce after his death. The third one is a por
trait of my father."

Mr. Root has been accused of being cold, of lacking
sympathy, but as he looked at the picture of his father there
was an expression of softness and tenderness in his eyes.

"He was professor of mathematics at Hamilton College in
Clinton, which I attended. But that was a great many years ago."

"You have seen many changes in your lifetime," I
remarked.

"Yes, a great many." Then there came a moment of silence.

"Ideas and ideals are changing, and I think we are con
stantly moving toward better things. Gradually men s con
ceptions of their relations to one another have improved.
While this is a slow process and has been going on since the
dawn of history, even in my lifetime I have seen evidences of it.

"That is the reason why I can look to the future with hope.
When you go back in history and study the condition and
character of civilized peoples in each succeeding century,
you find an increase in liberty and justice and righteousness.
Education has gained ground and men have become generally
more intelligent, less cruel, and more considerate of the rights
of others.

209

"Even in my time compassion not only for human beings
but even for animals has grown. I distinctly remember that
when Henry Bergh founded the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals he was looked upon as more or less of a
crank. To-day a man who is cruel to animals is regarded as a
brute. It is this growth of compassion that I would say was the
greatest change that has occurred in my lifetime.

"As late as the last century there was an amazing degree of
cruelty, of oppression, of immorality, and of corruption which
would not be tolerated to-day. A little more than one hundred
years ago there were at least two hundred offenses punishable
by death in England. Of course, it has been the change in the
inner man which has brought about the abolition of these
punishments.

"Religion has gone through a metamorphosis. From a
narrow dogmatic theology, I have seen it swing to gross
materialism. Now, with Jeans and Eddington and other
scientists discovering that this materialism will not explain
everything, there is a return to spirituality. The men of science
are faced by a stone wall and they must stop; they know no
more about the ultimate than the most bigoted Fundamen
talist preacher."

He paused. For a few minutes he said nothing. Then he
continued :

"Our ideas of right and wrong have also changed. In
eighteenth century England a man expected to pay thousands
of pounds for a cabinet appointment, and it was not a dis
grace for a minister to buy the vote of a member of parliament.

"That was the period when the roads of the nation were
beset with highwaymen and Dick Turpin and others of his
calling were heroes in the eyes of the people. The custom of the

f 210 I

country permitted the plundering of wrecked ships; jails were
breeding places of pestilence and hospitals and insane asylums
were not much better.

"I mention England as an example. The same thing was
true of the rest of the world. But when we compare these
conditions with those of to-day in England and her dominions
and in the United States, or for that matter in all of Europe,
we must realize that honesty and humanity have made
amazing progress.

"In fact, some of the very evils which the government now
frowns upon it sanctioned years ago. In New York State, for
instance, a law was enacted in 1814 to raise money for colleges
by lotteries. In my youth there was a tradition that the
president of one of these colleges bought out the interests
of other institutions, which were to benefit by this form of
gambling, and thus enriched his college, which was fostering
and promoting the morals of the young men of the time.

"In my lifetime I have seen the attitude toward any
number of things undergo a radical transformation. For
example, there were the objectionable railroad practice of
rebates, the questionable management of corporations, and
even the abuse of the elective franchise. Of course I mention
only a few of the ills which I have seen cured.

"I distinctly remember the frauds, the tricks and devices
and acts of violence which worked against fair elections before
Federal election laws were passed. In those days there was no
registration of voters; the wayfaring man could vote a resident
out of house and home and the count of ballots was at the
mercy of anybody who managed to buy a local election officer.
The ballots themselves were supplied by the party; they
were made out and handed by political workers to each voter,

I 2111

who was given one or even more to drop Into the ballot box.
I have seen a long line of men march out of a tramp lodging
house with ballots held high in the air and continually in
sight until they were deposited, so that those who bought
votes would know they were getting what they paid for.

"Things are by no means perfect as yet in politics/ 9 he
continued with a smile. "Human nature must still progress.
But what I want to make clear to you is that the attitude
of the majority of people has changed toward many things.
Marcy s declaration to the victor belong the spoils 9 is no
longer accepted.

"Of course, there is much still to be accomplished, but I
think things have improved," he continued, looking up at the
photograph over his desk, "since James Bryce wrote his
* American Commonwealth 9 a generation ago, when the govern
ment of practically every American city was a byword of
shame for Americans all over the world.

"Politics in themselves have not changed as much as men s
ideas. But in the natural course of events these ideas will
ultimately affect politics and improve them. It is a long way
from the day of the Greek serf, and although slavery per
sisted up to a comparatively short time ago, there has been a
gradual, steady growth of human sympathy. The words
liberty, justice, order, and peace denote the application of
moral ideas to the conduct of men in mass toward their
fellow men. They mean more to-day than ever before.

"This growth of human sympathy, together with the
realization of the advantages of self-control and of working
for a common interest, is changing man s attitude toward
life. He has come to learn that the progress of the world has
now reached a point where society must rely upon that self-

I 212 I

control and that common interest for the smooth working of the
vast machinery of government. The mere forcible enforcement
of law is inadequate, for laws do not effect reforms, nor do
they make men better. The improvement must come from
man himself. It is not the fear of the policeman or the sheriff
that keeps peace among us; it is the self-control of our citizens
who conform their lives to the rules of conduct necessary to
the common interest. It is upon this spirit that the hope for the
permanence of modern civilization lies."

f 2131

XXIV

ris significant that two former American secretaries of
state should be deeply interested in a cause for which the
Permanent Court of International Justice stands as a
worldwide symbol. Mr, Root is one of those secretaries, the
other one is Charles Evans Hughes, Chief Justice of the United
States, It was just before he left to take his seat on the bench
of the Permanent Court that I visited him. He went, not
as a representative of the United States, but as a judge selected
by the Council and Assembly of the League of Nations. For
the United States is not a member of the Court, whose function
under the League Covenant is to interpret treaties, pass on
questions of international law, and settle differences arising
between nations.

Mr* Hughes believes that the Court will aid materially in
preserving peace and that we shall gain something in our
quest for peace if we recognize that war is not an abnormality,
that it is the expression of the insistent human will, inflexible
in its purpose, and that the culture of civilization has strength
ened, not enfeebled it.

"However," he said, "there are controversies between
nations which should be decided by a court. There are con
troversies calling for the examination of facts and the ap
plication of the principles of law. There are international
contracts or treaties, now more numerous than ever, to be
interpreted.

1214}

Charles Evans Hughes

"It is to the interest of the United States with respect to
the disposition of its own controversies that the best practicable
method of judicial settlement should be provided. We have
rights and duties under international law. We are parties to
treaties under which we have rights and obligations. And we
cannot be the final judge in our own cases; we need the best
possible international tribunal to decide them. This is to the
interest of every American citizen. It is also to the interest of
the United States that controversies between other nations to
which we are not a party should be appropriately determined.

"Suppose a citizen of this state should say that he was
interested in having a judicial tribunal to determine con
troversies only between states to which New York was a
party, and that it made no difference to him what happened if
the question was between Missouri and Kansas.

"Every citizen knows that it is to the interest of domestic
peace to maintain a tribunal by which controversies between
any two states can be determined. It is equally essential to
world peace to maintain a tribunal by which controversies
not our own should be peacefully and impartially determined,
wherever that is possible."

Mr. Hughes has the happy faculty of simplifying seemingly
complex questions. As he talks he emphasizes the point he
wishes to make with a smile. It is not a smile of humor, but
one with an interrogatory twist which seems to ask whether
the listener understands a smile which assumes the simplicity
of the statement no matter how abstract it may be. Mr.
Hughes sees but two ways for the settlement of controversies
between nations, for a controversy cannot remain, as he put
it, "a festering sore. 5 Ultimately the alternative to peaceful
settlement is the arbitrament of force.

I 217 I

"The only way to prevent war/ 5 he said, "is to dispose of
the causes of war, and the desire for peace must be supported
by the institutions of peace. Because a court may not be
able to deal with every sort of controversy, but only with
controversies that are appropriate for a court to decide, is no
reason for dispensing with it. There is no immediate access
to the millennium, and a demand for the millennium will
not prevent war."

The son of a Welsh Baptist clergyman, Mr. Hughes was
born and lived the first years of his life in Glens Falls, a village
which is filled with Revolutionary lore. While the battle of
Appomattox Court House was being fought, and Richmond
threatened, he was visiting the cave made famous by Cooper in
his "Deerslayer" and seeing Bloody Pond where hundreds
of earlier Americans had met their deaths in the French and
Indian wars.

When he was but three years old, this country, to use his
own words, "was standing aghast at the irreparable loss of the
martyred Lincoln and confronted with the suspicions, hatreds,
and scandals of the period of Reconstruction."

"In England, the long career of Palmerston had ended
and the first ministry of Gladstone had not yet begun," he
said. "In France, Napoleon III was endeavoring to conceal
the decadence of the empire with a fatuous splendor. In Italy,
Cavpur had been laying the foundation of Italian unity,
but the essential successes of Victor Emanuel were yet to
come. In Germany, Bismarck was pressing to the fateful
victories of Sadowa and Sedan, and with relentless will
was forging the mechanism of German imperial power. MilPs
Liberty and Darwin s Origin of Species had but recently
appeared, and Das Kapital of Marx was shortly to be
f 218 I

published. The electric age was in its beginning and science
was yet to win the victories which have given us the practical
achievements of the gas engine, the moving picture, and the
radio more revolutionary than political theories/

It was but a short time after this that his family moved
first to Jersey City and, after a brief stay there, crossed the
river and made their home in New York.

Both parents were deeply religious and looked forward to
their son s following in his father s footsteps, but the boy had a
will of his own. In fact, when he was but five years old, dis
approving of the method of teaching in the school which he
attended, he formulated a plan, set it down on paper and under
the heading " Charles E. Hughes, his plan of study, 5 presented
it to his father. When he delivered the salutatory address in
old Public School 35 he had firmly made up his mind to become
a lawyer.

There followed years at Madison, now Colgate, and at
BrOwn; teaching Greek and mathematics at Delhi, New York,
and a course in the Columbia Law School, succeeded by three
years of graduate work.

The professorship of law at Cornell took him to Ithaca
where he spent some of the pleasantest days of his life, and then
he returned to New York to resume his practice of law*

"Life is only work, and then more work, and then more
work," he said, and his entire career has exemplified this
idea. To-day with a world-wide reputation, he works as hard
as did the young lawyer who was selected by Senator Stevens
to investigate the gas and electric companies. He crowds
as much into one year now as he did twenty-five years ago,
when, having finished with the Stevens Committee, he became
counsel for the Armstrong Investigating Committee and made

I 219]

a nation-wide reputation in unearthing the wrongdoings of
the life insurance companies. This resulted in his election as
Governor of New York, and for the ensuing quarter of a
century he has been constantly in the public eye a period
during which he said that he had been more libeled than any
other public man by bad drawings of himself.

He gave me a photograph which he thought might help
me to finish the portrait I was making of him. He believed
it was like himself, but as I looked at it I remembered the
quotation from Burns. It was a picture of an entirely different
man from the one I saw. The obliterating hand of the retoucher
had smoothed away all the marvelous character that was
present in the original. Gone were the lines of concentra
tion above the eyes; the beautiful modeling in the well-
shaped nose had been removed, and the fire in the eyes
had vanished.

Mr. Hughes has changed considerably in appearance
since the days when he founded what eventually became the
Rockefeller Bible Class, or even since the time he was Governor
of New York. The square-cut brown beard which was once the
target of cartoonists has turned gray and is trimmed more
closely. But there is the same fire in the eyes and the same
smile, a smile which breaks suddenly with no warning.

There is something of the air of the medical man about
him: there is a finality about his statements that there is no
gainsaying, and a positiveness which a diagnostician would
employ when he was sure of the conclusions at which he had
arrived. And then, too, there is something of the teacher,
a didactic manner of expression, meticulous and precise.
No consonants are slurred, and sibilants are given their full
force.

f 220 I

He is one of the few men whom I have drawn who did not
keep me waiting a minute; President Coolidge was another.
The moment I arrived I was ushered into his room and he
apologized because he had to continue his dictating for a
few minutes. When he had finished he turned in the swivel
chair behind his desk and faced me. In repose his expression
is stern, almost Jovian; It is only when he speaks that it lightens,
and then it becomes benign.

For the last thirty years, he told me, he has been doing a
daily dozen on arising. These exercises, together with walking
whenever he has the time, have kept him in first-class physical
condition, and he recalled the long walks he used to take on
Riverside Drive when he lived on West End Avenue and when
Grant s Tomb was still a novelty.

In reading, his tastes are catholic. On his desk and beside
his bed there are always books that may be picked up for a
few minutes, but he does not believe that "by the study of
books you can obtain the equivalent of contact with men."

"As I observe, * he remarked, "the profusion of educational
opportunities not only through varied courses of instruction
but in the multitude of books and periodicals, of dramatic
portrayals by word and picture, I realize that what is needed
is not more information but better judgment, not more bulletins
but more accuracy of statement and a better assimilation.
And as we consider the welter of controversies and the danger
ous clashes of interest, we come to place our reliance not upon
emotional appeal but upon the processes of reason and the
dominance of those who have not lost emotional power but
have been able to hold passion in check.

"We live in an interesting world and we must not contract
ourselves into some narrow little sphere in which we happen

I 221 1

to be placed and refuse to come out and get into contact with
the varied interests of the world.

"It is a beautiful world, too beautiful in nature, beautiful
in the works of the imagination, beautiful In the works of art,
beautiful on every side."

I 2221

XXV

STRETCHING along Fifteenth Street between where Penn
sylvania Avenue stops on its course from the Capitol
to where it begins again as it runs past the White
House, stands the Treasury Department. Discolored by dirt
and age it appears even darker in contrast with the green
grass about its main entrance. There is something very secure
about it and, compared with the domed Capitol and the
newly painted White House, it has a stern business-like aspect.

In a corner on the second floor is the office of the Secretary
of the Treasury a large room done in mahogany and blue that
might be the office of the president of any large corporation.
On the walls hang five paintings, portraits of Mr, Mellon s
predecessors Chase, who served with Lincoln; Taney, after
wards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Sherman, author
of anti-trust legislation; Gallatin, the fourth to hold the office;
and Hamilton, father of our governmental financial system.
Through the windows one gets a vista of the city and, above
the trees, the Washington Monument shoots its shaft skyward.

Mr. Mellon is seated at a desk at the far end of the room.
The sunlight that floods the room is reflected by some papers
and throws a glow over his head, emphasizing his prominent
cheekbones and the strongly defined markings in his face.

A tall, slightly built man, he gives an impression of great
nervous energy under complete control. One senses in him a
tremendous force, a force of brain, not of muscle; a man whose

I 2231

reasoning faculties are always dominant over his emotions. Mr.
Mellon is not robust but he is that thin type which is capable of
great endurance under physical or mental strain.

- To whatever he undertakes, Mr. Mellon seems to give
himself over completely. For more than a decade the subject
absorbing his attention has been the Treasury Department, and
it is by what he has done there that he wants to be judged.
Upon personal topics he lives up to his reputation for shyness.
And so the conversation turned to Mr. Mellon s work in
Washington and what he as a business man thinks of the
administration of government.

"The Government is really a gigantic business/ he began.
"It should be run, and can be run, on business principles,
though there are certain necessary limitations on efficiency,
which we are not obliged to contend with in private life. I mean
by that such limitations as, for instance, selecting employees
from a limited civil service list and paying salaries which are
frequently inadequate for the quality of service demanded.
There is, too, the political pressure that is constantly applied
for the promotion or retention of undeserving employees.
Because of the low salaries in the higher positions such as, for
example, in the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the labor turnover
is very high in the key positions. The housing facilities are often
inadequate, though plans are under way for a building program
in Washington which will to a large extent eliminate this evil.

"These are some of the disadvantages. On the other hand,
there are many compensations and advantages. It has been
my experience to find in Washington a sense of unselfish
service and a pride in position that have brought the Govern
ment an honest, and more faithful class of workers than private
industry could command upon anything like the same terms.

| 2241

Andrew W* Mellon

I know that this is true so far as my own department of the
Treasury is concerned."

"How do you feel about getting results ? Isn t it slow work as
compared with the way in which private business can operate ?"

"Oh, yes, 55 Mr. Mellon replied, "but it is necessary to have
patience. The Administration and many members of Congress
worked for years just to get one idea across that in reducing
taxes it was also possible to revise and reform the tax system,
and that just because taxes were high it did not necessarily
follow that they would produce more revenue, or even so
much revenue, as lower taxes would produce. But eventually
we saw that idea enacted into law, just as in time most things
work out. The danger is to expect too much of government.

"No government, however able, can change economic
conditions overnight or accomplish the miracles demanded
of it. All that can be expected is that a government moving
with intelligence should give economic forces freedom and
help the country to cure itself. In this country we have usually
avoided false gods in the past. But new theories and new
remedies are constantly presented, and we should therefore
analyze carefully the political promises of to-day. When a
candidate, in order to bring about the millennium, would
start the Government in an orgy of spending, let him submit
the details of his budget.

"Our ills, as they arise in our economic system, cannot be
cured by magic formulas, but only by the application of well-
tried economic principles. The rest can be left to the initiative,
intelligence, and good sense of the American people.

"You see, * he said with a smile, "such a philosophy of
government calls for the same conservative principles which
operate successfully in business. That is my conclusion derived

f 227}

from more than fifty years of business experience before I
came to Washington."

"Did you say fifty years, Mr. Secretary ?" I asked, for his
appearance made the statement seem incredible. "Have you
really been in business so long ?"

"Yes," said Mr. Mellon. "I was in the banking business in
Pittsburgh in 1874. At that time banking, along with most
other business, was on a very different scale from what it is
to-day. Industrial America, as we know it now, hardly existed
before the early seventies. Production was limited, and indus
trial and manufacturing concerns were operated chiefly by
individuals or partnerships. The great natural resources, which
were to produce such untold wealth for the country, were
still lying largely undeveloped, or undiscovered. Such indus
tries as petroleum, natural gas, and cement hardly existed;
the steel industry was in its infancy, and the automobile
industry was unknown."

I suggested to Mr. Mellon that as well as vast changes
in banking and in business in those fifty years, he must also
have seen a change in the attitude of the public and the
Government toward business.

"Yes," he said, "there has been a change in attitude,
particularly in the last decade or so. The distrust of great
corporations has largely passed away, as it has become more
and more evident that organization on a large scale is necessary
in a country as large as this, not only in developing our natural
resources, but in producing such things as automobiles,
express and freight trains, textiles, electric power, and many
other commodities necessary to our present mode of living.

"It is the old story of large-scale production. We have
learned that lesson in the United States, and realize that only

{228}

by achieving a uniform, and, therefore, cheaper production
of commodities, and by taking advantage of labor-saving
mechanical devices, thus increasing the productive capacity
per capita of labor, is it possible to pay high wages and still
reduce costs, so that the finished products are within reach
of the great buying public. It follows, of course, that, as a
result of lower prices, consumption of commodities is increased.
This still further stimulates production, and so it goes. In
the end, we find that it pays to manufacture in quantity and
to make a large volume of small profits.

"It is because this fact is becoming so generally under
stood that much of the distrust which formerly existed against
corporate organizations is disappearing. There is, too, the
further fact that corporations are not owned by a few wealthy
people, but by millions of stockholders, many of them persons
of small means, who find they can secure a surer return on their
money through investment in some useful and well-run
enterprise than in any other way. There is nothing new in
what I have been saying, but it is a fact of great significance
that this change is taking place."

"I suppose, Mr. Secretary," I said, "that in the changed
attitude of both the Government and the public toward
business, there is also to be found an explanation of the changed
attitude of the Government toward the banker, whose services
are called on more and more in helping to solve governmental
problems."

"It is partly due to that," said Mr. Mellon, "and partly
to the fact that the problems themselves have changed. This is
particularly true since the war. In recent years problems have
arisen that are so largely financial and economic in character
that bankers have been called upon to help in their solution,

f 229 I

even when those problems are of an international and semi-
governmental nature, such as were once left to officials and
diplomats to settle.

" American banking before the war largely confined itself
to financing industrial developments in this country. But
now we have Become a creditor., instead of a debtor nation;
and banking Is finding that, just as it earlier became involved
in industry and has been obliged to help in the solution of
industrial problems, so It must now help In finding a solution
for those international financial problems which must be
solved if the world is to go forward."

"And now, Mr. Secretary, one more question. You have
seen America grow from a comparatively poor nation to a
very prosperous one. Do you attribute its present wealth, as
foreign critics sometimes do, to its great resources ?"

The Secretary deliberated a moment before replying. "In
part, of course, it is due to those resources," he said. "But it is
due in a larger measure, I think, to the energy and initiative
of the American people and to their genius for organization.
Those of us who have lived through the economic readjust
ments of the last fifty years know that the country s dominant
position in the world of finance and industry is due to the
fact that America has succeeded in adjusting herself to the
economic laws of the new industrial era. In doing so, she has
evolved an industrial organization which can maintain itself,
not only because it is efficient, but because it is bringing
about a greater diffusion of prosperity among all classes of
citizens than was ever known before in any other country
In the world s history."

That, one realized, was a statement of Secretary Mellon 3 s
faith in the soundness of America s business system and of
f 230 I

the principles underlying the whole American civilization.
It was easy to understand; but what was not easy to under
stand, was that the keen, vigorous man before me, who is in
the very forefront of all that is going on in the world to-day,
could be the same man who was a business cqntemporary of
Carnegie, Frick, and the other great figures of ^irty or forty
years ago. Mr. Mellon is, indeed, one of the last of the great
business leaders still living, who link us with that earlier era
when conditions of life were so vastly different from anything
we know to-day.

I 231 1

XXVI

CONSIDERABLY younger than Mr. Mellon, but also a link
with that almost mythical past when great fortunes
were amassed in a growing country, is Charles M.
Schwab. Seated in his library, a large room, its walls lined with
carved bookcases above which hung paintings by Diaz and
Turner, he told me that after fifty years of business it made no
difference to him whether he had one dollar or a hundred
million and I believed him. For he could make almost any
body believe almost anything.

Several days before seeing him in his home on Riverside
Drive, I had gone to his office to make a drawing of him. A
salesroom takes up the ground floor of the building a sales
room with the atmosphere of a cathedral, in which salesmen
speak in whispers and in which tools are incidentally displayed.
As the elevator whisked me by the nine floors occupied solely
by offices, I caught fleeting glimpses through the glass-paneled
doors, and as each succeeding floor came into view the only
things that could be seen were articles made of steel and
painted a dull green steel cabinets, steel desks, and even steel
chairs. On the tenth floor the elevator stopped. Here customers
were again received, and I entered what at first seemed to be a
dimly lighted cloister. As on the ground floor, a semi-religious
note was introduced into the scheme of decoration and formed
a marked contrast to the snatches of bare efficiency to be
seen on the way up in the elevator.

1232}

n

Charles M. Schwab

I was ushered into a small office, and within a few minutes
Mr. Schwab came in. There is something all-compelling about
him his voice is such as Homer ascribed to Nestor, "a stream
of eloquence sweeter than honey/ 5 The only requisites for
holding a conversation with him are two words, "yes" and
"no," and they should be used sparingly. He has so much to
say, he is so anxious to say it, and seemingly finds so much
joy in doing so that one hesitates to interrupt. As an evangelist
he would make Billy Sunday seem like the veriest tyro; as a
politician he would put Al Smith to shame; had he become
a criminal lawyer, juries would thank his clients for having
committed murder. At his persuasiveness the eyes of needles
would open to permit camels to pass through.

While I was making my drawing of him he did not have much
chance to tell me anything about himself or his ideas. People
were constantly coming in; before they left they were profusely
grateful to him for permitting them to do as he wanted. In the
few business transactions in which I saw him take part he was
always the same suave, genial, and accommodating.

But in his home Mr. Schwab told me something of his
half-century of business life, and it was there that he said that
he was tired to death of the laudatory articles that appeared
about him and that, like Cromwell, he wanted to be painted
"warts and all."

"As I sit and look back over those fifty years," he began,
"I cannot for the life of me understand the whole thing. All
I can do is to wonder how it all happened. Here I am, a not
over-good business man, a second-rate engineer. I can make
poor mechanical drawings. I play the piano after a fashion.
In fact, I am one of those proverbial Jacks-of-all-trades who
are usually failures. Why I am not, I can t tell you.

f 2351

"When I left Loretto and went to Braddock to take a job
in a grocery store I was just sixteen years old. If It had not been
for a ten-cent cigar I might still be selling dried apples over a
counter. One day Bill Jones came in to get a smoke. Jones
was the head of the Edgar Thompson Steel Works. I asked
him for a job there. I did not know a thing about the steel
business. Not for a moment did I at that time sense that the
era of sted was just beginning. Had I done so I should not
marvel the way I do at the result. But as it was, I was not
interested in the grocery business, I knew that things were
going on in the steel mills, and I thought I would take a chance.
I think it must have been my nerve that made a hit with Jones.
He gave me a position and by the time I was twenty-one I
was chief engineer of the company.

"Things happened just as in a fairy tale. At thirty-five I
was president of the Carnegie Steel Corporation. In the course
of events a dinner was given me by the Chamber of Commerce
in New York. Mr. Morgan sat at my right hand; Harriman,
Frick, and Carnegie were all there. I was called upon for a
speech, and partly as the result of what I said the Steel Corpora
tion was formed and I became its president. But I was not
happy there. With Mr. Carnegie I was a czar. In the Steel
Corporation I had too many bosses, and one of them was Wall
Street. So I got out and formed the Bethlehem Company.
That was twenty-five years ago, and in all that time we have
never needed business. 35

"Do you believe in luck?" I asked.

"Luck, opportunity, chance call it what you will there
is something that certainly gives some men more than an even
break," said Mr. Schwab. "In my lifetime I have known
thousands of men with more ability than I have some I

{236}

am certain were better executives, others were much abler
engineers but things somehow or other just did not go with
them.

"The smallest and most inconsequential thing may havfe
the most vital effect on a man s life. I often wonder what I
would have done if Bill Jones had not bought that ten-cent
cigar. For, surveying myself impartially, and appraising
myself fairly, I can find no special ability, no one trait in which
I excel. I love life and people. I am what you would call a
good mixer. After a short acquaintance people like me, and I
in turn have an abiding trust in them."

"And you managed to make money in spite of that?"
I asked.

"Yes," he replied with a laugh, "but think of how much I
might have made if I had not been so trusting. Speaking
seriously, I have never gone after money as such; I have
never started or done anything just for the sake of money.
I would be a very much wealthier man than I am had I done
so. Just to give you an example of what I mean, take the
companies that Bethlehem has bought up, such as, for instance,
Cambria. I could have purchased it personally and sold it
at a profit to Bethlehem; instead of which I let Bethlehem
bily it itself. Never in all the years that I have been connected
with a corporation have I sold anything to it. During the war,
before we entered it, Germany offered me $100,000,000 not to
sell ordnance to Great Britain, but I refused the money.

"What I have tried to do has been to build. It has been a
joy to see businesses grow under my guidance. To plan, to
adjust, to arrange and manipulate, to find the proper men for
the proper places, to start new companies and reorganize old
ones, in these things I have found my pleasure."

| 237}

I asked Mr. Schwab about the changes that had occurred
in the fifty years he had been doing this.

"In that time there have been vast changes not only in
the methods of production but also in the methods of business
and the attitude between employer and employee/ 9 he replied.

"As for the production end, the inventions and discoveries
in that time have been epoch-making; but I do not propose to
go into the technical changes. That would be too scientific and
naturally vary according to the product manufactured.

"But just to give you some idea of the other changes:
fifty years ago concerns in the same line of business were
rivals, now they are competitors. There were many more
trade secrets; the other fellow s product was usually not good;
you sold yours by running his down. Then the lesson had
not been learned that what would benefit one member in a
certain line of production would benefit all; that conferences
between them would result in a common advantage; that
creating a market for a product would mean more business
for every one.

"It is in the last half-century, too, that the world has seen
the mobilization of capital and engineering that has resulted
in the wonderful era of progress in which we live. Industry
has brought together and welded into single organizations
thousands of human beings with different habits of life and
thought. For the success and happiness of these human beings
and of society in general, mutual relationships had to be
adjusted on the basis of fair dealing and cooperation.

"The result has been that there is a new concept of manage
ment of business industry was humanized and men became
self-respecting workmen and citizens and factors cooperating
in the success of business.

f 2381

"I have always used my best efforts to further the interests
and better the conditions of the men who worked for me.
The first thing that I have always bornet in mind has been that
they were human beings with the same desires and motives
as my own. When their ideas did not coincide with mine, I
realized that they were as certain that they were right as I
was sure that I was. I do not know whether you know it or
not, but I was put in charge of the plant at Homestead while
the great strike was on there. Thirty-five years later, when I
was no longer connected with the company, the men there
gave me a dinner. I had to speak, I knew that I could not
ignore that strike. So I got up with Carnegie s book in my
hand and said that in speaking of the trouble I would read
from that book and what I read was this: As for the strike,
if Charley had been here there would not have been any.

"Management has come to realize that conflict between
labor and capital is destructive of the interests of each; it is
unnecessary and mutually expensive. The result is a new code
of economics, a code that aims not only to provide food,
clothing, and shelter, but also to place a true dignity on labor,
a dignity that yields a fuller and happier life.

"But this happiness does not mean the abolishing of work,
for work is the cornerstone of real happiness." It lies in the pay
ment of fair wages for efficient services; steady, uninterrupted
employment; safeguarding lives and health; good physical
working conditions ; provision to lay up savings and to become
partners in the business through stock ownership; and, finally,
some guarantee of financial independence in old age."

I asked whether standardization of labor conditions
now was as favorable for the success of the individual as
formerly.

f 239 I

"The conditions are more favorable, because there are so
many more opportunities/ 5 said Mr. Schwab. "Take the
question of wages, for instance. There was an adherence to a
policy of uniform wages regardless of individual effort. Such
a policy sought to discourage effort and to reduce the individual
output to a standard set by the least efficient worker. But
we have traveled far in our ideas on the question of reward
for service. We now realize the essential benefits derived
from relating compensation to the contribution made by the
individual,

"As a matter of fact, there are more good positions than
there are men to fill them, or, at least, men who have had the
opportunity, if you choose to call it that, to show the required
ability. The Steel Corporation had difficulty in filling Gary s
place, and the Westinghouse Company did not find a suc
cessor to Tripp in a whole year.

"Yes, in those fifty years I have seen a vast improvement
in the whole line of business. I am an optimist and look to
seeing even greater strides forward. I have never been a
calamity howler, even at times when I have been in pretty
tight places. I have always been a hard worker, and I have
always managed to look at the bright side of things.

"When I first went to work for the Thompson Steel
Company I was a stake driver and my salary was so small
that I taught the piano in the evenings for one dollar a lesson."

"Tell me something about your interest in music/ 9

"Now, listen," said Mr. Schwab, "I am a business man
pure and simple, so please don t stress this music. Some one
once wrote that it was through my singing that I met Mr.
Carnegie. Now, as a matter of fact I met him in the regular
channels of business, but people like to invent romances.

"I first studied music under a priest at Loretto, Father
Bowen, and then under a Sister of Charity. We always had
music in our house. My father was very musical and my
sister, who is a Mother Superior at present in Loretto, Is an
accomplished musician. As for myself, I originally studied
the piano; then I learned to scrape a tune on the violin, and
later I took up the organ. Music has given me a tremendous
amount of enjoyment in life, and for twenty-five years Archie
Gibson, whom I consider to be one of the finest organists
in the country, has come here to the house whenever I want
him to play for us.

"I am essentially a home man. Outside of public dinners, I
have not dined away from my home in fifteen years. This is a
pretty large house, but there is not a room in it that was
designed for anything but living purposes. I have no large
assembly rooms here, nothing for big functions. I love my
friends; I love to entertain them. But all the entertaining I
do is more or less Informal. Every Sunday afternoon I am at
home to them all; as many as want can stay for supper. Among
those friends are many musicians. When they play here it is with
a different spirit from that of a public appearance. Here Kreisler
is Fritz, and never at a concert have I heard him play the way
he does right here in this house. I can say the same of Sembrich,
Schumann-Heink and a host of others,

"That is the kind of music I love. I am not partial to opera.
It is too conglomerate an art. I prefer a more intimate and
less formal style. The costumes and scenery add nothing to
my pleasure, and the librettos for the most part are banal.
I suppose I am too much of a realist to appreciate seeing a
man or woman take fifteen or twenty minutes to die, warbling
all the time."

f 241]}

I got up to go, and Mr, Schwab arose also. Coming over to
me and putting his hand on my shoulder, he said:

"The other day you drew me as I appear. You did not
soften my wrinkles nor make my hair one bit darker than it is.
Go ahead and write about me, but tell the truth. I am not
giving any advice on how to succeed. I hate that kind of
article. I have no use for the successful business man who
lolls back in his chair with his thumbs in his pockets and says
do this and don t do that and you are bound to get on. For
nobody can tell any one else what to do. Things just happen,
that s all. I am not a Pollyanna, but I am not ashamed of
being an optimist. The world is a pretty good place in which to
live, and money isn t the only thing that counts in it. I have
never been so interested in business as not to be able to enjoy
a good book, a good picture, or good music. I have had a lot
of joy in this life which money has not brought me. But above
all I am thankful for one thing, and that is the God-given
gift of being able to see the good in other people and of making
them see whatever good there is in me."

f 242}

i

XXVII

^HE belief in luck which is so characteristic of Mr.
Schwab is also held by Julius Rosenwald,

"Entirely too much stress," he said to me one day,
"is put on the making of money. That does not require brains.
Some of the biggest fools I know are the wealthiest. As a matter
of fact, I believe that success is ninety-five per cent luck and
five per cent ability.

"Take my own case. I know that there are any number of
men in my employ who could run my business just as well
as I can. They did not have the luck that s the only difference
between them and me."

When I asked him to tell me something about his life, he
replied :

"That s an old story; in fact it is sixty-seven years old. I
can tell you something that is much more interesting. I suppose
that it was because I was born in Springfield, within a stone s
throw of Abraham Lincoln s house, that I am particularly
interested in his life. I am reading Beveridge s book now, and
I read Sandburg s work when it came out. I want to tell
this story because it shows that often authors are wrongly
discredited.

"Sandburg gives a very good picture of the times, and
among other things, he tells of the difficulties that Harriet
Beecher Stowe was laboring under when she wrote c Uncle
Tom s Cabin. Now, it happened that when I was traveling

| 243 I

in New Mexico, I heard that one of her sons was living there,
so I went to see him to find out all about it. He had not read
Sandburg s book, so I sent him a copy, and he wrote to me
and told me that it was all wrong that they always kept
a maid and that his mother had plenty of leisure in which to
write.

"The next time I saw Sandburg I repeated to him what I
had learned, and he explained the whole thing to me. It seems
that the man whom I had met was the youngest son; by the
time he was old enough to remember, Mrs. Stowe had not only
written her famous book but had made enough money from
it to afford the comparative luxuries which he mentioned.
So you see both of them told the truth."

This story and its investigation are characteristic of Rosen-
wald. It shows his interest in small matters and at the same
time it gives a good idea of his thoroughness a thoroughness
which enabled a country boy who came to New York to work
in his uncle s clothing store, in a short time to open his own
establishment on Fourth Avenue, near where it runs into the
Bowery. It was the same spirit of investigation and infinite
attention to details that enabled him to see the possibilities
in Chicago, to realize that there was a market there for summer
clothes for men, for that was the period when white waistcoats
and alpaca and seersucker suits were the vogue. Successful
in this, he soon saw that in Chicago there was a big field
for low-priced clothing, and accordingly he made new con
nections and enlarged his business.

One of his principal customers was Sears-Roebuck, a firm
which had started selling watches by mail and had developed
into a mail order house. The senior partner wanted to increase
the business and saw Rosenwald s ability. That was in 1895.
f 2441

l^^st-S&%^^

-., , !. ",. , , ,< ^^

Julius Rosenwald

Rosenwald bought an interest in the business. At that time
the capital stock was valued at $125,000; to-day its market
value is many times that and Mr. Rosenwald owns more than
half of it. And as he puts it, "that business has grown to its
present proportions without the introduction of one cent of
outside capital. It has made the money by means of which it
has been enlarged."

Though Mr. Rosenwald is known primarily as a business
man, and although he has held several important public
offices, it is in his philanthropies that one sees the real man.
There is more of the true Rosenwald, more of the essential
quality of his personality in one of his philanthropic schemes
than there is in any of his business plans.

"I am absolutely opposed/ 5 he told me, "to any system
of philanthropy that stores up huge sums of wealth and
permits trustees to spend only the interest on the principal.
To begin with, this is economically all wrong; but, what is
more important, it shows an absolute lack of confidence in
the future.

"Do you remember the manna of the Bible which melted
at the end of each day?" he asked. "I believe that gifts for
the good of mankind should be spent within one generation
of the donor s life. I can give you any number of examples
where comparatively large sums of money are tied up for
some particular purpose, the usefulness of which has entirely
disappeared. To give you but one instance, when Benjamin
Franklin died he set aside a certain sum of money, ten thousand
dollars if I remember correctly, to be lent, as he put it, to
married artificers under twenty-five. He computed that at
the end of one hundred years the sum would be equal to one
million dollars and this was to be expended for the construc-

1247 I

tion of sidewalks in Boston and to pump the water of Wissa-
hickon Creek into Philadelphia.

"Unfortunately there was a dearth of such artificers or
perhaps I should say fortunately. At all events, a large part
of the principal has remained idle and there is not enough
capital for the projects mentioned; nor is it needed for the
purposes for which he intended it. I have tried to circumvent
this fault in the provisions which I have stipulated shall
govern the so-called Rosenwald Fund, for its final disposition
has been set for twenty-five years after my death."

I interrupted to ask, "What are the purposes of the
fund?"

"It is a development of many years of personal gifts,"
Mr. Rosenwald explained. "In the words of the charter, it is
incorporated for the well-being of mankind. 5 For ten years
it limited its activities almost exclusively to the negro rural
schools; then it began to broaden its scope.

"There are many fields for this endeavor. The simple
question of material necessities is one; the wise assistance,
not by donations but by investments of capital, in housing
or projects for cooperative farming which might serve as experi
ments in fresh methods and new types of organization. Then
there are the problems of public health, of education, experi
ments in schools, cooperation with the government on various
schemes, support of research, the development of promising
individuals, and any number of similar subjects.

"Only recently the thought came to me that the govern
ment has made every provision for the separation of married
people, and to-day our divorce courts are working overtime
handing out decrees. I have an idea that if certain boards
were established to hear the troubles of unhappily married
f 248 I

couples, not necessarily with the Idea of separating them,
but rather with the purpose of disentangling their difficulties,
much good would come of it and many homes would be
saved."

I reverted to the subject of the negro schools and asked
what was the reason for his interest in them.

"I am interested in the negro because I am also interested
in the white," Mr. Rosenwald replied. "Do you know that
one-tenth of our population is black ? If we promote better
citizenship among that proportion of our people, it goes
without saying that our entire citizenship will be the better
for it.

"Of course all of the states themselves helped with this
project and appropriated money, and the colored people also
secured donations; but it made me very happy when I knew
that in fourteen southern states, March I, 1929 was set aside
as Rosenwald Day in all schools which are attended by colored
children."

Now Mr. Rosenwald is absorbed in the building of a
museum in Chicago, modeled after the Deutsches Museum
in Munich, in which the history, In tangible form, of most of
our modern inventions will be housed.

But of all the gifts that he has made in his lifetime, the
one that has given him the greatest pleasure is one that prob
ably cost him least in actual money.

"With Ingersoll," he told me, "I hate a stingy man.
If you have only a dollar in the world, and have to spend it,
spend it like a king. I d rather be a beggar and spend like a
king than a king and spend like a beggar.

"The reason I am quoting this is the fact that one of the
smallest gifts I ever made is the one which meant more to

f

me that any other, and at the same time was a case where a
beggar spent like a king.

"I was fourteen and I had worked all summer for a few
dollars a week. In the fall my parents celebrated their china
wedding. I took all that I had and went out and bought a
set of dishes. Proportionately, no king could have spent more
lavishly. But looking back over the fifty-three years that have
elapsed, no gift that I have made since then has left a more
cherished memory."

f 250

XXVIII

A HE leaned back in a big Italian chair in the vast
living room of his Fifth Avenue apartment, leisurely
talking, two hundred newspapers were awaiting words
from him that were still unwritten. Great presses would not
start their daily grind until this work was done, but into his
huge beamed room that might have been in a Venetian
palace Arthur Brisbane had brought none of the nervous
tension of a newspaper office.

Sitting there as if he had not anything else in the world to
do, his heavy-lidded blue eyes sparkling behind amber-rimmed
spectacles, he might have been a retired business man, except
for an alertness and an all-absorbing interest and curiosity
qualities not associated with ideas of retirement. For thirty
years he has turned out his trenchant but simple phrases
for millions of newspaper readers, and his literary output
would fill many library shelves,

But this has been only a part of his activities. He has
bought and sold newspapers; his real estate transactions
are tremendous; yet he still has time for other business
interests and for leisure. He lives in New Jersey, maintaining
his New York apartment for entertaining and luncheons and
dinners. In the midst of a busy day he will find two or three
hours for a more or less formal meal away from his office.
At sixty-six, with many occupations, he still searches for more
ways to employ his spare time.

1 251

There is a quickness about him, both in speech and
in manner, that denies his age. No one thirty years his
junior could be more active in thought or word. In physical
vigor, too, he seems young, though perhaps he has not
the strength he had when with one blow he knocked down
Charley Mitchell, who was then the champion prize fighter
of England.-

He talks incisively and employs short sentences. His con
versation sounds the way his editorials read. He translates
abstruse thought into words of one syllable and he does this
in no pedagogical manner. He thinks that way. He can apply
the Darwinian theory to April FooPs Day or the philosophy
of Jeans to the price of beef, and he can do it in such a manner
that they become clearer by comparison.

There is a typical so-called Yankee shrewdness aboat
him despite the fact that he was born in Buffalo. His sister
told me she cannot recall the time when he did not have
money; even when he was as young as ten he knew how to
drive a good bargain.

But there was a peculiar softness in the voice of the alert
but venerable editor as he took me into a small room and
showed me a portrait that his father had painted of himself
when he was a boy. It was with pride as well as sentiment that
he pointed out other ancestral portraits, for he believes strongly
in the influences of heredity.

"The best cart horse in the world/ he said, " can t beat
the worst race horse. Breed makes the difference. We talk of
boys starting out with financial advantages. They are usually
handicapped. A poor boy succeeds because he is poor, a rich
one despite the fact that he has money. In nine cases out of ten
wealth is the greatest obstacle a boy must overcome."
f 252 1

Arthur Brisbane

Turning to the portrait, he continued: "I suppose it was
on account of my father that I went into journalism. He had
very radical ideas and in order to give them publicity he
bought a weekly column on the front page of the New York
Tribune and there expounded his views. I am paid for doing
badly what he did well and paid for, besides.

"When I started in to work Horace Greeley had hardly
ceased telling young men to go West. I could not see the need
for this. New York looked perfectly good to me. Though I
went to the little red schoolhouse, I had five years* study in
Europe, and when I came back I started to work for The Sun.
I was nineteen years old at the time and I was much upset
that the Constitution prevented any one under thirty-five
becoming President. I couldn t wait that long. That s the
reason I became a newspaper man."

I asked him what was the difference between the news
papers of those days and the newspapers of to-day.

"To compare the newspapers of to-day with the news
papers when I started would scarcely be possible. How can
you compare a child three years old with one fourteen or
older ?

"When I began to work on The New York Sun, it consisted
of four pages, two sheets, which carried everything news,
editorials, advertising, foreign dispatches. Not much adver
tising. Charles A. Dana refused one advertisement because
the advertiser insisted on spelling cigar with an.V segar.
A modern newspaper man would let the advertiser spell it,
if he wanted to, with a 6 z. 9

"I was correspondent of The Sun in London at twenty-one.
I had left the local staff and gone to Europe thinking that I
was leaving journalism for good."

I 255]

After several years as London correspondent Mr. Brisbane
returned to New York to become editor of The Evening Sun.
In speaking of those days he said:

"We ran the paper for some time on what might be called
a literary basis. Such writers as Charles W. Tyler, Richard
Harding Davis, Frank Wilson, afterward editor of The Police
Gazette, wrote brilliant * stories/ Davis began his Van Bibber
stories then, based on a story by Manchecourt, which I
translated for him from La Fie Parisienne. The Sun then had
the biggest evening circulation in New York, which shows as
W. R. Hearst said when I went to work for him that * there
are a dozen ways of making a paper successful. The important
thing is to adopt some one way, and stick to it. "

From The Sun Brisbane went to The World. In those days
The World meant Pulitzer, and in speaking of him Mr. Brisbane
said: "Joseph Pulitzer was an inspiration to hard work for
every man who knew him well* Few knew him well. He worked
at his newspapers literally from the moment he awoke until
he went to sleep at night.

"Only success appealed to him, and his idea of success
was results, circulation. You could not tell Joseph Pulitzer:
*We are holier and purer than our competitors. That s why
they have more circulation than we have.

"One day Joseph Pulitzer woke up to discover that W. R.
Hearst had hired the entire staff of The New York Sunday
World, with the exception of one capable lady. Mr. Pulitzer
asked me to take charge of The Sunday World, and hire
anybody in New York you want to. In ten weeks our readers
were increasing at an average rate of eleven thousand a Sunday.
Pulitzer s delight was intense. When circulation came so easily,
he, as sometimes happens with owners, had an attack of

I 2561

respectability/ Both The Sunday World and The Sunday
American were excluded from certain clubs. I had no objec
tion to this since it compelled club members to buy the paper.

"Mr. Pulitzer did not like it, and decided to overcome
the objections of clubhouse committees by displaying such
intense * respectability * as would impress them. He sent me
this message: Please have on the front page of the magazine
in next Sunday s World a fine portrait of General 0. 0.
Howard, head of the army, done by Mortimer, and an inter
view with Howard/ Mortimer made fine portraits in pen and
ink. General 0. 0. Howard would have talked fine platitudes.
The following Monday I sent Mr. Pulitzer this telegram : Sorry
we did not have that 0. 0. Howard picture and interview.
Instead, on the front page, I had a wonderful picture of Kate
Swan in the electric chair and circulation is now up fifteen
thousand/ Mr. Pulitzer telegraphed back : * You know perfectly
well I am blind, and must rely on you. Congratulations/

"Above all, he was a man of quick action. He had been
fighting a proposal to sell United States bonds at 104, saying
that they were worth no. One day his wife, a very brilliant
woman, responsible for much of his success, asked him:
Joseph, why don t you buy some of those bonds at no,
instead of talking so much about them ?

"Instantly, Mr. Pulitzer called up Dumont Clark, then
president of the American Exchange Bank, telling him to
bid $1,100,000 for $1,000,000 par value of the proposed bonds.
He bought them at no, sold them later at a much higher
price, and broke the effort to sell the bonds privately at 104,
forcing a sale to the public.

"A powerful man was Pulitzer. His one eye, with defective
sight, seemed strong enough to look through a stone wall.

| 2571

It was said that he would use a man, and throw him away
like a squeezed orange. But he never did it unless, the man
was that kind of man. Above all else he knew how to translate
thought into action; that is what any successful man must do
to keep on going.

"I may have an idea, but unless I do something with it
it is worth nothing. Let me tell you a story. When the new
tunnels to Jersey were first talked about I thought the property
over there would be bound to increase in value. My idea in
itself was not worth a hang, but I put the idea into action.
I went over there and bought property. There is one piece
that I have in mind that I paid fifteen thousand dollars for.
A few months later the man from whom I bought laughingly
said he would have accepted five thousand dollars for it,
To-day that particular piece of land is renting for sixty
thousand dollars."

He continued: "I had an idea that a tower would be a fine
sort of structure for apartments. I erected the Ritz Tower,
the first apartment house of that type in the city. It was a
good idea, so good in fact that all you have to do is to look
across the park to see how many have followed it."

But I wanted to hear more about newspapers. I referred to
the growth of tabloids.

"I can only speak about tabloids as a spectator, " said Mr.
Brisbane, "but their growth and circulation do not surprise
me. Size, in my opinion, has little to do with their success.
They ask themselves, What interests nine million out of
ten million people near here?" and they concentrate on that.
They realize the force of pictures and recognize the fact that a
strong picture can portray in a second what would require
half a page of words. A full-size paper run on the same lines,
{2581

in my opinion, would get more circulation than any tabloid, be
cause people like a big picture better than they like a little one.
"Of course, the taste of the public continually changes.
A strong man starts a paper, his personality goes into it and
the paper is a success. Were he to live forever and his per
sonality remain uniformly strong and progressive the paper
would be eternal. For a paper to live it must continually
absorb new ideas, which are its food, and keep up with the
procession."

"Where will that procession lead to?" I asked.
"You mean the newspaper of the future? Who can tell
what will be produced for the kind of men who will cultivate
one eye for use in the telescope, the other for use in the micro
scope, and both for ordinary things on earth? That future
man may have a skull that will be an absolute sphere, except
for small openings for the eyes, nose, and mouth. He may
weigh only twenty pounds or less, since his hardest work may
be pressing a button. His wife, maintaining her size, and
increasing her beauty, as mother of the race, may carry the
husband suspended at her girdle, as the female parasite crab
carries her little husband under one flipper.

"But one thing is as certain now as when it was said long
ago by an old Greek teacher of oratory: *To convince others,
be yourself convinced/ The newspaper man who believes
something and knows how to convince others of it will sell
his newspaper. No matter what kind of newspaper you are
printing, large size, tabloid, conservative, radical, you will
succeed if you are saying what you really mean and are saying
something worth while. If not, you won t succeed.

"Of course, I believe that moving pictures will largely take
the place of books in education and condense by at least fifty

{2591

per cent all educational processes. The radio, too, will become
more and more important in conveying instantaneous news, and
will, perhaps, educate the newspapers along the line of brevity."

I asked him whether he had spoken on the radio, "No, 95 he
replied, "I am a dictator, not an announcer. Don t misunder
stand me. I do not mean I am another Mussolini. I mean I
dictate too much into a machine, with the result that I have
lost the sense of accent and emphasis and I cannot make much
of a speech. Why, I once was addressing a group of professors
in Chicago and I noticed them looking very queerly at me and I
suddenly realized that I was dictating, even to punctuation."

He got up to look at the drawing.

"You have given me the brow of Sir Walter Scott," he re
marked with a laugh, "and the chin of Charles Dana Gibson. I
might have amounted to something if I had had a chin like that."

"Do you believe that facial characteristics reveal a man s
ability?" I inquired.

"Practically always. Look here," he said, going to the
large refectory table that stood in the middle of his room.
On it were two inscribed photographs. One was of Gibson,
the other of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

"Couldn t you tell both of those men would make their
mark in the world?" he asked. "I will acknowledge, however,
that Gibson looks more like the trust magnate and Rockefeller
like the artist. Perhaps, after all, each would have done better
in the other s calling."

It was after three o clock and my drawing was finished,
so I suggested that I should go along.

"I guess I had better be going, too," he said, "as I have to
write my editorial, and my train leaves for Allaire at five
o clock."

f 260 I

"Isn t it written yet?" I asked in surprise.

"Oh, no, but I have plenty of time. I usually dictate it
in twenty minutes to half an hour. Let me drop you off at your
place and on the way I ll show you how I work."

He put on a soft gray hat which only partly hid his high
forehead. The collar of his overcoat was turned up, and, with
a huge bundle of newspapers and magazines in hand, he took
me down to the ground floor in his private elevator.

"Here s my machine," he said. "It s a second-hand one.
I think I have bought more second-hand automobiles than
any one else in the country."

The chauffeur opened the door. The interior resembled a
baggage car. On one of the folding seats was a dictating
machine, and suitcases, rugs, and papers were strewn
about the floor. Though the car was large there was just about
room for the two of us to squeeze in.

This is the way he makes use of his time. On his way
through the city he sees things that strike him and he immedi
ately dictates his impressions. The rest of it he does in the
office. By the time he is ready to catch his train his stenog
rapher has transcribed what he has dictated. A secretary
accompanies him on the way to the ferry and across it and
he corrects what he has dictated, so that when he gets aboard
the train the day s work is finished. On the train he has a
compartment and here is another machine with which he can
start the next day s work.

As I got out of the car at my destination he leaned over and
took up the mouthpiece of the recording device. Turning,
he said, "Perhaps I write too easily, or rather take too little
trouble. *H I had had more time I should have written you a
shorter letter. Madame de Sevigne wrote that to her daughter.

261

I aim at brevity, but I miss it. I think, however, that I occa
sionally print useful quotations from others that stimulate
thought."

As the door closed and his car started off through the
crowded street I could see him sitting there dictating into the
machine.

262}

XXIX

I MUST confess I had been rather surprised to see a portrait
of the older Rockefeller on Mr. Brisbane s table. There
was something incongruous about this man who had
written vitriolic editorials against trusts having the portrait
of the head of the one-time largest trust in the country in
his living room.

I have never met the father but I have drawn a portrait
of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. His office is on the twentieth floor
of 26 Broadway. Stand in front of the building some morning
between nine-thirty and ten o clock, and from one of the
many motors that stop there you will see a young-looking
man of fifty-odd years alight. Perhaps he himself has been
driving the car. As he hands the machine over to the chauffeur
and gets out he might pass for a successful lawyer, or, more
likely, for an up-to-date college professor whose researches
have been found to be of practical use to some tremendous
business concern.

Of medium height and almost athletic build, he conveys the
impression of strength and reserve force, of a man capable of
handling a situation judicially and effectively. He dresses
well, but not conspicuously. In fact, after meeting him one is
likely to forget what his clothes are, for one remembers
rather his keen gray eyes, his peculiar arched eyebrows,
almost meeting above his well-modeled nose, and his broad,
generous mouth. His head, though in reality long, seems broad

I 263

on account of the squareness of his jaws, which swell just
below his ears and sweep along, merging into a firm, bold
chin. His color is almost ruddy. His hair, coarse and wiry and
streaked with gray, is cut quite short. His walk gives an
impression of physical fitness, of being in training yet not
overtrained, which bears out the stories of his frequent visits
to the handball courts.

As he enters the building and passes through the white
marble corridor the chances are that he will glance up at a
heroic bust that dominates the entrance hall. It Is the likeness
of a man past eighty, on whose face are shown without com
promise the marks of time. There is a strong resemblance
between the bust and the younger man the same penetrating
eyes, the same sharp nose with its characteristic curve. The
principal difference in the two heads is that the older man s is
slightly more oval and the curve of the face less broken by
the squareness of the jaw.

Here are the founder and the dispenser of one of the
greatest fortunes that has bee n accumulated on this earth.
The father s life is still to be written. It is the romance of the
country boy who rose to world supremacy in business and,
having become the world s richest man, in turn became one
of its leading benefactors through wise philanthropy and
systematized scientific humanitarianism. To his son this
modern Croesus handed over the disposition of his colossal
fortune.

Rockefeller endowments amounting to almost half a billion
dollars are administered by carefully chosen boards of trustees.
Throughout the entire world trained minds in all branches
of science and art are devoting their lives to the benefit of
humanity, with the knowledge that they have the freedom

{26*1

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

of unlimited resources at their command. It is through John D.
Rockefeller that Carrel and Flexner can bend over their
microscopes with free minds unburdened by material worries.
Explorers are digging in the tropics and braving the polar
seas, architects are designing new and better houses for the
poor, college professors are provided with opportunities
to make original researches, and social and religious move
ments are aided. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is working in behalf
of his father in these and countless more such activities.

The younger Rockefeller spends part of each day conduct
ing his affairs in a large room wainscoted in dark oak, with
windows that overlook the harbor. There is a large flat-topped
desk carved to match the woodwork at one end, and around
it stand a number of chairs upholstered in a bright vermilion
leather. Behind the desk Mr. Rockefeller was seated one
afternoon. It was a dull day and the gray light from the
windows was augmented by an electric globe above; its rays,
falling on his head and the red chairs, brought them into
strong relief against the dark background.

It is not difficult to interview Mr. Rockefeller. He speaks
freely on almost any subject and seems to feel that by reason
of the position he holds in administering his father s fortune
he owes a certain obligation to the public and should be more
than willing to discharge it,

I mentioned the bust of his father and asked him whether
he liked it.

"Yes," he said, "I like it; it is all good, except the two
wrinkles above the nose. These convey to me a certain expres
sion of fear, and that is one emotion that I am certain my
father has never experienced. Perhaps I am wrong when I
say fear. Probably it is apprehension, but that, too, is entirely

f 267}

foreign to his nature. If at any time he has had that feeling it
was so fleeting that it is not a characteristic trait.

"In all my life, however, 1 have seen only two representa
tions of any one whom I have intimately known that I consider
faultless, and those are the two portraits of my father by Sar
gent. I was looking at one of them the other day. Examining
it I could see in it the man I know. There was he to whom I
had instinctively turned as a child for food and clothing and
shelter and then for companionship. He responded and became
my pal and from the outset had my confidence and friendship.

"I could see in that picture the friend who was never so
occupied with his own business or pleasure that he had no
time for my interests. On the canvas is my father as I know
him, who, in all the years of my close association with him
from earliest childhood, never told me what to do or what not
to do. Sargent has shown in that painting why no influence in
my life has been as powerful as his silent influence."

As Mr. Rockefeller sat there in his chair his hand toyed
with a Phi Beta Kappa key that hung from his watch chain.
I mentioned it and asked him whether he felt that a college
education was needed nowadays for success in business.

"That depends largely on the individual, 5 he answered.
"I do not believe in forcing any boy or girl to go to college.
As it is, our colleges are overcrowded by too many young people
who are there only for a good time, and that is not why colleges
are established.

"The Standard Oil Company has a special department
for the training of foreign representatives and one of the
requisites for admission into that training school is a college
education. With such an education must go something more
than ability, persistence, industry, and thrift; for, while all

I 268 I

these are necessary for success in business, the real foundation
is character* That is essential and indispensable.

"But do not confuse reputation with character. Reputation
is what people think we are; character is what we really are.
Now, by character I mean several things; the first is integrity;
the second is obedience to the law, even when we do not feel
the entire justice of that law; a third requisite is clean living,
and by clean living I mean irrespective of the changing point
of view in modern times. Way down within us we know what
are the things that make us physically fit, mentally vigorous,
and spiritually sensitive. Last, a vital component of character,
I should say, is singleness of purpose. No man can serve two
masters/ Upon singleness of purpose one s value to an employer
largely depends.

"Those are the fundamental qualities underlying character,
and to my mind none of them can be ignored if any continued
success in business is looked for. Money is sometimes made
by trickery and sharp practice, but successful business must
be established on something more firm.

"As I have said in a speech: * Corporations and individuals
who set themselves up as superior to law are bound to be
condemned eventually in the court of public opinion, so that
even the most worldly-minded is bound to ask himself whether
it pays, and to admit that no business, any more than any
individual, can be successful and at the same time not be
law-abiding.

" While it is natural that every ambitious and self-respect
ing citizen should want to make a living, on the other hand it is
well to remember, in this money-mad age, that the real pur
pose of our existence, after all, is not to make a living, but to
make a life a worthy, well-rounded, and useful life."

I 2691

Mr. Rockefeller had mentioned "this money-mad age."
I asked him whether the present social conditions did not make
it difficult for a man to live a worthy, well-rounded, and useful
life and at the same time make a living.

"Men do not live merely to work; they live also to play, to
mix with their fellow-men; to love, and to worship/ 5 he
replied. "To the extent that a man is free to realize the
highest and best self, just to that extent is our social organiza
tion a success.

"It is only natural that evils have developed as a result of
the increasing complexities in industrial conditions, but with
these complexities have come new devices of progress. We
cannot give up the corporation and industry on a large scale,
nor can we give up the organization of labor; human progress
depends too much upon them.

"Present conditions are not by any means perfect, but we
shall get nowhere by going around and saying that the world
is ever to be doomed to a warfare between labor and capital.

"Human nature is the same as it was years ago; there are
the same cravings, the same tendencies toward sympathy
when it has knowledge, and toward prejudices when it does
not understand. In large part the difficulties that exist in our
social state are due to nothing but misunderstanding.

"There is much talk of the opposing forces of labor and
capital. To my mind they are essentially the same human
beings imbued with the same weaknesses, the same cravings,
and the same aspirations.

"I do not feel that I am foolishly optimistic when I say
that an age which can send moving pictures across the Atlantic
through the ether will devise some means of permitting men
really to see their fellow-men, to penetrate, as it were, the
I 2701

barriers that have grown up in our machine-burdened civiliza
tion.

"Of course I do not feel that scientific methods alone can
solve our problems. There is need for spiritual assistance from
a church that will promote applied, not theoretical, religion, a
church with a sympathetic interest in all of the great problems
of human life, in the social and moral problems, those of
industry and business, the civic and educational problems; in
all such as touch the life of man.

"For such a church to have real influence, denominational
emphasis must be set aside. In large cities there must be
conveniently located religious centers, strongly supported,
and inspiring their members to participation in all community
affairs. In smaller places, instead of half a dozen dying
churches, competing with each other, there should be one
or two churches uniting in the spiritual life of the town;
this would mean economy in plant, in money, in service, and
in leadership."

Several people were waiting to see Mr. Rockefeller; it
was time for me to go, but before I left him there was one
more question to be asked,

"Which is more difficult, making money, or spending it?"

He rose and smiled.

"Spending it," he answered. "Of course, I have never made
any, but I find it very difficult to spend properly. I have no end
of advice given me by people who are not directly concerned;
but the very people who think it is so easy before they have the
spending of it in charge are the ones most puzzled if they have
an opportunity to show their ability to distribute it wisely.

"As for charity," Mr. Rockefeller concluded, "it is injur
ious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it."

H 2711

XXX

ONE of the greatest of the philanthropic enterprises he and
his father have sponsored is the Rockefeller Institute
for Medical Research which in the thirty years that it
has existed has spent over forty million dollars in the service
of health.

The head of that Institute is Dr. William Henry Welch.
Recognized though he is by his fellow-workers. Dr. Welch is not
so well known to the general public as are many other physi
cians. The reason for this is not hard to understand when one
meets this short, square-set, energetic man who is now past
eighty years old. Intensely interested in the welfare of human
ity, he has been content to help without seeking applause,
In the laboratory and in the classroom he has scored his
triumphs and he has sought neither publicity nor gratitude.
Public recognition or notice has not meant as much to him as
has personal satisfaction in a job well done. He is thorough
rather than spectacular, and the painstaking searching for
some hidden element of truth never wins the acclaim that is
accorded a lesser but more sensational endeavor.

Americans may be looked down upon by Europeans as a
money-getting people with no respect for intellectual greatness,
yet when I asked the taxi driver at the station in Baltimore
to take me to the Welch Library, it was with an awed voice
that he asked me whether I was going to call upon a the
doctor himself." It was the same tone that another driver

{272}

William H Welch

had used in Berlin when I told him to go to 6 (I think it was)
Haberlandstrasse. This man had inquired, with the same
mixture of awe and respect and local pride, whether I was
calling on Professor Einstein.

Baltimore still retains much of its ante-bellum atmosphere;
about it still cling the memories of the days when "patriotic
gore" flecked its streets. Its old red brick houses with their
white marble window trimmings and doorsteps look wonder
fully like the backgrounds of some of Howard Pyle s Civil War
drawings. It would be no surprise to see some crinoline-skirted
belle with a little parasol on her arm emerge from one of them.
There is a quietness about the city that is reminiscent of old
world towns, and an air that is more conducive to study than
one finds in most of our other cities.

Into these surroundings Dr. Welch fits remarkably well,
for, in spite of years of study in the principal universities of
Europe, he has managed to retain that old-fashioned attribute
of neighborliness. In manner he belongs to the period when
the people had family doctors who kept their instruments in
back parlor closets, and who were friends as well as physicians;
who, before they had prescribed anything, had instilled such
a feeling of confidence that the patient began to notice an
improvement; who did not hesitate to stop at the drug store
to make sure the medicine would be sent in a hurry.

I caught my first glimpse of him as I got out of the taxi in
front of the huge white building that bears his name and which
is a fitting tribute to the man who since 1884 has been one of the
leading figures in the medical school of Johns Hopkins Uni
versity* Up the hill was trudging a small figure, hands clasped
behind his back, with vigor and determination in his step
that belied his fourscore years.

12751

Dr. Welch carries his head to one side, giving him an
inquiring look which is heightened by the keenness and alert
ness of his light blue eyes. His forehead is high, his jaws full
and square, and he wears a sparse mustache and beard.
Recognizing me by the portfolio that I carried, he led me up
the broad flight of marble steps in the hall, past a bronze bust
of himself, into his private office. He seated himself at his
desk and took out of the drawer a huge cigar, though an
intimate friend had told me that he had been ordered by a
physician to stop smoking forty years ago. Into that room he
seemed to have brought back with him from his numberless
trips to Germany, where he studied, an air of "gemiitlichkeit"
that is so characteristic of the German professor. Born in
Connecticut, there is no trace of the New Englander about him,
and although he went to Yale and to the College of Physicians
and Surgeons in New York, Strassburg and Leipzig and
Breslau have apparently left more impress upon him than
New Haven.

This does not imply that he seems at all foreign. He is
distinctly American, but with his native Americanism is a
cosmopolitanism that does not recognize boundaries. More
over, in talking with him one immediately sees a broadness
of vision and a breadth of interests that are sadly lacking in
many younger men who have attained prominence in his or
in other professions. This age of highly developed specialization
does not make for general culture; time is too precious for
young physicians to give thought to other subjects. With Dr.
Welch it has been different. With a career which began as an
instructor in Bellevue Medical College fifty-two years ago
and which has embraced not only the founding but also the
deanship of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, as well as a

I 276 I

professorship of pathology and a directorship of its School
of Hygiene and Public Health, he has managed to combine
other interests.

His college work did not interfere with his being president
of the Maryland State Board of Health for a quarter of a
century, nor has it prevented him from giving his advice to
any number of public committees. Nor has his own profession
so dulled his artistic sensibilities as to close his eyes to either
the beauties of nature or the appeal of art; they have not been
so glued to a microscope as to make him blind to the charms
of a tree or a landscape. In fact it was with difficulty that I
succeeded in getting him to talk about medicine at all, so
interested was he in Sargent s method of painting a portrait,
for with Drs. Osier, Kelly, and Halstead he is one of the sub
jects in that masterpiece by Sargent, "The Four Doctors/ 5

At last, however, he began. He leaned back in his swivel
chair, his head cocked to one side; mentally and physically as
alert as a man forty years his junior, he recounted the changes
that had taken place since that autumn of 1871 when, after
a year of teaching Latin and Greek in a school in Norwich,
New York, he matriculated in a medical school.

"I was graduated in 1874," he said, "and after a year
and a half at Bellevue Hospital as an interne I went abroad
t6 complete my studies.

"At that time, you must remember, the germ theory as
the cause of disease was hardly known. The entire history of
medicine changed when that theory was established.

"Leaving out of account superstitious views, rational medi
cine during antiquity placed small importance upon contagion
as compared with miasm, conveyed through the atmosphere,
to account for the origin and spread of endemic and epidemic

1277}

diseases. True, the Mosaic sanitary code and certain lay
writers stressed contagions, but with Hippocrates and Galen
and the other great doctors of those early times emphasis
was laid on miasm.

"In all the years that elapsed up to the time that 1 was a
student, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of
this doctrine in the history of preventive and curative medicine.
Indeed, it has survived up to our own time and has been dis
placed from its dominant position only by knowledge of the
living agents of infection.

"For while contagion at last was recognized, its recognition
occurred before the reason was known. As long ago as the six
teenth century an Italian physician did everything but dis
cover that diseases were caused by living organisms. Two
centuries later Jenner practiced vaccination and then came
Pasteur, who was delving into the mysteries of bacteria and
the processes of fermentation and putrefaction when I went to
Europe. Lister immortalized his own name by applying the
Frenchman s discoveries to the prevention of accidental,
surgical infections even before the actual agents of these
infections had been recognized."

Dr. Welch relighted his heavy black cigar and continued:

"You see I go back pretty far. Of course, I am not a con
temporary of Hippocrates, nor did I have a speaking acquaint
ance with Galen or Francastorius, but as we look back at it
now it is surprising to think of the advances in medicine
since I was a student.

"The truth is that medical and sanitary science was
groping in the dark before the discovery that microorganisms
were the cause of infection. At last, however, the light came
from the torch kindled by Pasteur. For a quarter of a century
{278J

he had been laying the foundations of modern bacteriology,
but he did not actually attack the problems of human infection
until about the time when Koch, under whom I was studying,
entered the field and introduced those technical methods
which led, in that golden decade in the eighties, to that
marvelous series of discoveries of the parasitic microorganisms
causing cholera, tuberculosis, puerperal fever, typhoid, diph
theria, pneumonia, and other infectious diseases.

"The mauve decade, in medicine, was marked by the
introduction of vaccine, serum therapy, and prophylaxis,
and the exploration of the highly important domain of insect-
borne diseases. The end of the last century was crowned by
the discoveries of Walter Reed and the conquest of yellow
fever.

"So you can see what has happened since I first took
the Hippocratic vow. Bacteriology, by revealing the micro
organisms concerned in those diseases which are of the greatest
racial and social importance to mankind, and by providing
methods for the study of their characters and behavior,
transformed public health from a blundering empirical set
of doctrines and practice to a science, and laid secure founda
tions for its further development.

"Now, 55 he said, "that I have bored you with a history
of the development of medicine and hygiene, come down
stairs and I ll let you feast on one of Sargent s great master
pieces."

Downstairs trotted this little man eighty years young and,
opening the door of a great room, with pride he pointed to the
painting. He told me that Sargent had painted his head in
one sitting, but that he had any number for one of the hands.
He described how one day Sargent had walked up and down

|279i

the room waving his arm and saying to himself, "This is no
picture. How can I make it a picture? 5 And then came the
idea of introducing a globe, and he asked the four doctors
whether there would be an objection to that.

For a long time he told me anecdotes, and I felt that In a
way he was prouder of having posed for Sargent than of being
the eminent physician that he is. Then we returned to his
study. On the way upstairs he stopped to show me a new
statue, an antique figure of Esculapius that had just been
presented to the library, and he spoke of its position in relation
to the light, and the color of the marble slab that formed a
background. He was interested in it, not only because it was a
representation of the god of medicine, but because it was
a work of art.

When we returned I suggested that he was a living proof of
the falsity of the statement of his great colleague, Dr. Osier,
that a man did nothing after forty.

"He did not mean that," he replied. "He was misquoted.
What he meant was that every man had in him all that he
would do by the time he was forty, though he might develop
after that time. In other words, success might come to a man
later, but that that success would be founded upon ideas which
he had before he reached that age.

"However, a man cannot keep on forever. I resigned four
years ago from the directorship of the School of Hygiene and
Public Health. Then they made me professor of History
of Medicine and I had to start this museum, so, in 1927, I
went abroad again to study a similar institute in Leipzig and
to buy books for the library.

"But no general rules can be laid down about individuals.
I caught myself once addressing a group of young doctors
f280

and telling them that they should maintain a spirit of coopera
tion, and should allow nothing to divert them from their
professional and scientific work. I found myself saying Resist
the call to give general addresses, especially at a distance
from home, to serve on committees, to assume time-consuming
administrative duties, and to show visitors around laboratories,
clinics, and buildings. And these are the things I have done
all my life."

Reverting to the subject of the change in medicine since
he entered the profession, "I asked him whether he thought the
day of the general practitioner was over.

"Many changes have taken place/ he replied. "Medicine
is now as much preventive as curative. The hospital, a place
that was once dreaded as a last refuge for the sick, is now
looked upon as almost a necessity by those only slightly
ill.

"But there is one thought that makes me look back with
gratitude and love to the old-fashioned doctor. He treated
people; the doctor of to-day treats a disease. The old family
doctor, though he had a long beard where germs abounded,
and even a spotty vest, knew his patient and in many cases
the patient s family and his physical peculiarities. He did
not have to jot down the antecedents or the history of a case
on a card; he had it in his head and in his heart.

"If medicine were an exact science I would say: Yes, the
family doctor has outlived his generation. But it is not.
There is something to mental healing, and the ounce of
confidence which he instills often proves to be a pound of
cure."

When I went downstairs he again came with me, and
though the day was icy, without hat or overcoat he stood

| 2811

outside the door. I asked him to go in, for fear he might catch
cold.

"Bother," he said, "I never catch cold."

Then he showed me where to get a taxi. As I entered it, I
looked back. There he stood in the sunlight, a very small
figure in front of the great monument which a grateful college
has erected in his honor for the furtherance of his ideas.

f 2821

XXXI

I HAD gone to Baltimore to see Dr. Welch, and from Balti
more I took the train for Washington, My work brings
strange contrasts. Leaving Dr. Welch, whose life has
been spent in saving lives and preserving health, I was going
to the Capitol to see the Commander-in-Chief of the American
Expeditionary Force.

I first met General Pershing in Paris, a Paris that was
being shelled in the daytime by Big Bertha, thirty miles
away, and bombed during the night by German planes.
It was a sad and despondent Paris to which he had come, a
confused and frightened city, where not only terrified and
pale-faced children, but grown men and women rushed to
safety when the sirens with melancholy wails warned of
another attack from the skies.

His house was on the Left Bank, on the Rue des Varennes.
It was large and furnished in rococo style, and I shall never
forget my first glimpse of him as he came down the carved
marble steps. The fat modeled cherubs, and the gilded wreaths
with flamboyant bows of carved ribbons, the tapestry hangings
and the flowered rugs, all seemed trivial and almost ludicrous
in comparison with the ragged figure in khaki, which breathed
business-like efficiency. There was a certain grimness about him,
a determination of purpose, but withal a feeling of optimism
and sincerity that made an impression which the years since
have not dimmed.

1283]

Time has not changed him much. There is the same fire
in his eyes, the same wrinkles of concentration above the
nose. The mouth perhaps is a little more set, and the clefts on
each side perhaps a little deeper.

His manner is always cordial but reserved. He is a quiet
man, not given to the flare of war. Above all else he Is an
executive, the army is his working force, and like all working
forces it must of necessity be kept fit.

No man ever headed our troops who looked more the part
than he. Tall, erect, square-chinned and shouldered, he is the
personification of all that a commanding officer should be.
But there is a tenderness about his manner, almost a shyness,
that, despite his impressive appearance, does not detract from
the feeling of authority which he inspires.

There is nothing military in his present office except a
bronze bust of himself in uniform and a portrait of a Revolu
tionary general, and as he sat before his desk in a striped suit
he might have been the head of some great business.

The General is interested in art, he realizes its difficulties,
and he knew that the light was so bad that it would be next to
impossible to draw him where he sat, so he moved to a large
chair beside the window. It was a big, heavy chair intended for
lounging, but that meant nothing to him. He is one of those
people who never lolls. Sitting absolutely erect, the sharp
light from the high window throwing dark shadows under his
brows, he recalled the first time that I had done his portrait.
It was in March, 1918.

"At that time/ he said, "we had but three hundred thou
sand men in France. My early cables had asked for one million
men by that spring, to be further increased to three million.
At my first conference with the Allied commanders it was
{28*1

John J. Pershing

decided that a purely defensive attitude should be assumed
on all secondary fronts, and that all surplus troops should be
sent to the Western Front, which it was believed could be held
until our forces should arrive in sufficient numbers.

"The prospects were not encouraging. All the expected
shipments of men, animals, and supplies had fallen short
and all construction of storehouses and railways was behind
what we had hoped for.

" Secretary Baker arrived in France during that month and
he and I went to the headquarters of the French army.

"On the twenty-first the great German drive began against
the British right, penetrating thirty-five miles to the vicinity
of Amiens. Plans for an Allied reserve had failed, and the
French could ill afford to send many men from their own
feeble front to check the enemy s advance.

"That was when decisive action was taken by the Allies.
A commander-In-chief of all the Allied forces was appointed,
the British came forward with tonnage that carried across
over a million men in addition to the million sent by our own
shipping, and all entered the race to reinforce the Allies before
the Central Powers could force a decision.

"You remember what followed, the German attack in
May which carried their line forward thirty miles, its progress
suddenly stopped by two fresh American Divisions thrown
in at Chateau Thierry and in that vicinity.

"The Prime Ministers cabled President Wilson that there
was grave danger of losing the war unless the Allied inferiority
in numbers could at once be remedied/

He was living those days over again. Slowly and as if he
were weighing his words he recounted how by July we had
one million men in France, and how he had urged that our

f 2871

best troops be permitted to attack the CMteau Thierry
salient.

"On the fifteenth of July the Germans attempted to
advance further at this point, and three days later the Ameri
cans and French launched a counter attack which drove the
enemy behind the Aisne.

"This was the turning point of the war; from then on the
initiative was with the Allies. But ultimate success required a
new striking force and the moment was opportune for the
formation of an independent American Army.

"After a year of the utmost insistence by the Allies that
our soldiers should fill up their depleted ranks, at last in
August we were able to organize an American Army, and our
units were assembled to fight under our own flag."

He continued and told how in September our Army over
came the astonished Germans on the St. Mihiel salient. The
American Army had become an accomplished fact and the
enemy had felt its power.

Then came the Argonne offensive and at last the cutting
of the German line of communications at Sedan and the
Armistice.

"Yes," he said, "twelve years have passed, but I can still
see our men in memory as they move forward in battle, eager,
resolute, courageous. They did not count the cost, but each
one thought only of his task."

He looked at me, and perhaps I imagined that there was a
watery film over his eyes.

"If ever men were unselfish, if ever any died that others
might honorably live, if ever war was pursued that peace
might reign, it was during that time of untold sorrow when
France was a modern Calvary.

f 288 I

"Coming from patriotic homes, those men were filled with
a deep sense of responsibility, and they proved that a pacific
spirit and a sense of justice had not weakened their virility
or their courage.

"They showed that initiative and energy are as essential in
the test of war as in the pursuit of peace. They vied with their
Allied comrades in tenacity and valor.

"No army ever entered a war at a more critical period
and none ever acquitted itself more nobly."

The talk then turned to the present revival of interest in
the war and the publication of a number of war novels.

"Many of them that I have read," he said, "give a true
picture of the horrors and sufferings that take place in the
trenches. But with all its futile desolation the rack and ravage
of war fall most heavily upon women and children. No one,
especially one who has been in close contact with war, ever
wants to see another. It is, however, not the man in the .
trenches alone who is the sufferer in the army. There is some
thing worse than physical pain. There is the dread and awful
responsibility that rests on those in command, and when I
say this I am not minimizing in any way the horrors endured
by the enlisted men. There were times when it was necessary
to send half-trained boys into action, and it is a question
as to who suffered more, the men who led or the boys who
followed.

"Think of the feelings of a man who gives a command which
he knows will make hundreds of widows and orphans. It must
be done and in him is vested the terrible authority which when
exercised, he knows, will not only cut off in the flower of their
manhood untold numbers of his boys, but leave in its wake,
weary, helpless and lonely women and children."

| 289]

The General got up. For a few minutes he walked up and
down his office. The silence could almost be heard. What
thoughts were running through his head were his own. He
sighed and again sat down for me to continue my drawing. I
hesitated to talk.

At last I ventured, "Was it all worth while ? ??
"It is up to the world to-day to make that peace for which
they fought as secure as anything human can be made. The
outcome rests in the hands of those who are now charged with
directing the affairs of nations.

"The broadening facilities of intercommunication, the
exchange of friendly visits, the increasing cooperation among
nations in finance and government, the favorable growth of
public opinion among friends and former foes are all working
together to create an international relationship of common
understanding and good will. 55

"What about the League of Nations ? 55 1 asked.
"That is all right for European nations/* he replied,
"but we were very wise to keep out of it. There are many
questions involved in European politics which do not affect
us and it would be foolish for us to become mixed up in petty
quarrels in which we have no concern.

"The United States showed during the last war that it
did not need either treaties or signed agreements to make it
do what is its moral duty. We recognize our obligations and
we are in a better position to carry them out when we have
nothing to limit our actions. With no secret understandings
with any nation we entered a war to help those countries
which we felt were fighting for the right. Removed from
Europe, so that we can see things in their proper perspec
tive, we shall always be in a position to act in a way that

{290}

will be of most assistance to the progress of the world at
large.

"I cannot state too strongly how I feel In this matter, and
how much better it is for this country, not for itself alone, but
also for the future of peace throughout the world, to have
refused to become a member of the League."

I suggested that European ideas had changed since the
war.

"All ideas have changed," he replied, "ideas of war and
ideas of peace. The fallacious notion that war is an essential
element of the national policy of government, and the erro
neous belief that nations become great through aggressive
undertakings carried on regardless of right and justice
have always existed. Against such views the reasonings of
cabinets and the creations of ententes have shown themselves
powerless. The war showed that the expansion of any
modern civilized nation at the expense of another cannot
be permanent.

"In the future, nations that attempt to achieve greatness
through unjust aggression are certainly going to incur the
active hostility of all others. It would incur our hostility
just as much though we do not belong to the League of Nations,
as if we did."

"And what is the prospect of a lasting peace?" I asked. " :

"In order to make a lasting peace still more probable the
leading civilized powers have agreed among themselves to
the general principle of the elimination of war as an avowed
instrument of national policy. This agreement need not
interfere with the necessities for reasonable armament. For
there may occur here and there armed rebellion against con
stituted authority, or crimes against international obligations.

f 2911

"With the cultivation of friendly relations and good will
toward one another, any differences between nations that
may arise which cannot be readily adjusted will naturally be
settled by arbitration,

"On the other hand, if, despite this agreement, some
nations continue to accept war as essential to national policy,
we must be prepared to see the most advanced peoples engag
ing in periodic wars of destruction in which future genera
tions will suffer the same hideous loss of human life that we
have suffered."

On the wall of General Pershing s present office hangs a
portrait of Lincoln. He turned to it.

"Do you remember his words?" he asked. " The better
angels of our natures might be touched by the mystic chord
of memory extending from every battlefield and every grave to
every living heart and every hearth stone/

"This prayer we have lived to see fulfilled here in our
country. The bitterness and hatred that incited brothers to
take up arms against each other has vanished.

"What we have accomplished in America between the
different sections of the country is possible to exist between
nations.

"If the people of the countries in the late war sincerely
wish for peace, and to my mind there is not the slightest doubt
of that, then there is hope that with old enmities already
almost forgotten our former enemies will live in peaceful
and profitable relationship."

f 2921

XXXII

VERY different in make-up and temperament from the head
of the American Army in France is another general who
also played an important part in the World War. There is
nothing conventional about Charles G. Dawes. From the time
he first took office as vice president and startled the country,
and incidentally the Senate, by attempting to dust the cobwebs
of senatorial procedure, down to the present day, no one has
known what he would do next. Unawed by ceremony, he
has seen fit to speak when he has felt the occasion demanded
plain words. That is his nature. The result is that the country
did not forget that it had a vice president nor what his name
was. Dawes s personality rose above the office.

The sandy-haired, rosy-cheeked, kindly, fighting man
could not help doing things. His vitality and nervous energy
are all-pervasive. A student of history, he laughs at tradition;
a philosopher by nature, he turns to material things; a
musician by inclination, he becomes a leading financier; a
conservative in business, he does not hesitate to propose
radical changes.

He posed for me while he was vice president. His room
adjoined the Senate Chamber. Its walls and ceilings were
decorated with scrolls and shields. In the center was a large
mahogany desk above which hung a huge crystal chandelier.
Facing the entrance was a gilt-framed mirror above a white
marble fireplace, while to the right hung a portrait of Washing-

I 293

ton painted by Rembrandt Peale, and to the left a huge
closet from which, so the story goes, Andrew Johnson took his
spiritual support before he was sworn in as president. It
was in this room that Henry Wilson, Vice President under
Grant, died. Here General Dawes, seated behind his desk,
his underslung pipe in his mouth, posed and talked as I drew
his portrait.

General Dawes likes to philosophize on life in general. To
him people and their actions form a panorama from which he
formulates theories. Intensely human and practical, he studies
the lights and shades of human history. Archaeology interests
him and he reads much ancient history, but his researches
into the past are translated into the present. Extremely
characteristic of him is the fact that during the war, while he
was in charge of purchasing the army s supplies, he spent
much of his little spare time in the Louvre among Greek and
Roman sculpture. Here was a Chicago banker, who had
introduced business methods into an army, devoting his
leisure to the study of ancient art.

It is difficult to get him to speak about himself. When I
asked him to, he laughed and said he would not. "It reminds
me too much of when I was young," he said, "and some little
one-horse journal would come around and ask for your life s
history and incidentally tell you that it was going to cost
you thirty-five dollars to have it published."

It is useless to try to direct General Dawes s talk into
preconceived channels. He speaks so quickly that at times
it is hard to catch all he says, and he thinks so quickly that
the association of ideas is not always evident, with the result
that he appears to jump from one subject to another with no
apparent connection.

I 2941

./

Charles G. Dames

In the same way that I found no opportunity to ask him
certain questions I had in mind, his drawing turned out as he
wanted, not as I had planned. He has been photographed so
often with his pipe that I had determined not to introduce it
in my drawing. But that pipe never left his mouth for more
than a minute or two the entire time I was with him.

The subject of the World War was brought up. I asked
him to tell me something of his work in it.

"What do I know about the war?" he said. "Ask the boys
who were in the trenches. My job over there was a prosaic
piece of business. General Pershing made me the head of a
board of ten officers representing all the purchasing depart
ments of our army and also the General Purchasing Agent in
Europe for the A. E. F. That, of course, gave me unlimited
discretion and authority to devise a system of coordination of
purchases and while much depended upon this work it was,
after all, a business proposition pure and simple. This purchas
ing of supplies in Europe worked out to be a much bigger thing
than we expected, for two-thirds of the entire tonnage consumed
by our army was obtained in Europe.

"But the things that I did in the war are not the things
I remember best. In all the reviews, celebrations, and gather
ings that I have attended since the war the picture in my
mind has been what went on to make them possible, and I have
wondered whether the millions buried in the wheat fields of
northern France knew of them.

"Have you ever thought what is behind those boys who
stand lonely in those front-line trenches, waiting for they
don t know what? There they stand, the new frontiers of a
country. Behind them, pushing irresistibly forward, are all
the forces that a civilized country can muster its ingenuity,

I 2971

its wealth, its resources, its man power. Think of those boys
out in the observation posts, miles from home, of those that
fall so that the overpowering force behind can advance,"
"And was it all worth it?" I asked.

"Now this Is getting too much like an interview, 5 he
replied, "I have been reading Hadley s History of the Roman
Empire/ After Csesar s death, and with it the end of the great
wars, there were wrangling and uncertainty for six years.
Finally Octavius became Augustus and the reaction of human
ity after one hundred years of terrible warfare throughout
the civilized world brought a peace unbroken for two hundred
years. That gives us hopes, to say the least.

"But, irrespective of all other results, those boys who were
in the army did learn one thing at least, and that is respect for
authority. Now I for one believe that authority can best be
maintained when fortified by reason. The officer must com
mand the respect of his men, he must be obeyed by them;
but in my opinion the officer who at times explains what
seems to be an unreasonable order is more apt to be obeyed
blindly when the occasion demands than he who treats his
men like unreasoning automatons. And in this way authority
commands respect.

"Of course it is essential that the authority of officers be
preserved. That s the reason they have set rules for the
method of communication between privates and the higher
officers. For, believe me, if there were too much rubbing of
elbows between officers and men it would soon be discovered
that there were many captains who should be in shirt sleeves
and many men in shirt sleeves who should be captains.

"When Napoleon sent his brother Joseph to Italy in com
mand of an army, he said, Hold no council of war/ He knew

298

his brother s shortcomings. Mediocrity requires aloofness to
preserve its dignity. Genius alone can afford to mingle. In
fact, it loves to mix in order to demonstrate its superiority.
In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, it doesn t
like to hide its light under a bushel. The man who paints or
writes superlatively does not destroy his efforts after he has
accomplished them. Say what you want, he loves public
appreciation.

"This does not mean that geniuses alone want approbation,
or that they are unique in desiring to show their abilities.
, The superbly ignorant resemble them in this.

"And," he continued, with a twinkle in his eyes and a look,
as I thought, in the direction of the Senate Chamber, "if
combined with ignorance there is sufficient impudence, success
sometimes results. In fact, a book on the success of ignorance
could be filled with notable examples. Remember that if the
empty vessel makes the greatest sound, then the empty vessel
is bound to be heard.

"Together with ignorance goes desire for ceremony which,
while more or less necessary in army life, is not so requisite in
times of peace. Of course the value of ceremony as a social power
is unquestioned. It cannot be dispensed with without destroying
one of the useful agencies of governmental and social discipline.
At times the individual must use ceremony as the best means to
noble ends. But to my way of thinking it is well to beware of too
much ceremony, whether it is directed toward the submerging
or toward the exploitation of the individual.

"Here I sit in an office that has the halo of tradition.
Outside are officers and what not. A certain amount of scenery
and stage setting are essential to give the office not me,
mind you its proper importance. My title is Mr. Vice Presi-

f 299]}

dent, but do you suppose it makes any difference to me
personally how I am addressed ? To my friends I am Charlie,
but to others, whether I am General or Mr. Vice President is
unimportant. After all, a title is a handle. If I don t count
without that title, I am not a bit better with it."

While he was talking, softly from another part of the Capi
tol came the strains of a military band; through the open door
were heard Civil War melodies. Later I discovered it was the
ceremony attendant on the return to some of the southern
states of flags captured by State of Maine troops during the
Civil War. General Dawes heard the music.

"Have you noticed," he asked, "the effect of music upon
soldiers? I remember when we first landed in England. We
reached Borden at eleven o clock at night. The men had had
only a sandwich each at noon. It was cold, dark, and rainy.
And then occurred a demonstration of the reviving effect of
music, for there appeared to lead us to camp a British band.
It played American marches and airs as we marched in the
dark and it meant much to all of us that we were welcome,
that we amounted to something.

"The following day London greeted us. We were the first
American troops to pass through the British capital, but I
think that our men were not so uplifted as when we marched
along that lonely road, hungry, at the end of a weary day, to
the tunes of our homeland.

"Aside from the rhythm, the association of ideas with
music plays an important part in its effect. I was at a review
of a Scottish brigade by Marshal Haig. And when the bagpipes
struck up The Campbells Are Coming it was not those
magnificent and battle-worn troops that I saw. It was the
Sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry marching down the

3001

Emmitsburg Road on that second of July in 1863 with my
father at their head, his fife and drum corps playing the same
air; for all my life I had heard that this was the tune they had
played as they advanced at Gettysburg."

Realizing that music had meant much in his life, I asked
General Dawes where and when he had studied it.

"I never studied at all," he replied. "You see, my parents
were afraid I might become a musician, with the result that
they would never allow me to take lessons. And when I say
that I never studied I mean that I never received any instruc
tion in any instrument. I always loved music and what little
I know I taught myself. The flute is the smallest of all instru
ments, so it was the easiest to smuggle into my room, and
then, too, it is not as noisy as most others, so it was the one I
learned to play.

"When I grew up I made a lot of friends among musicians
and for years a number of them came to my house in Chicago
and we had trios, quartets and quintets, in which I often
played a part."

"What about your Melody in A Major ?" I asked.

"When I wrote that, I created for myself no end of trouble,
and it is always bobbing up to confront me. One of the musi
cians who used to come to my house very frequently was
Francis Macmillen, the violinist. I got this tune in my head
and I set it down and he used to play it. I never gave the thing
a name. Some publishers heard him and wrote to me asking
if they might publish it. Like a fool, I said c y es -

"Shortly after this I was walking down State Street and
happened to look into a music shop. Imagine my feelings when
I discovered not only the window filled with copies of it, but
my name plastered on the glass in large letters.

f 3011

"Here was I, presumably a perfectly sane and respectable
banker, turning out tunes. I feared that my friends would
say that if all my notes were as bad as my musical ones, they
were not worth the paper they were written on.

"Later on I went to hear a concert by Kreisler and on
looking through the program what should I discover but that
he had selected it as one of his numbers. Now I am not going
to deny that I was pleased, particularly when afterward I made
inquiries and learned he had picked it out without knowing
who was the author. 59

f 302

XXXIII

rTHAT distant day before General Dawes was consorting
with royalty, one Herbert Hoover was Secretary of Com
merce in President Coolidge s Cabinet. That was when I
first met him. His house was on S. Street, a few doors from
where President Wilson lived and died, and he had asked me to
breakfast with him so we could get to work early on the drawing
which I wanted to do.

I remember distinctly my first glimpse of him. He was
standing with a long stick in his hands beside a pool of goldfish
in the grounds behind his house. Some dead leaves had dropped
into the water and he was trying to get them out. A cool wind
was blowing as he turned to greet me and I particularly noticed
that one lock of smoothed hair had broken loose from the rest
and drooped low over his forehead,

He looked up from underneath his brows, a fairly heavy
man with an almost awkward smile. His handshake is soft,
repressed, and his voice gives evidence of the same restraint.
Punctiliously polite, he is cordial without being effusive. There
is a reticence about him that it is difficult to overcome, a
reserve that appears impossible to penetrate.

His niece was stopping with him at the time and we three
ate together. His manner with her was as detached as with me.
Over the strawberries and the bacon and scrambled eggs the
conversation was impersonal, almost forced. A great police dog
which sat beside him alone broke the formality. Unawed by

I 303 1

conventions, he rested his fore legs on the Secretary s chair
and begged for bacon. The young woman left she was going
to school and on her departure we talked of the younger
generation. It was then that his eyes, ordinarily cold, assumed
a kindlier look. And yet, despite a certain sympathetic interest,
one instinctively felt it was the problem that was absorbing,
rather than people. Rationally he could understand, emotion
ally they were as far away as the dinosaurs.

"The great difficulty in education," he explained, "is how
much to leave to choice and how much to prescribe. As a
member of the Board of Trustees at Leland Stanford I have
often run up against that question. Are our young people
securing at the colleges as well-rounded an education as in the
days when specialization was not the order ?

"Some of our students make a point of picking out easy
courses; others, thinking that their lives will run along certain
lines, specialize in such studies as they believe will aid them.
After they have graduated they change their minds and are
left without the benefits of a general education. More and
more I have noticed that our colleges are turning out specialists
rather than scholars.

"Of course I realize that the old system whereby a
student, no matter what his bent, was compelled to take
certain studies in which he had no interest, and for which
he would have no further use, also had its faults. It is only by
a compromise that the advantages of both systems can be
retained."

We had gone into the living room and there by a window the
future president sat smoking a large black cigar while I made
my drawing. He had shown me a portrait of himself which
his wife liked and which had been painted some years before,
f 304 1

ve i

Herbert Hoover

and he had cautioned me not to make him look like a Mellin s
Food baby in my drawing.

It was in my meeting with him before he became president
that I feel that I got to know Mr. Hoover best, if indeed one
may say that he got to know him at alL For about him is a
curtain of secretiveness that in more or less casual meetings
precludes any deep insight into the man.

Mr. Coolidge has the reputation of being more or less of an
enigma; his silence has been stressed ever since he first entered
public life. Yet that silence is eloquent compared to Mr. Hoover s
speech. There is a ruggedness and spiciness about the New
Englander that lend color to his actions as well as his per
sonality; there is a positiveness even in his most ambiguous
statements that convinces one that he knows his own mind.
Mr. Hoover has none of these assertive traits. He appears to
lack color, and it is this fact which makes it difficult for the
White House correspondents, some of whom have filled the
same post during three or four administrations, to send inter
esting stories concerning him to their papers.

Several drives through the city of Washington with the
then Secretary of Commerce come to mind. On one of them he
was much pleased because Congress had voted him a new
car without question while there had been opposition to
other members of the Cabinet having theirs replaced. At
another time we were speaking of the Mississippi flood which
had just about that time subsided. From the topic of floods
the conversation turned to that of earthquakes and hurricanes.
It was then that he made a remark which has always stuck
in my memory, and which to me revealed the man. I shall
not attempt to give his exact words but the gist of them
was that up to the present, the power of our tall skyscrapers

I 307]

to withstand either a convulsion of the earth or a terrific
windstorm was unknown. And he expressed a keen interest
in what would happen should either of these cataclysms
overwhelm a city. What particularly struck me at the time
was the cold engineering question which he puzzled over; the
other results of such a catastrophe apparently did not concern
him at all.

And yet it was as a humanitarian that Mr. Hoover first
made his reputation. But as one sees him and speaks with
him, as one begins to realize his approach to any question it
becomes more and more evident that he Is above all else an
engineer, and that even when he sat distributing food to the
people of Belgium, he would not permit his feelings to be
touched. He acted as if it were a question involving fuel for
furnaces rather than sustenance for the starving.

This does not mean that he does not feel keenly; it implies
rather that he keeps his feelings in the background, almost as
if he were ashamed of being human. But when it is. remembered
that as a ragged boy he worked his way through school and
college, that his student romance with Lou Henry culminated
in his marriage, it seems certain that but few people know the
real Herbert Hoover.

Before he became president he told me that the only
exercise which he took was standing before the window and
inhaling deeply a number of times. Since he has been in the
White House his daily bouts with the medicine ball have
been added. But the life of a president Is confining, and
before Mr. Hoover entered public office his profession had kept
him much in the open.

Seven o clock has long been his rising hour. It is interesting
to learn that he shaves himself with a safety razor, and a
I 3081

little before eight he comes downstairs, but prefers to walk
rather than use the elevator.

The presidential menu does not vary. It consists of fruit,
bacon and scrambled eggs, and one cup of coffee. Unlike his
predecessor his first meal of the day has not assumed great
importance. In fact, he seems in a hurry to have done with
it in order to have his first cigar, which incidentally is large
and heavy.

Mentioning this cigar again brings Mr. Coolidge to mind.
He invariably clipped the end of his cigar with a knife or a
cutter and carefully adjusted it in a pasteboard and quill
holder. Mr. Hoover squeezes off the end of his with his nails
and puts the cigar itself in his mouth.

By nine o clock each morning he is seated in front of his
mahogany desk in the executive office going over the mail
which requires immediate attention. When he has read this
he begins to dictate his replies. He does this slowly and
evenly. Trained in method, he usually knows exactly what
he is going to say before he says it, and it is not often that he
asks his stenographer to repeat what has been said.

If he is redrafting a paper which has already been typed he
hardly ever looks up -from it, but with a pencil in hand, he
will note the changes on the first draft as he makes them to
his stenographer. Should a question of fact in the matter arise,
instead of noting it for future corroboration, or disproof,
he sends immediately for the person who can supply the correct
information.

At one -o clock he goes to luncheon. While he was Secretary
of Commerce he often ate at his desk where sandwiches and
milk and peanuts, of which he is extremely fond, were the
menu. Since he became president this meal is taken at the

I 309]}

White House and is of a more substantial character and often
guests are present,

He is back again in his office at two and from then until
four he sees people with whom he has appointments. After
that he is again with his secretaries and continues dictation.

He likes to leave his office by six, but this is not always
possible. However, at seven-thirty he dines and when there
are no visitors this meal is served in the small colonial dining
room. He Is neither a fussy nor a large eater, and when he is
particularly rushed he eats most sparingly.

Ten-thirty is his usual retiring time, and only important
matters will keep him up past that hour. It is then that he
goes to his own room to read for a time in bed the latest detec
tive story upon which he can lay his hands.

Despite the tax that has been put upon him Mr. Hoover
looks better now than when he was running for the presidency.
I remember going to see him while he was campaigning and
he was thin and appeared very worried. He posed for me the
first day he was in office and the appreciation of the heavy
responsibilities that he knew were in store for him showed
itself on his face.

At most times he is very serious looking and it would
be difficult to imagine him ever laughing uproariously; that
is not his nature. His humor is distinctly a mental process;
the slightest distortion of a fact would spoil any joke for him.
On the other hand he is shrewd in his observations. On one
occasion he was speaking about the changes that had come
over Washington.

"The so-called Cliff Dwellers," he said, "the old families
who have been here for years, are rapidly dying out. A new
society is taking their place. Now when any man makes a lot

f 3101

of money in a small town, let us say Podunk, he immediately
buys a house in Washington. Through his business interests
he gets a letter of introduction to his Senator and to the
representative of his district. He is invited to semi-public
functions and his wife joins some literary clubs and in a com
paratively short time they are members of the new social
class which is in evidence here."

He did not say this in any spirit of criticism. It was a
simple statement of facts, and yet though he did not mention
it, it was evident that he was amused by the entry of small
town manners in the capital of the country. In a way the
subject seemed one that Sinclair Lewis would delight to
write about. For undoubtedly Babbitt in Washington would
give him another opportunity for a display of fireworks and
would cause as much discussion as when he hurled a bombshell
into that long thoroughfare which wends its way from New
York to San Francisco and passes through Gopher Prairie,
Zenith and hundreds of other towns of similar character a
bombshell which rattled the cans on the grocery store shelves
of Ole Jensen and the windows in the emporium known as
the Bon Ton Store.

XXXIV

IT WAS years and years ago that I first met Sinclair Lewis.
At a typical Greenwich Village party his brilliant con
versation made such a deep impression that although
there were a number of other guests I remember none of them
except him.

Sophisticate and satirist though he is, Sauk Center, Minne
sota, where he was born, has left an indelible mark upon him.
Tall, red-faced, red-haired, with very blue eyes, in all his
awkward movements and almost jackknife-like poses, he
reminds one of a freckle-faced boy with a broad grin in a Briggs
cartoon.

It was the day after he was notified of the award of the
Nobel Prize that I made my sketch of him.

As he leaned back on a sofa, or nervously jumped up and
walked around the room, shortly after he had heard of the
award, protesting that prizes meant nothing, that he was
just a writing man, that he wrote as well last year as he did
now, I could not help feeling that all this was an innate
modesty and shyness a self-depreciation of the country
boy and that away down in the bottom of his heart Babbitt
himself could not have been more pleased had he been voted
the best citizen of Zenith.

But the personalities of authors are often the antithesis
of their writings. Mark Twain seemed to be rather acrid and
sour; the sardonic Shaw is sweet and kindly and, indeed,

[312J

Sinclair Lewis

somewhat like a lovable old Santa Clans; and here was Lewis,
who laughs loudly at mankind, decrying the value of prizes, and
at the same time trying to learn Swedish so that he would
be able to make a reply in that language when he received the
award in Stockholm.

Indeed, his entire personality is apparently a mass of con
tradictions. He scorns patriotism and declares that America
is the only country in the world in which he cares to live; and,
while he said this, he showed me his old passport and expressed
his anxiety to get abroad again as soon as possible. He laughs
at sentiment but a great part of his conversation was about
his wife and his son, Mickey. He has made fun of the Babbitts
and, at the same time, he has no use for the ill-kempt superior
souls who sit around bare tables in Greenwich Village discuss
ing art an aversion for which one might find an explanation
in his own Greenwich Village days and his heritage of Sauk
Center morality.

His father was the doctor of the town, which may account
both for Kennicott in "Main Street" and for Arrowsmith.
When he was seven years old he determined to be a writer,
for he had been impressed by the respect and awe with which
the village editor was regarded. When he was fourteen he
wrote his first story, but it was four years later before he
succeeded in selling any of his work. That was when he was
attending Yale, where he wrote poetry and short stories for
the college magazine, and gained a reputation for being a
good and tireless talker.

After three years at New Haven, Lewis left to join that
strange colony which Upton Sinclair founded in New Jersey;
he became the furnaceman of Helicon Hall for every member
of the colony was assigned to some form of menial labor and

I 3151

this job gave him plenty of leisure for writing. It is not hard
to imagine the effect this communistic experiment had upon a
youth from Minnesota whose outstanding experience with a
radical up to that time had been an association with his Sauk
Center tutor, who, though an Episcopalian clergyman, had
had the temerity to preach evolution to a body of Funda
mentalists. When he tired of Helicon Hall Lewis came to
New York and lived in a tenement in the gas house district.

A trip to Panama, and a final year at Yale followed, and
then he became a reporter for an Iowa paper. This job did
not last long, and for a number of years he drifted about,
selling a story here and there, and working as a reporter,
reader, or publicity man in various parts of the country.
Then he became advertising manager of a publishing house.
By this time, he had written three novels, which, although
they had fair success, gave no hint of his later point of view.
Then came "Main Street."

"So you see," he said, as he leaned back in his chair, his
lean legs crossed and his hands clasped behind the back of his
head, "I have had a varied life and the twenty-seven years
that have passed since I sold my first story have been filled
with pretty hard work at a tough game. And a lot of the time
I had to do stuff that I hated."

There is nothing dignified about Lewis. The humor of
most dignity appeals to him too much to permit him to
assume it. Indeed, about him is something of the actor, and
when I asked him what had happened to Main Street in the
last ten years, he immediately became the inhabitant of a
small town boasting of its progress.

"Gosh," he said, "you wouldn t know the place, its so
changed. Remember the mud ? Well it s all paved now, right

f 316 I

out past the city limits. And the trolley cars have gone.
Yes, sir! We had them all ripped up and the most comfortable
buses you ever rode in pass through our city every half hour.

"When you first knew the street half of it was filled with
story-and-a-half wooden buildings. You won t find one of them
left.

"Remember the Minniemashie House? Tall, lean struc
ture, three stories of yellow wood. They covered it with stucco
and made a regular hotel out of it. Tiled linoleum on the
floor and not a brass cuspidor in sight. And that dirty old
dining room with the soiled tablecloths and the catsup bottles ?
It has been turned into part cafeteria and part dining room
with glass-covered tables.

"Dave Dyer sold his drug store to a chain outfit, and I ll bet
you neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis can boast of a better place.

"Of course, the saloons are gone. They were a disgrace to
any self-respecting village. Oh, yes, we have got a couple of
speakeasies in their place, but they are so dirty that no decent
citizen likes to be seen in them. We have our stuff in our homes
or else in the lockers at the golf club.

"I don t think we had a golf course when you were there.
We laid that out shortly after prohibition came in. But there
wasn t anything else for us to do when they closed the bar at
the Minniemashie House. By the way, the name of it was
changed to the Harding, but that only lasted for a year or two;
now it s called Gopher Mansion. They decided it was a little
risky naming it again after a president.

"And then, there s the Bon Ton Store. Hay dock and
Simons owned it ten years ago. Well, do you remember the
little errand boy, Ikey? He bought them out and enlarged it
so that you wouldn t know it."

13171

And he continued, jokingly describing the architectural
changes that had occurred in the decade that had passed since
he immortalized the principal highway of any small town.

"But speaking seriously, 5 he continued, "even if these
changes have taken place, Main Street is still Main Street and
will always be so. For essentially and basically Main Street
is also Broadway- Indeed, I am beginning to wonder if it Is not
also Unter den Linden and the Avenue de FOpera and Regent
Street.

"Of course, Main Street is progressing, but so are Broad
way and all of the other streets in the world, and there have
been on it just as many changes, comparatively speaking, as
there have been on Regent Street.

"Though the people of the world vary in certain character
istics, essentially they are the same. The only difference be
tween the Babbitts in this country and those in France is that
over there they wear gray silk gloves. I have seen them and
heard them in England too. Shell spectacles are not a part of
their make-up, but in many an English town I have met good,
hearty British Babbitts whose conversation, apart from its
pronunciation, might be duplicated in any Kiwanis luncheon in
Iowa or gathering of Lions in Kansas. 5 *

"Has Babbitt changed much also?"

"Of course, he has. Do you think that he has any sympathy
with Vergil Gunch who wastes his time reading detective
stories? No, sir, not he. Of course, business had been going
along well until the slump and he has some definite ideas
on how that could have been avoided but the trouble has
been right along that he has only been able to give about two
or three hours of his time to mental diversion. But there s
nothing he likes better than to get into an easy chair, with

318

his slippers on, and after he has lighted his cigar with his
patent lighter which he now fills with jelly instead of fluid
to get deep into a good biography. And of course he keeps the
radio going all the time. But he keeps it down low unless
there s something good on.

"But you know," he continued, "despite all the changes,
there was something present ten or fifteen years ago that is
lacking to-day. There was a certain pioneer spirit in those
days. Of course, as far as churchgoing was concerned they had
narrow ideas. If you did not attend an evangelical church
every Sunday, the opinion was that you ought to be lynched.
On the other hand, there were a certain juice and zest that are
lacking to-day. There s more talk about automobiles and the
radio and what proportion of water to use, but there s less
conversation. People are not interested as much in scandals
or politics or abstractions as they were.

"The old pioneers have gone. They have been replaced by
people who own bathtubs and sedans and limousines, strange
glass-topped porch furniture, even speed boats and country
homes people who are determined that these things shall not
be endangered by the success of radical theories and who are
more interested in them than in mere speculation on the soul
of man.

"This is an age of radio, of the talkies, where religion is
road paving, patriotism the relation of weather to Sunday
morning, when contract is discussed with a sanctified
fervor, and when even the sky is becoming cluttered with
airplanes.

"This is an age of industrialism. But one must recognize
its supremacy to-day or else be submerged. Main Street
recognizes it and so does Babbitt. They have to."

I 319 I

He got up, and strode across the room with his hands In
his pockets.

"But this age will pass just as the others have. People
will come to resent having an entire evening spoiled by the
boom of a dynamic speaker and hearing morons bawl out
idiotic banalities. I have faith that the very passion in the
worship of the Great God Industrialism, together with his
attendant deities, will bring its own reaction. Even Babbitt
progresses, and his grandsons will laugh at his gods much as
he does at the chin whiskers of the Smith Brothers. 5

"Then you have hope for the country?" I asked.

"Hope? I should say I have. It s the greatest country in the
world, and its people have the greatest potentialities."

So, fearing that Mr. Lewis would sing "The Star-Spangled
Banner," I left.

320

XXXV

rwAS some time after I had seen Lewis that in a conver
sation with Gilbert K. Chesterton the subject of Main
Street came up. The ponderous Englishman at once took
issue with the picture as drawn by the vitriolic American.

"When the pioneers of this country started westward/ he
said, "they traveled in covered wagons with closed minds.

"The Puritan is likely to be a fanatic. He believes in the
simplicity of human nature. If there is any defect he thinks he
can find one thing to cure it. He does not realize either the
complexity of the world or the complexity of human nature,

"He suddenly decides that drink is the cause of much
misery and he promptly adopts prohibition as a panacea for
all ills. When by chance, prosperity, as a result of a thousand
and one causes, strikes your land after the adoption of this
evil, he promptly attributes the prosperity to the measure
which he has adopted for the spiritual welfare of mankind.
But when prosperity departs he does not blame it on what
he considered its cause. He promptly goes looking around for
another remedy.

"In other words, he is by nature a professional reformer,
and is constantly looking for ways to improve the world.
When he walks along Main Street he is not willing to accept
what he can see. Behind the attractive grocery stores he goes
rummaging among the packing boxes and crates, finding a
spiritual pleasure in discovering rotten fruit and spoiled

1321}

olives. He is more gratified by finding one potato with an ulcer
than a bushel of them without any. For that is something for
him to reform.

"Indeed," he went on with a chuckle, "I feel that it is that
Puritanic idea of reformation that has played a large part in
Mr. Lewis s writings. He has tried to delve behind the scenes
on Main Street, but all that he has found were ulcers on
potatoes. The real motives, the simple but full lives of these
people have escaped him, at any event he has endeavored to
improve and reform them.

"The antimacassar on the back of a fine old chair has
blinded him to the beauty of the lines of the furniture. In his
way I find him much like the lady who was trying to bring
Ibsen to Main Street, except he is trying to bring Mencken
there. And I am not sure were he to succeed whether the
people would laugh more at Mencken or Mencken at the
people."

The first time I met Chesterton was in London. I had an
appointment to draw him, and instead of going out to his
country home he had suggested that I make the sketch in the
office of G. K/s Weekly. In spite of his detective stories, he
had always seemed to me a survival of the literary man of the
eighteenth century. Reynolds s portrait of Johnson always
substituted itself in my mind s eye for his photograph; and in
his work, in spite of a certain modernity, I could always detect
the guiding hands of Addison and Steele.

I had walked down the Strand from Trafalgar Square. It
is one of the ugliest streets in the world, a battlefield on which
the ghostly forces of Victoria are just beginning to give way
before an army of modernists. In the chemist shops, in the
tobacconists, and behind the red velvet sofas in dingy hotels,
| 3221

Gilbert K. Chesterton

the specters of Victorianism still cluster, but the hands of the
wreckers are fast dislodging them.

Down past Aldwych I strolled, longing for a little bit of
the London of Johnson, or even Dickens, and turned sharp
right into Essex Street. I was looking for No. 20, and came to
a stop before a structure some six stories high, such as any Main
Street over forty years of age might contain.

To find the successor of Dr. Johnson in an office building
was, to say the least, disconcerting, for associations do count,
and to transplant an eighteenth century character into a mid-
Victorian surrounding was difficult. When I did find his office,
I felt as if I had been transported back about a hundred years.

It is a dirty office and very small. An appalling amount of
material is crowded into one small room. Against two walls are
high book shelves filled with papers, while two large walnut
tables covered with what at one time was green oilcloth, are
burdened with files of memoranda. An old letterpress, a
pitcher and basin in the corner, wastebaskets full of pamphlets,
all add their touches- of character, and had Ebenezer Scrooge
walked out from one of the two doors that led to other rooms he
would have been as much a part of the picture as was the fat
boy in a much worn coat who sat at the table opposite the door.

As I entered, he was leaning far over the table, licking
postage stamps. In front of him were thousands of large
envelopes, at his elbow were sheets of stamps. He stopped
his performance to say that Mr. Chesterton had not arrived,
handed me a current number of the publication, and went
back to his task. First he licked a stamp, then he placed it on
an envelope, then he pounded it with his other hand to make
it stick, then another lick, another envelope, and so on, quite
mechanically.

I 3251

How long I sat fascinated I do not know, but I was awak
ened from reverie by heavy footsteps outside, the quick open
ing of the entrance door, and the appearance of a large,
heavy-breathing man, who made everything in the room,
including the fat boy, dwindle into insignificance.

He muttered something about being sorry that he was late
and walked rapidly into his own room, followed by the fat boy,
who quickly returned and ushered me into G. K ? s sanctuary.

The first thing that strikes one about Chesterton is his
abounding good nature. The complexion of a baby, wavy
blond hair, a drooping reddish brown mustache, kindly blue
eyes, all contribute to this impression. He was sitting, as I
entered the room, at the head of another long office table.
Behind him was a tall bookcase filled with many books,
principally paper covered ones, and this room, like the outer
office, presented the same picture of absolute disorder. Papers
were strewn everywhere, the furniture was old and worn, and
Chesterton, sitting there in the midst of this chaos, immedi
ately brought to mind Johnson sitting in much the same kind
of room writing furiously in order to finish "Rasselas" and
thereby be enabled to pay his mother s funeral expenses. The
atmosphere was intensified when, looking through the window,
I caught a glimpse of the old Temple, very little changed in all
these years, and realized that within a stone s throw was
Goldsmith s grave.

"I want to apologize for this office," said Mr. Chesterton,
"it is not much of a place compared to what American publi
cations have in the way of editorial rooms. It must seem very
small and stuffy to you."

But I assured him that it was exactly the kind of place I
had hoped to find in London, but up to then had not found.

326]

"In fact/ I said, "it is precisely the setting in which I could
picture Dr. Johnson."

"Yes," he began, "it is an old-fashioned place, and it is in
the very neighborhood in which Johnson lived. He worshiped
at St. Clement s and that is the reason they put up that
statue to him over there behind the church; and a strange
statue it is to put up to Johnson. If he was one thing, he was a
big man, and in the shadow of that church he is absolutely
dwarfed, and that Johnson never was."

Chesterton s voice is pitched high, and as he talks he draws
in his breath with almost a whistling noise conveying a certain
self-appreciation of his own remarks. He smiles often, dis
closing a missing front tooth in his lower jaw, which intensifies
the impression of absolute disregard of personal appearance.

Leaving Johnson, he talked about himself and his journal
istic experiences.

"A week after I had left Warsaw that great political crime,
the murder of the Bolshevists, occurred," he said. "I have
had this strange experience a number of times. Invariably I
leave a place of interest just before it becomes really interest
ing. In the first days of the Zionist quarrel in Jerusalem, I saw
the mobs gathering and heard the cries against the Jews; but
the first real riots broke out a few days after my departure.
Just after I left Madrid things began to happen there; and
while I was away from London and trying in vain to get back,
even more interesting things happened here. This may some
times be a relief to a humanitarian, but it is something of a
tragedy to a journalist."

I began talking about the interest in spiritualism as one of
the results of the war and asked Chesterton how he accounted
for Conan Doyle having embraced it.

I 327]

"To my mind Doyle hit the bull s-eye when he wrote the
Sherlock Holmes stories/ 5 he said. "He was very successful
with them and as people liked them he kept turning them out.
He turned out many, and as Holmes always discovered the
criminal, Doyle in time began in his own mind to associate
himself with Holmes. This often happens. People say that an
author puts a lot of himself in one of his characters, when as
a matter of fact he puts a lot of his favorite characters in
himself. It is a case where Nature begins, as Whistler said, to
catch up to Art."

From Doyle and his detective stories it was an easy step to
lead Chesterton to talk of his own efforts in that field.

"Yes," he said, "I have done a number of them; it has been
great fun doing them. They are a sort of game to me and I have
often started out with one idea and before I have finished I have
made an entirely innocent bystander the guilty party. The
real way to do them, however, is to forget that you are writing
a detective story at all. Just start out with certain facts; a
murder or other crime has been committed; a number of
people are involved; you, no more than your reader, have any
idea as to the guilty party. Then go ahead and unravel the
crime as if the problem were actually put up to you."

While at work on Chesterton s portrait I remarked that in
arranging to make sketches of various British officials one
encountered little red tape and that there seemed to be more
democracy in England than in America.

"Yes," Chesterton answered, "in some ways there is. I
imagine that here a Prime Minister is much more democratic
with his secretary, than in your country, but on the other
hand, in America I think that the secretary is much more
democratic to his Minister. When I was traveling in America
f 3281

I had occasion to spend several days on a railroad train. Our
porter was a nice-looking colored fellow, and one day I engaged
him in conversation. I found him intelligent and fairly well
read, in fact learned much about the section through which we
were passing from him. I had been speaking to him some time
when the call bell rang and he had to leave me, which he did
with these words, So long, see you again soon.

"Now that to me was true democracy. He was not in the
least impudent he had said to me exactly what he would have
said to any friend of his; but can you imagine what would
happen to an English porter who said the same thing ? In other
words, we have the forms of democracy and not the spirit,
and I fear the forms without that essential idea that goes with
them are dangerous."

There was a commotion without and I looked around as the
fat boy entered, bringing two cups of tea. My drawing was
finished, so I left after the first cup and accordingly do not
know whether Chesterton, like his prototype, Dr. Johnson,
drinks seven at one sitting.

3291

XXXVI

THE mere mention of tea at once brings to mind that
active old yachtsman. Sir Thomas Lipton. It was on
the occasion of his last attempt to lift the America s
cup that I first met him.

Keen, active, and alert, he belied his fourscore years.
Perhaps his hair was a little whiter and thinner and his shoulders
not quite so square as they were when he made his first attempt
to win the cup, but there was still the same bubbling humor in
his sharp blue eyes and there was the same engaging smile. His
complexion was as ruddy and vigorous as it was when he trod
the deck of the first Shamrock.

The greatest change in his appearance was the way he
trimmed his mustache, a mustache that was characteristic of
the Lipton of old. The ends retained the same whimsical turn,
but the white hair on the upper lip was clipped short, so that
the two curls, together with the goatee, would have given him
a Mephistophelian expression, were it not for the benign humor
that radiated from his countenance.

Though he was bronzed, as all men are who sail the seas, he
looked more like a physician or a college professor than a man
who had spent part of his life aboard ship. His humor, though,
was his dominating trait. The minute he began to speak, what
ever academic air he had, vanished. His was a distinctly Celtic
humor, heightened, when he spoke, by a mixture of brogue and
burr. It was that strange mingling of Gael and Scot that gave
I 330

Sir Thomas Lipton

to Sir Thomas those divergent attributes that were so marked
in him. When I asked him about his nationality he said:

"I am Scotch-Irish or Irish-Scotch, depending upon what
company I am in."

It was his Irish ancestry which prompted the humor of
the remark, it was his early Scottish environment which was
behind its shrewdness.

Indeed, kindliness and canniness were the keys to the
success of this son of two poor Irish emigrants who went to
Glasgow, where young Thomas was born. It was canniness
that enabled him to become one of the leading merchants in
the world, it was kindliness that made him probably the best-
loved Briton who has come to these shores.

But it was not as a cup contender that he first came.
Indeed, his first trip occurred long before any international
yacht race to which he was a party. Sixty-odd years ago
the boy who had helped in a little provision shop, and who
later had run errands for a stationer for half a crown a week,
heard the call of the sea. Mooning along the docks on the
River Clyde he built strange dramas about the lands to which
the old square-riggers sailed countries where fortunes were
easily won.

One day the call was too strong to be resisted. Quietly
packing his few belongings, he left the gray stone town and
started on his first great adventure. Through the old, round,
brick building which had once reechoed to the notes of Jenny
Lind, the penniless immigrant entered the largest city of the
New World. Upon his last visit he passed by the same building
in a flag-bedecked ship, the guest of that same city, cheered by
thousands, as he once more put foot on this soil. The intervening
years held an almost incredible story of success.

f 333]

It was not long after the Civil War when he first came here.
Times were hard, particularly so for a friendless boy with no
money. He tried his hand at many jobs 5 even that of hoeing
cotton in South Carolina. It was not long before he decided
that he might just as well work at home as in this strange land
where he knew no one. When he had saved up enough to pay
his passage, back he set sail for his native land.

"But," he said, "even if my pocketbook was not bulging
with American dollars, my head was filled with new ideas that
I had gathered in this country. My father and mother were
keeping a little shop in Glasgow. The principal things that
they sold were butter, eggs, and ham, and their customers
were the people whom they had known for years and who lived
in the immediate neighborhood.

"What I had learned over here was that shops did not
depend entirely upon the people who lived near them. Already
in those days the great American idea of advertising had taken
hold. I don t know whether I should call it altogether an
American idea, for one of the men who developed it to a great
extent happened to be a Scotsman. However it was in America
that I first saw the great benefits to be derived from it, and
when I got back to my parents little shop that would barely
hold six people, I was filled with enthusiasm for a new plan.
I so impressed them with it that my father decided to risk his
little savings in trying it out."

The shop grew slowly at first, but eventually another one
was opened and then others. This was in Glasgow, but young
Lipton soon saw that there were the same possibilities in many
towns, and before long he was opening similar stores in the
larger cities of both England and Scotland. In order to supply
them with teas, he bought plantations in Ceylon, and even-

{334}

tually, when he owned some six hundred stores, he went into
coffee and cocoa growing, and even acquired a packing house
in Omaha, Nebraska.

I asked him when he built his first Shamrock.

"Some sixty-nine years ago/ he said with a half-roguish
smile in his eyes.

"You see," he said, "no one can live in Glasgow and not
love the water. The great Clyde River, filled with shipping from
all parts of the world, is bound to affect a youngster who sees
it almost from the moment of his birth. As a boy I used to
frequent the docks and talk to those strange, gruff men who
had sailed all over the world and who came on land with
stories stranger and more fascinating than fairy tales.

"It was only natural that as soon as I was old enough to
own a knife I should cut boats out of blocks of wood.

"On puddles near our house I sailed my first yacht, a boat
crudely made and having paper sails, but a boat that was in
my eyes the trimmest ship that ever glided through the
water. It bore the same name as the yacht now at Newport.

"That was a long time ago, but in all the years that have
since gone by I have never lost my interest in ships. Of course,
I have often said that business is my vocation, yachting my
hobby, and that is true; but it has been a hobby that has
yielded me many happy hours, and also a few disappointments."

He smiled as he said this, and I asked him what he would
do if he did not win the cup this time.

"Try again as soon as I can build another boat, but I do
not think that will be necessary, for the present Shamrock
has so far beaten everything in sight.

"You know, when Mr. Adams s boat, the Resolute, beat
mine last time, you made him Secretary of the Navy in

1335]

gratitude, so when I come back with the cup this time I have
no doubt my government will do as much for me. But I will
not play quite as fairly as you people, for, once I have that
cup over there, and I am in command of the naval forces, every
time you send over a challenger I ll order out a couple of gun
boats to fire shots along your boat s course, so that It will be
impossible for it to win.

"But, seriously, seventy-nine years is too long for any
nation to hold the trophy. After I shall have held it fifty, I shall
be perfectly content for America to regain it. ? *

As he sat in a large armchair, his hands clasped in his lap,
and spoke of plans and purposes, interspersing his remarks
with his sly humor, he breathed a spirit of optimism. It was
clearly evident to him that this world is a pretty good place in
which to live, that life had been a marvelous game, in which
the bitter never outweighed the sweet. It was difficult for him
to be serious long, and whenever he could turn his answer into
a joke he did so.

Although his humor was ever to the forefront, behind it,
deeper but perhaps even a little more powerful, was a certain
Scotch dourness, a seriousness of purpose, unswerving and
irresistible, begotten in the gray mists in the land in which he
was born and in which he toiled. It did not come to the sur
face often he hid it, almost as if he were ashamed of it
but it showed itself when he replied to the question as to
whether a poor boy of to-day had as much chance to succeed
as one in former times.

"Of course he has. Times have naturally changed," he
said. "Modern inventions have made the world an entirely
different place. But take the Leviathan, on which I crossed the
ocean on this trip, and the little packet on which I made my

{3361

first crossing. Do you think that the oil-burning engines, the
radio, or anything else aboard the new ship has affected the
feelings of the people ? There are the same joys and griefs and
hopes in the breasts of the passengers to-day as there always
were. External conditions cannot change them, nor can they
change opportunities. In fact, if anything, they only make
opportunities greater.

" Success in life depends upon the individual, and no one
who goes around with a long face, who keeps saying the world
is not as good as it was, that he has no chance to-day, can
ever hope to succeed. Indeed, that person is beaten before he
crosses the starting line. To begin with, he is headed in the
wrong direction; he is going backward instead of forward,
and he is looking for squally clouds and rough water, even if
the sun is shining and the sea is calm.

"But very often this wrong way of looking at things is the
result of wrong upbringing. It is home surroundings that, to
my mind, set a boy or a girl on the road to success. As you
know, my early days were not the easiest, but our home,
though perhaps it was not beautiful, was clean and inviting
and comfortable, and presiding over it was the bravest and
noblest woman in the world, my mother.

"When things were not going as well as they should, there
was nevertheless a smile on her face. She has always been my
guiding star. It was from her that I learned to look toward the
future and not to the past. It is expecting better things that
brings them; it is the conviction that they will come to pass
that provides the incentive to work to bring them about.

"The boy who starts out in life with honesty and courage,
convinced that he will get along, is provided with proper
weapons to succeed, and modern conditions will prove no

{3371

more formidable to him than the old ones did to the boys with
the same ideas."

He was intensely serious as he spoke, and then suddenly
came the look of humor in his eyes.

"Indeed/ 5 he went on, "modern conditions are going to
help me lift that cup."

"What are you going to do with It after you have won it ?"
I inquired.

"That s a fine question for a person in a dry country to
ask," he shot back. "Don t you know cups were made for one
purpose only? That s for tea."

f 338J

T

XXXVII

^HIRTY-FIVE years ago Walter P. Chrysler was an oil
wiper working for five cents an hour. To-day he is the
head of one of the largest automobile companies in the
world and is regarded as one of the outstanding figures in
the motor-car industry.

"The man who makes good is the man who starts his job
with enthusiasm," said Mr. Chrysler in his office, "and who does
a little more than is expected of him. Give the boss a little more
than he expects and he will see that you are rewarded. And
if he doesn t the best thing to do is to find another boss."

Seated behind a large flat-topped desk, which was placed
diagonally in one corner of the room, this tall, powerfully
built, sun-tanned man issued crisp orders.

It is not the peculiar shape of his head, which narrows
above the temples, that one notices on first meeting Mr.
Chrysler, nor is it the strong aquiline nose and the square
jaws; it is the piercing black eyes, which seem to bore through
any object upon which they are focused.

"It is not strange that I am in the automobile business,"
he said. "My grandfather drove a covered wagon across the
plains, my father was an engineer on one of those old wood-
burning engines of the Union Pacific Railroad, so you see
transportation is in my blood. 5

Mr. Chrysler s voice is deep, and he speaks quickly, so
quickly that he runs one word into another. One feels that he

339]

realizes the shortness of life; that as much as possible must
be crowded into its span.

He leaned back in his chair and passed the palms of his
hands over his sleek hair, and went on:

"I was born in a little Kansas hamlet it wasn t even a
town called Wamego, near Ellis, and it was there that the
shops of the Union Pacific were located.

"I went to school until I was seventeen. Of course, like all
country boys I had had summer jobs in the grocery store, but
it was at seventeen that I really went to work, and I have
been working steadily ever since."

Shrewd business man that he is, there Is nevertheless in
Chrysler a touch of the philosopher. He leaned forward and
clasped his hands on the glass-topped desk.

" You know," he said, "the poor boy has a great advantage
over the kid whose father is wealthy a great advantage, I
mean, in shaping his future life. He can only get pleasure in
constructive things. The wealthy boy gets pleasure in spending
money, and in most cases he does that in a purely destructive
fashion. I still have a real working model of a locomotive that
I built, and I not only made that, but I even had to make the
tools with which I worked."

For four years he worked in the Union Pacific shops, then
something happened that had a distinct effect on his career.

"One day traffic had been very heavy," he said, "and a
locomotive pulled in with a broken cylinder head. In two hours
a mail train had to leave, and there wasn t another locomotive
to be had. A chap by the name of Hickey was the Superin
tendent of Motive Power, and he called me into his office,
That locomotive has to be fixed in two hours/ he said. Can
you do it?

{3401

^ar^ii^ ^;"^ Jfs:::

^ , "

Walter P. Chrysler

"Believe me, that was some whale of a job. But I said
I would tackle it and I put in as hard a spell of work there
as I ever did in all my life, but the engine was finished on
time.

" Walt/ Hickey said to me, <I didn t think it could be
done. I can t pay you anything extra. But I won t forget/

"And he didn t. Three months later, on his recommen
dation, I became general foreman of the Colorado and
Southern shops at Trinidad. I had given the boss a little more
than he expected and I had received my reward."

Chrysler made good here as he had done in the first job.
In nine years he had become superintendent of motive power
of the Chicago and Great Western system.

"I was getting a pretty good salary," he said, "but I was
thirty-three and I realized that I had gone as far as I could in
the line I was in. Mechanical men never got further than being
the heads of their own departments. Executive positions were
not given to them. Tradition prevented my promotion, but
it did not prevent my taking another job.

"And that is something which I have never hesitated to do
all my life.When I have seen that I have gone as far as possible
in one direction, I have been willing to take a chance in an
entirely new field, even when doing so meant an actual
pecuniary loss for the time being.

"So at a salary of about half of what I had been getting I
went to work for the American Locomotive Company in the
position of works manager. I saw possibilities there for future
advancement. My job meant more than the actual construc
tion of locomotives the element of competitive sales entered.
In two years I was general manager and the company was
operating at a profit.

1343]

"From what I am telling you I don t want you to get the
idea that I object to punching a time card. As a matter of
fact, at the office entrance of the Chrysler Company in
Detroit, card number one has my name on it and every morn
ing I am in that city that card is punched at eight o clock.
But what I am trying to drive at Is that I was interested not
only in the construction details of engineering, but also In the
purely business side of It.

"As a matter of -fact," he went on, "engineering is the
foundation on which all sound manufacturing is developed.
Engineering, finance, design, production and sales are the
tools with which the management works. Efficiency Is achieved
only when each of these functions is scientifically managed.
And to my way of thinking, the running of large corporations
is just as purely mechanical as the building of a locomotive
or an automobile.

"I suppose you are wondering how I happened to switch
from locomotives to motor cars. Well, you see in the early part
of the century horseless wagons began to chug over our roads.
It did not take a prophet to see possibilities in these primitive
cars. The day of individual transportation was dawning.

"Way back in 1905 I went to the Chicago Automobile
Show. There I saw what struck me as a marvelous car. Its price
was five thousand dollars and I had seven hundred. But I wanted
that car. Not to drive, but to see how it was made. I managed to
borrow the rest of the money and I had the car shipped home.
By the time I had taken it apart and put it together again I
knew a lot about the inner workings of motor cars.

"That was just nineteen years before I brought out the first
Chrysler, but I had dojie some tall thinking in the meantime, and
I had been in a number of jobs , In order to get into the automobile
|344j

business, I had to do exactly the same thing that I had done in
order to get out of the mechanical end of the locomotive business.

"I gave up a twelve-thousand-dollar job to take one at
six thousand dollars with General Motors. I finally became
vice president there, but then I left. After the war I reor
ganized several other automobile companies, but all the time
I was dreaming of that car of my own. In 1924 my dream came
true. I started to build it.

"To-day all our ideas of motors have changed from what
they were. A quarter of a century ago, the automobile was an
inventive hope. In the early days of the twentieth century the
budding automobile industry was experimenting with an
almost endless variety of self-propelled vehicles and there was
no agreement among engineers.

"It was the phase when the industry hoped that the cars
built would run. It was easy to see the place that the motor
car was destined to occupy in modern life, but not so easy to
see the form of the final product which is to-day a vital factor
in our existence, which is changing our cities and remaking
the habitable parts of the globe.

"We were on our way, however. Naturally the first experi
mental cars were costly. If the automobile was to grow in public
use and become a factor in modern life, stability had to come.

"The second phase was the production of more nearly
standardized types in such volume that they should come
economically within the reach of the mass of the people. To
Henry Ford must go the credit for having the vision of quan
tity production at low prices. He set the pace through the
years of the second phase the period of low-cost cars.

"A step behind came the great quantity production era.
We thought then that the ultimate status of the industry was

I 345]

attained. With all the essential variants size, number of
cylinders, variety of models, and luxury of finish other com
panies followed the Ford lead; great plants sprang up. Quan
tity became the keynote of automobile development.

"And logically following quantity was an era of lowering
prices. In spite of the interruption of the war period the down
ward trend of prices continued steadily, with quantity output
ever growing*

"An inevitable reaction from quantity production and low
prices is a demand for quality. The universality of that trend
affecting all products suggests that it is perhaps sociological
rather than economic. When an article universally needed
becomes cheap enough for practically every one to possess it,
the demand for higher quality, better style, and greater
luxury naturally follows quickly.

"And so," he went on, "we now have arrived at the third
stage; the problem is now quality production on the most
economical basis. Miracles of manufacturing have been
accomplished in the last five years, and those miracles have
all demonstrated the practicability of building the finest
quality cars in large quantities.

"Quality from the lowest to the highest priced car is here
to stay. It is an essential of the modern utility of automobiles.
We must have power and the capacity for speed, which is
inherent in power, to cope with modern traffic conditions.

"And speaking of traffic conditions leads me to speak of
traffic congestion. That is an economic ill of the first mag
nitude. Regulation and distribution of trafiic by the con
struction of highways and byways, instead of by-laws and
ordinances, is the need of this country to-day/

f 346}

XXXVIII

SK any ten people to name the three largest corpora
tions in this country and nine of them will include
Standard Oil in their answers, yet it is doubtful
whether one out of those nine could tell who is its president

This is in a way characteristic of the man who heads the
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, for while the name of
Rockefeller still blazes forth on the front pages of the news
papers, and although in their time Rogers, Archbold, Flagler,
and Bedford were often in the public prints, Walter G Teagle
has remained comparatively unknown.

From the day in June, 1899, when at the age of twenty-one
he returned to Cleveland from Cornell University, having com
pleted its four-year course in three years, and his father handed
him a pair of overalls and told him to go to work, up to the
present, he has been too busy working to bother about publicity-
It is but natural that he should have taken to oil, for his
maternal grandfather was one of John D, Rockefeller s original
partners, while his father owned an oil refinery that had been
bought out by the Standard Oil and of which young Teagle
eventually became the vice president. His rise from that
position has been a steady one; besides having been an officer
in many other companies, he has directed the export policy
of the Standard Oil of New Jersey, has been largely responsible
for opening new fields and devising new methods of sales,
and for the last thirteen years he has been its president.

347]

Mr. Teagle s work for the company has carried him to the
four corners of the globe, and for years necessitated his living
out of the country. He combined in his work the duties of
publicity man with those of executives for he not only suc
ceeded in creating a demand for the company 9 s products
but also laid plans for their distribution and delivery. In
Asia he was up against the already matured plans of rival
companies, but this did not deter him. Through his efforts
Standard Oil tankers became a common sight in Chinese and
Japanese harbors.

Coupled with this business ability goes an aptitude for
making friends, and also of not antagonizing competitors, so
that to-day one of his closest cronies is Sir Henri Deterding,
the head of a rival concern, whom he originally met in the
Far East.

More than six feet tall, weighing well over two hundred
pounds, with a weatherbeaten complexion and an almost
lumbering walk, he looks more like the captain of a vessel a
man who has braved the rigors of storms at sea and poured
oil on troubled waters than like the head of a vast corpo
ration who has directed the production of the oil.

In fact his entire manner, his booming voice, his hearty
laugh, the way he snaps his square jaws, all smack of the sea
and bring up pictures of the old Yankee skippers. And after
all, perhaps this is not strange, for upon those sturdy men who
sailed out of New Bedford and neighboring ports, much of the
country depended for the oil supply of those days; the whale
oil that fed the flickering lamps in American homes. Man had
not then learned to drill into the earth for his lighting fuel,
nor had engines been constructed that would get motive
force from the same fluid. And so, in a way, this bluff, genial

f 348 I

C. T eagle

man, in his oak-paneled office, with windows overlooking
the harbor, is a direct descendant of those old-time mariners,
who, on shipboard, directed the earlier industry.

On his desk, as on theirs, was a pipe, a straight one, with
a mouthpiece almost bitten through, and maps, not of a -small
part of the ocean but of the entire world.

I mentioned these thoughts on oil.

"The world does move/ Mr. Teagle replied. "Only
twenty-five years ago the principal reason for refining crude oil
was to produce kerosene. It was practically the only com
modity that could be sold. Gasoline was an unwelcome by
product that was difficult to dispose of.

"In a quarter of a century electricity has practically dis
placed kerosene as an illuminant, while the development of
the gas engine has not only transformed our entire business
but also changed our entire mode of life. Though our great
cities are important factors in our civilization, after all our
real prosperity and our greatness rest with the people in small
communities and in agricultural areas. It is for them that the
automobile has effected a great change, for it has removed the
loneliness and handicaps of rural life, and has brought them
within visiting distance of larger communities, and in so
doing has necessitated the reconstruction of the primitive
roads that existed at the beginning of the century

"But one thing you must remember," he continued.
"This country has been favored as no other with natural
attributes to foster this desire for change and travel, which is
a distinguishing characteristic of our people. There are more
reasons than one why we have gone chasing around our land
in automobiles while the citizens of other countries have had to
walk. The motor fuel supply has been at our call. Not by

f 3511

accident, but by fortunate circumstances, an abundance has
been available to our people. The entry of crude petroleum
into the field of commerce was coincident with an era of
commercial expansion. Oil fields were discovered at a time
when our people were a pioneering folk and the uncertainty
of oil drilling captivated their adventurous spirit.

"Our country is not the only one that produces oil, but a
production great enough to fill our needs was possible at home;
there was no necessity on our part to go to other lands. Great
Britain and the other European nations that are commercially
comparable to the United States have not the raw materials,
while most of those countries that have oil are hampered by
climatic conditions less favorable than ours.

"The development of an oil field to-day is an expensive
proposition, and before returns begin to be commensurate
with the investment a minimum of at least twenty-five million
dollars must be expended. Thus the physical obstacles and the
large amount of capital required in foreign fields have con
vinced American business men that dollar for dollar an invest
ment here would yield greater returns than elsewhere. Foreign
companies have realized the same thing, with the result that
there has always been a foreign exploitation of our petroleum
and even companies primarily formed for the marketing in
this country of petroleum from other lands have eventually
found it more profitable to produce a large proportion of their
crude oil here. 3

As he was speaking, through one of the doors of the
room a secretary entered. In this hand was a stack of
letters. In whispers he consulted Mr. Teagle. The amber
cigar holder, with its long black cigar, was gripped further
in his teeth.

{352 I

"Look through our files/ he said, "and about February,
1927, you will find a letter from these people giving us the
figures that they now ask for."

It is this remarkable memory that is one of the secrets of
the man s success. Almost instantly he can quote figures
years old. And coupled with this memory is a most methodical
manner of doing things. In his upper vest pocket he carries a
little black book, in which he jots down ideas as they come to
him. Then, too, he appears to give off dynamic energy and
one immediately feels his entire absorption in his business.
As a matter of fact most of his evenings are spent at his home,
near Greenwich, going over papers which he carries from the
office in an old brief case with a trick lock that nobody
but himself can open. He does not care much for the theater
or for the opera.

"But," he said, "don t think that I work all the time. I
do not play golf, but I get off in the wilds every now and then
and hunt and fish, and then too I like a good game of contract.
In fact, on my last vacation somebody at the club said that I
hunted and fished all day and played bridge all night, but I
did come back wonderfully rested.

"I guess I have one hobby, and that is dogs, and by the
way, this is not a very good day for you to make a sketch of
me, because I just heard that my best prize winner has been
defeated for a cup.

"But these are hobbies; my real interest," he went on, "is
in the oil business, and, believe me, in these days of big busi
ness no one can hope to succeed who is not tied up heart and
soul in what he is doing.

"I remember a little fellow, bald and unobtrusive, who
started in on the Stock Exchange about twenty-five years ago.

1353}

He specialized in a food product that was not very well known
at the time, but that fellow got to work; he learned that business
from beginning to end and he talked the future of this food
product from alarm clocks to pajamas. To-day that man and
the stuff he boosted are sensational successes of the time.
His enthusiasm, based on faith that in turn was based on
knowledge that was based on hard work, won.

"I have in mind another chap who was fifty years old and
flatter than Kansas when for the first time he took his little
red book out of his pocket and started in to sell life insurance.
Now that s no easy job in New York, but he himself told me
that he became enthusiastic over the idea of service; he forgot
what he was going to make out of it, but the idea in the back
of his mind was that he was saving families from destitution
on the death of the bread-winner. He communicated that
earnestness to the people with whom he was doing business
and in ten years he had earned enough out of his commissions
to retire on a comfortable competence.

"These are not exceptional cases. Right here in this com
pany I could show you any number of examples of men who
have succeeded by their enthusiasm. Every large company in
the world is constantly on the lookout for new men to fill
satisfactorily new positions that are bound to be created as
new business is undertaken. And let me tell you right here
that there are always more big positions to be filled than there
are men to fill them."

He had spoken of new business and I asked him about the
future of oil.

"No one can answer that," he replied. "At the present
time it is used either in its semi-crude or finished state as fuel
for automotive engines; as kerosene for illumination and heat;

{3S4J

as light distillate oils for the Diesel engine, and as fuel oil for
steam generation. What its future will bring forth no man can
tell

"But this much I can say. The American oil industry has
always displayed conspicuous foresight, initiative, and re
source in the past, and in the face of an ever increasing demand
it has made petroleum products more easily available at a
cheaper price than in any other country in the world. In fact,
the reason for the widespread consumption has been the low
cost. The price has produced alike the demand and the product
to meet the demand. Price which is fixed by competition
finds the oil and produces it. Price controls and limits its use.
As the American public signals its needs to the industry, the
response will be as it has been in the past, a supply of those
products ample for all the requirements which the future may
require."

f 3551

XXXIX

r THESE days when changes occur so rapidly that It is
bard to follow them, publicity brings renown that would
have startled our fathers. When the chimney of Walter
Damrosch s house caught fire some passers-by, seeing the
smoke, turned in an alarm. After the fire was put out, Mr.
Damrosch asked the firemen down into his dining room to
have a cup of "tea." As he did so, one of them turned to him
with, "Say, don t I know your voice? Aren t you the feller
that tells us all about the pieces you play every Saturday
night?"

Then and there a discussion of music ensued. It is imma
terial whether the "Eroica" was preferred to the "Fire
Music" of the Valkyrie. The point is that the firemen were
interested in good music.

As Mr. Damrosch told the story, he was tremendously
pleased, because it was another bit of evidence that the mission
ary work which he set out to do is bearing fruit. The music of
the great masters is being brought right into the homes of the
people music that has heretofore been unknown to them.

That this will ultimately mean much to the hearers, that
it will work not only for their spiritual welfare but will serve
also as a counteracting influence to the various factors tending
to the breaking up of home life, Mr. Damrosch firmly believes.
It is but natural that he should, for his own life has been
spent in musical surroundings.

f 3561

\ ^

\ \ , V!W*>v\r* tf v

Walter Damrosch

Contrary to general belief, Mr. Damrosch was born not in
this country but in Breslau. His father, a physician, had given
up the stethoscope for the violin, and played at Weimar when
Liszt conducted there. His mother was an opera singer who
was one of the first Ortruds in Wagner s "Lohengrin."

It was a toss-up as to whether Walter Damrosch would be
a painter or a musician, but a house that was frequented by
Wagner, von Biilow and Rubinstein was bound to exert an
influence upon a child who was gifted in two arts, and even
tually he decided to follow in his father s footsteps.

In his own home to-day he has many mementos and por
traits of those times. On his desk is a large picture of his
father, long-haired and bearded, who was largely responsible
for the introduction of Wagner s music into this country.
There is a little study of Liszt, done from life, and paintings
of Mrs. Damrosch and her father, James G. Elaine.

Above the piano in the music room hangs a large portrait
of a blond-haired, dreamy-eyed young man, with a strong
aquiline nose and a determined mouth. Mr. Damrosch showed
it to me. He was standing directly under it, and the light from
the window fell on him in much the same way as it had fallen
on the subject of the painting.

The daylight that came into the room did not reach into
the farther corners. Within the pine-paneled walls, among
early Dutch pictures, there was an atmosphere of mystery.
The painting, behind the tall, erect figure with its strong face
and white hair, looked a little like a ghost. The past and the
present were both there. The Damrosch of the late eighties,
who was the contemporary of Lehman and Eames and the
De Reszkes, and the conductor of the thirties of Debussy
and of Honegger s "Pacific 299" were both looking at me.

| 3591

The time that has elapsed since the portrait was painted
has seen a great development in the musical taste of this
country and a large part of that development has been due to
Walter Damrosch. He began to conduct when music was a
luxury indulged in by the fashionable few who lived about
Gramercy Park and lower Madison and Fifth Avenues. He
helped to make good music popular and he is still wielding a
baton for the benefit of the people of the entire nation.

During the intervening years he has not only led the opera
but also several symphony orchestras. He has composed
chamber music and operatic works. When the war broke out
he volunteered his services and went overseas to organize a
school for the instruction of bandmasters in our army.

"I have seen the musical taste of this country develop from
what was almost a primitive instinct into a discrimination that
demands the very best in music in all its forms/ he told me.
"And what I see now, which assuredly was not in evidence
when I first began my career, is a love of music among the
so-called plain people. It is this love which makes for the
creation of a national school of music.

"The Italian workman knows his Verdi and the German
peasant his Schubert and Schumann. For years Italy and
Germany have been leaders in music. To-day the farmer out
west, miles from a large city, who heretofore has been denied
the opportunity of listening to what is best in music, properly
rendered, can sit down after his day s work and hear the
masterpieces of all times played, very often, as they should
be."

Mr. Damrosch talks very precisely, as millions of listeners
over the radio know. His voice seems to me to be characteristic
of a man who, having an almost didactic approach to an art, has

f 360 I

also a keen business-like capacity for the financial details that
are necessary to the fostering of any art project.

"While any art," he went on, "can be created in poverty,
its popularization requires financial assistance. No college
can exist only on the money received as tuition fees from its
students. There must be an endowment fund which will go
toward its upkeep. In the same way, there is not an art
museum in the world that can continue from the sale of its
tickets and catalogues. The same is true of any orchestra.
It is absolutely essential that it be supported by the people
who can afford that form of public service, and the larger the
sum that is subscribed, the smaller can be the price of the
tickets to the public at large, and the better the artists it
can employ.

"Radio has worked a miracle. It has, in effect, erected a
concert hall in every hamlet throughout the country. In fact,
it has gone even further. It has turned every home into a
potential palace of music, where the finest can be heard. Now,
too, the children in our public schools, instead of singing
* Jingle Bells and other similar compositions to the beat of a
lead pencil held in the hand of some teacher, are being intro
duced to the great classical compositions of all times. For
many of the children that means the opening of a door to
untold treasures."

I asked how he felt about the broadcasting of modern

music.

"So long as it is music," he said, "I believe in it. But
unfortunately, I think much that is broadcast tinder the name
of music does not fall in that category. By that I do not mean
to say that there is not good and interesting music being
written today. But there is also a lot of trash. Luckily it will

| 3611

soon die a natural death. It has always been so. While every great
musician is an innovator, his art, nevertheless, is built upon what
has gone before, no matter how much it may differ from it.

" Catholicity in music was a distinguishing characteristic
of my father. He made a great fight for Wagner, Berlioz, and
Liszt, who in those days were moderns. However much he
admired them, and often though he conducted their works,
he kept me pretty close to Bach, Beethoven, and Handel when
I started to study music. The moderns/ he used to say to me,
will take care of themselves/

"I believe that is true. The great trouble has heretofore
been that classical music has been regarded as non-under
standable by people who had never had the opportunity of
hearing it. They looked on it in much the same way that they
looked on heavy books in the library which could be appreci
ated only by specialists.

"What is happening now is that these very people turn on
their radios and cut in on some delightfully charming compo
sition. They do not know what it is, and when it is finished
they are surprised to learn from the announcer that it is by
Beethoven or Mozart."

Mr. Damrosch went on to speak about the little talks he
gives before playing his pieces.

" While the essential attribute of music," he said, "is to
produce esthetic emotion through the medium of sounds, very
often the so-called literary side of music will create an added
interest in the composition. I do not try to instruct my lis
teners, but I know that many of them are not acquainted
with musical forms, and often I try to give a concise outline
of the particular type of composition that I play as well as the
idea that is expressed.

f 362f

"All of these things contribute to a greater appreciation of
music, but this does not imply that they are necessary for the
enjoyment of any piece of good music. Nothing is essential for
that but its performance in a proper way. And that is the
reason I am so much interested in the work I am doing. It
has been pioneer work. But I have been no keener in my
interest than the people who are connected with the radio
industry. From the highest official down to the man who
arranges the orchestra seats, each one of them has done his best
to help. As you sit in your living room and turn the switch that
fills it with music little do you realize the technical difficulties
that have been overcome, or some that still vex us.

"The placing of the various instruments has been a problem
In itself, and as it has been worked out it differs essentially
from the way in which the musicians are placed when playing
in public. That is the reason concerts in the studio sound better
than concerts broadcast from large halls.

"That is but one of the problems that we have encountered.
There have been countless others of a technical nature, and
besides these there is always the question of programs. How
ever, I know we are progressing and creating a larger interest
in musical art. 5

3631

XL

A HER the tumult and the shouting had died at the
Democratic Convention in Dallas in 1928 there was
one dramatic note which stood out above all others.
It was that moment when a man in the prime of life, but
walking with canes to the rostrum, began to speak in a mellow
voice, calmly and deliberately.

"I come for the third time," said he, "to urge upon a con
vention of my party the nomination of the Governor of the
State of New York. The faith which I held I still hold. It has
been justified in the achievement. The whole country has now
learned the measure of his greatness."

It was not only the sweltering audience in Houston which
became interested; the people with radios throughout the
country at once sensed that this was no ordinary nominating
speech. Without any futile attempt at suspense, simply,
directly, and sincerely, Franklin D. Roosevelt stated at the
outset his purpose The nomination of Alfred E. Smith for the
presidency. Compared to the bombastic effusions that had
gone before, his earnestness and simplicity seemed all the
more striking. With no striving for theatrical effect, honest
and straightforward, he represents the best influence of the
college man in American politics to-day.

Mr. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, Dutchess County,
New York, the son of James Roosevelt, who was president
of the Delaware & Hudson Company. Like Theodore Roose-

1364

Franklin D. Roosevelt

velt, his famous distant cousin, and, in fact, like most of the
Roosevelts, he went to Harvard from which he was graduated
in 1904. While there he was managing editor of The Crimson,
the college daily, and also a librarian of the old Hasty Pudding
Club. After his graduation he attended Columbia Law School,
and, having been admitted to the bar at the end of three years,
he went to work for the legal firm of Carter, Ledyard &
Milburn.

He had been practicing law but a short time when he was
offered the nomination for State Senator. This, however, did
not mean much. For years Dutchess, Columbia, and Putnam
counties had been represented by a Republican in the Senate.
In fact, the Republican nomination was regarded as the
equivalent of election. But young Roosevelt did not see it
that way. He accepted the nomination in no spirit of party
sacrifice; he was determined to win and made a whirlwind
campaign. Employing an automobile, then a novelty in
campaigning, he thought no village too small to be visited.
For weeks he made six speeches or more a day, and by the
time election day came around most of the voters had seen the
candidate and obtained a fair statement of his opinions re
garding the issues they were called upon to settle at the polls.

The tall young man, with clear blue eyes, sharp aquiline
nose, strong mouth and chin, made a favorable impression
upon the people, and when the votes were counted the candi
date of the Republican bosses was defeated by the young man
who had fired verbal fusillades at the men who for years had
run things in those counties.

But he had not been in the Senate a week when he showed
that he was as much opposed to Democratic bosses as he was
to those of the Republican Party. Charles F. Murphy of

f 367}

Tammany Hall had given orders to the Democratic Legis
lature to elect John C. Sheehan to the United States Senate.
That was before senators were elected by popular vote. But
Roosevelt was not taking orders from Murphy. His mind did
not work that way. He was regarded as the leader of the
insurgents in the Senate, though he disclaimed it.

"Leader? 35 said he. "I should not claim that title; there
really was no leader, there was no need for any. We just deter
mined to stay out. Our districts wanted us to. We laid no dark
and deep plots to confound the enemy. We waited for public
sentiment to perform that function."

It did. Sheehan was defeated. Roosevelt was reflected to
the State Senate in 1912, Then, in 1913, President Wilson
appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a post he held for
seven years and from which he resigned when the Democratic
Party made him its candidate for the vice presidency in 1920.

It was in his New York house that I made a drawing of
Mr. Roosevelt and had a talk with him. The house is filled with
ship models and naval pictures. And as he seated himself in his
library, its walls lined with books, the man who had just
returned from a meeting of the Democratic National Com
mittee seemed much more the scholar than the politician. On
the table beside him, surrounded by hundreds of papers and
magazines, was a glass-inclosed model of the Constitution. Above
the fireplace hangs a marine by Claude Lorraine, while resting
on the tops of the bookcases are prints and engravings of war
vessels and a portrait of John Paul Jones.

In that room there is no likeness of his illustrious cousin.
That hangs in the bedroom, on the wall facing the bed. In
that room is also the original of one of the first cartoons in
which the late President figured. It is by Nast and shows

{ 3681

him, still a very young man, standing before President Cleve
land a sort of prophetic picture.

" It s going to be much easier for you to make a drawing of
me/* he said, "than to get that article. The trouble with me
is that I have never specialized in any one thing; I am in
terested in too many things, and the result is that there is
nothing to say about me.

"Take my library, for instance. It is almost accidental
that I have so many naval books. It did not begin that way.
When I was at college I was librarian of one of the societies,
and I started collecting. But a general library, such as I
wanted, was out of the question, and I just happened to gather
one on our naval history. To-day I have practically every book
and pamphlet that has been published on the subject.

"I have a small collection of ship models also, not as many
as I would like, but they take up too much room. I have also
built a number of them.

"However, the thing in which I am most interested at the
present time is the sanitarium down at Warm Springs, Georgia.
In 1921, I contracted infantile paralysis. It left me with very
little power in my legs. I determined that I was going to be
cured. I heard about the curative powers of these springs
which, in addition to containing mineral properties that are
beneficial, have a temperature of eighty-nine degrees. I went
down there and started a course of treatment, exercising as
much as possible in these warm waters. In a short time an
improvement was apparent, and this improvement has been
steady and progressive. I felt that here was something of
inestimable value to the world, here was a means of benefiting
thousands of crippled children. The place, however, needed
development, and I accordingly interested some philanthropic

I 369 I

friends in starting a foundation, and we are now getting
excellent results.

"Another hobby of mine is forestry. Up at Hyde Park
we have a large acreage in woods. You see T. R. was the Roose
velt who chopped down trees; I like to plant them. 35

Endeavoring to turn the conversation to politics, I asked
him how it came about that a Roosevelt should be a Democrat.

"Nearly all of them: used to be Democrats/ 5 he answered,
"all except T. R/s father; he was the only Republican of his
generation.

"After all, one has but to compare the two parties to see
why most of the Roosevelts have been Democrats. Place two
facts of history side by side by way of example. Eight years of
Democratic administration in Washington produced a slate
free from election scandals, free from a single act of public
dishonesty on the part of any responsible official. These
years included the responsibilities for the conduct of the
vast operations of the World War. On the other hand, the
succeeding years have given to, the nation examples of public
turpitude which we would like to forget.

"If we select the proper leader the United States can
regain the world s trust and friendship. And in foreign affairs
we can point the way to the reduction of armaments; we
can cooperate officially and wholeheartedly with every
agency that studies and works to relieve the ills of mankind;
and what, to my mind, is very important, we can for all time
renounce the practice of arbitrary intervention in the home
affairs of our neighbors.

"Needless to say these are my own individual ideas, but,
thank goodness, with the spread of education throughout the
land, the younger generation is learning to think for itself."

f 3701

XLI

JT m ^I*E younger generation is a much discussed subject
Youth has always proved of interest to age, and to
each passing generation the succeeding one appears
an enigma.

One day I happened to notice in the paper that Booth
Tarkington was in New York on a visit and it occurred to me
that It would be interesting to learn what the author of "Pen-
rod" had to say about the boys and girls of to-day.

I called him up on the telephone, and while he declared
that by this time the generation of which Penrod was a type
had grown to manhood, and that he knew but little about
the present youngsters, nevertheless he was most cordial
about making an appointment.

But it is unsatisfactory to talk with a gentleman from
Indiana in the living room of a Park Avenue hotel. The stock
steel engravings of Benjamin Franklin and Lafayette express
none of the personality of the temporary tenant, nor does the
near Duncan Phyfe furniture give any hint as to his taste
in interior decoration. There Is a singular sameness of arti
ficiality about all hotel rooms, from the monotone carpet to
the French telephone. And then, too, it is hard to hear the
murmur of the Wabash above the clank of the trolley cars a
short half block away.

Mr. Tarkington did not leave me, long alone in the cold
formality of the hotel room. A man nearing sixty, he does

I 371 1

not look much over fifty, and, though rather stoop shouldered,
this seems a fault of posture, not a sign of age. A tall building
opposite threw the room into shadow and it was necessary
for him to sit very close to the window. Remarkably keen-
looking, well-groomed, a cigarette in his long, thin fingers, he
seemed in every way a man of to-day, capable of seeing things
as they are, with a knowledge of the past, but with his mind
open to the present; a man whose feet were firmly planted
on the ground and who was in no danger of being swept away
by sudden fads or fancies. There is nothing of the dreamer
about Mr. Tarkington; nothing of the studied negligence of
the professional writer.

Almost as soon as I had begun to draw he asked me whether
I had read a book which tried to show that Sargent was not an
artist. I told him I had not seen it, and he went on:

"But I am not surprised. They have denied God, why stop
at Sargent ?"

"To whom do you refer, the younger generation ?"

"Not necessarily to them," said Mr. Tarkington, "but
rather to a certain class of disgruntled individuals who hate
the world and the people in it, and who believe, as a matter of
course, that every thing that is established is wrong. It goes
without saying that this class has an immense influence on
young people, for the rising generation is always looking for
the faults of the one immediately preceding it; but this is as it
should be; otherwise we should not have progress in the
world.

"It is not only our ideas that the youngsters criticize, but
also our clothes and our household articles. Have you ever
noticed that anything less than thirty years old is old-fashioned ?
As time goes on it becomes quaint, then interesting, later on
f 372f

Booth Tarkington

rare, and finally it looms forth as an antique. And so, the furni
ture and bric-a-brac used by our parents to adorn their parlors
and got rid of by us to make way for the uncomfortable mission
atrocities, our children are beginning to drag down from attics
and are using in their own homes. But, of course, we did the
same things when we were young,"

"In what way then," I asked, "does the present youngster
differ from Penrod ?"

"Essentially he is the same; superficially, he is entirely
different," Mr. Tarkington replied. "Human nature does not
change very much, but environment and the material things
which surround us naturally influence our ideas of life. Remem
ber the period in which the Penrod stories were laid. The
garage had not replaced the stable, the man who owned a
car still kept it in a building in which stray wisps of hay lurked
in the cracks between the boards on the wooden floor; the odor
of horses had not been driven out by the fumes of gasoline.
It was not a cold-blooded mechanistic age, and efficiency had
not swept over the country like a plague.

"Not that I object to efficiency, everything is all right
in its proper place, but what I am trying to get at is the reason
for the apparent change in the young. I believe the boy of
fifteen years ago was very much the same as the boy thirty
years ago. The big change has come in the last fifteen years,
and to my mind one of the biggest factors in that change is
the automobile. Of course, I am speaking particularly of the
boys in middle western towns ; they are the ones I know best.

"Before the automobile became so common, some families
had horses, the majority did not. If a boy went to call on a
girl, what did they do ? They sat on the porch, the doors and
the windows of the house were open, a gas lamp was usually

I 3751

within fifty feet of them, and if they wanted to go some place
they walked a half a mile or so to the village drug store and
had an ice cream soda. If by chance the boy s father did have a
horse, it was hitched to the red-wheeled buggy, but they could
not get very far with that, not far enough, anyway, not to
be recognized. But to-day space has been eliminated by the
motor car. When a boy takes a girl out in an automobile I
have no more idea where they go or what they do than their
parents have. You see I am too old to find out, but unless I
do, I can t write about them.

"Girls, too, are much less chaperoned than they were.
This is a logical outcome of the growing economic independence
of woman and in many ways it is a fine thing. Mothers to-day
look back at the time when they had to drag their own mothers
along and many a harmless party was spoiled, and the result
is that they give their daughters much more freedom than
they had. Besides, girls are working and demand rights of
which their mothers would never have dreamed.

"Why, when I was a boy, people threw up their hands in
holy horror if a girl hinted that she would like to go on the
stage; to-day a girl can become a scientist or a chorus girl and
nobody will say a word/

The remark about girls becoming scientists led to a question
as to what Mr. Tarkington thought of colleges at the present
time.

"To my mind," he said, "the principal trouble with the
colleges to-day is that there is too much education and not
enough human nature. I know a boy who was graduated from
Princeton last year and he was so educated that I was afraid
to speak to him for fear that I should show my ignorance. The
only person who appeared to be cultured enough to hold a

I 376 I

conversation with him was a professor of< Greek. The finest
things that I found in college, and what I retained long after
I forgot my Latin and Greek, were my friends, but judging
from the amount of knowledge that boy had, I can t see how
he found time to make any.

"Knowledge is a fine thing, but if it goes to the making
of an intellectual snob it defeats its own purpose and breaks
down the inherent and natural sense of democracy that exists
in the young."

"Do you mean that the Penrod of to-day no longer plays
with Herman and Verman ?" I asked.

"Left to himself he invariably does. The boy whose father
owns a Rolls Royce is tickled to death to go for a ride in the
dilapidated flivver belonging to the father of a friend. Speaking
of these very things brings up another reason for a great change
in children, and that is the fact that the luxuries of fifteen
or so years ago have become the necessities of to-day, with
the result that what used to be a treat is now tiresome.

"I have a friend who has a daughter eight years old. At
her last birthday her parents could not think of a thing to
give her that she had not already had. At last a great inspira
tion came to them. They finally hit on something that would
be a complete surprise. They gave her a live baby elephant.
By the time that girl is sixteen they will have to blow up an
entire navy to give her a thrill.

"Now, if that child is blase at an age when we were getting
the time of our lives out of circuses, it surely is not the child s
fault. What our generation does not seem to realize is that it is
responsible for what the younger generation is to-day. Take
all this sex talk that is so prevalent. There is no doubt that we,
revolting against the false modesty and prudery of our child-

I 377 1

hood, and inspired by such plays as Wedekind s Spring s
Awakening/ may have gone a little too far in clearing up the
sex mystery. In order to get away from the foolish reticence
of our parents, we may have stressed sex too much, and the
result is the younger generation Is sex-conscious* In fact, it
goes around with the idea that it has suddenly made a great
discovery: there is such a thing In the world as sex. Strange
as it may seem to them, sex existed long before they were
born. Spring was spring ever since this world began, and
youth has always been youth. The boys and girls who two-
stepped to the "Washington Post March and those who
waltzed to The Merry Widow* had the same feelings as
those of to-day, and I don t honestly think there is much more
side-stepping.

"There is no doubt that there are dances that would not
have been tolerated years ago, dances indulged in solely to
awaken emotions I begin to feel old when I talk this way
but I s wonder whether the proportion of young people who
indulge in these is any larger than the proportion that found
equally exciting pastimes in years gone by."

"Do you believe," I asked, "that there is a lowering of
moral standards ?"

"For the large part, I don t think there is," Mr. Tarkington
said. "Of course, youth is impetuous. It always has been.
It has seized on the idea that we have given it and perhaps it
has gone a little bit further than we expected. But if the
pendulum does not swing far to one side, it will never get to
the other. The principal thing that I fear may result from
our children going to this extreme is that our grandchildren
may be brought up in the same way as our grandmothers.
And that would be a calamity.

f 3781

"As a matter of fact, I think that a large part of the so-
called let-down in morality is rather a change in vocabulary
and a freedom of speech. I wonder how much more there is in
the c petting parties than there was in the old-fashioned
* spooning. What is the difference between *sex appeal and
f coquetry, charm, and c allure ? As far as I can see, they
an? all It.

"But even this change in vocabulary is not so marked as
some of the twenty-year-olds imagine. With a great air of
superiority they go around and say, Why, you people used to
call legs " limbs." Now, as a matter of fact, who did that but
maiden aunts who could boast only of a couple of toothpicks ?

"The older folks are saying: The young girls wear nothing
to-day. I leave it to you, are their dresses cut a bit shorter
than those of their mothers ? But so far as this curtailment of
clothes is concerned, I can see that it has done nothing but
make it unnecessary for a bunch of men to congregate on
corners on windy days. In other words, we have removed the
veil I don t say seven from a lot of things that required no
mystery. And the very fact that mystery no longer exists
makes natural things as they should be, natural. But here
again when our children take a natural view of things, some
Aunt Maria for they still exist excitedly exclaims, What
has become of the modesty of our ancestors ? Thank goodness
it is buried with them.

"There is another thing very similar to this. When we were
young and were told to do a certain thing, very often there
were good reasons why we didn t want to, but we knew
enough to keep our mouths shut. Realizing the injustice of this
method, we have treated our children as reasoning human
beings. When a child is told to do something to-day which does

f 3791

not seem right to him, he asks Why? 5 Now this is perfectly
proper. Still, the minute he demands to be treated in the way
that we have taught him he should be, some one is bound to
say, What has become of parental authority? Where is the
respect that we had for our parents ? *

"Of course, in a civilization as complex as ours, there are
countless contributing causes to these superficial changes.
Much has been said about the sex trend in literature, but that
is not as new as it seems. I remember a copy of *Sapho ? in my
father s library, and the English translations of Zola have
served as models for any number of our modern novels."

"But surely," I remarked, "books like these are more
universally read than they used to be."

"Up to fifteen or sixteen, the average boy still reads Henty
and his successors. So-called love stories are mush 5 to him.
After that he reads what his elders do, and as sex talk is no
longer taboo I don t feel that it has much effect, that is, on
the average boy or girl. But there is one class on which this
type of writing has had a direct influence. The sex novel, the
sex play and the psycho-analytical books have all contributed
to the creation of the young intelligentsia who, in striving for
apparent sophistication, do very foolish things. There are
undoubtedly more of these than there used to be. Before the
last few years those that there were, were the near-Bohemians.
They did as they pleased and blamed it on their souls and
temperaments. Now they find justification for their actions
in the dangers of repression and the resultant complexes.

"One cannot speak of this sex literature without also
mentioning the movies as they are to-day. At one time, there
was a prevalence of pictures in which there were gun fights
and hold-ups. To my mind that kind of picture did have

I 3801

a bad effect on the youngsters by youngsters I mean on the
boys ten, twelve, or fourteen years of age. To-day I feel that
the influence of the movie is nil. The younger ones have as
much use for love on the screen as they have for it in books.
The older ones have as much sense as we, and after they go to
them they wonder why they did.

"I think I have told you what, to my mind, are the super
ficial differences between this generation and the preceding
ones, but now I am going to tell you something else. When I
started out I intended to be an artist. I studied in the art
schools of Paris. Once I managed to sell a drawing to Life.
That was way back in 1894. Though I have given up art as a
profession, it was my first love and I am still true to it. It
means much to me and always will. But in spite of a life-long
interest, I ll confess that I cannot understand modern art. Do
you think the younger generation can tell me what it means ?"

381

XLII

^ - ^Q THE younger generation must be left the answers to
I many of the questions that are puzzling the world
JL to-day. Already they have begun to give them. A
twenty-five year old boy spanned the ocean in a plane while
older and perhaps more experienced heads hesitated and waited
for more favorable conditions. Lindbergh s flight was an expres
sion of youth. It was the younger generation s first answer to
one of the world s old questions, old as Icarus himself.

One day off the Irish coast the steward brought word into
the smoking room of an ocean liner that the "flying fool"
had landed in Paris. Many of the passengers did not even
know his name, but there was a scene there that I shall never
forget. Yet few realized the true import of that flight; few
realized that in those previous thirty-six hours a boy had
opened the way to the junk heap for the speeding boat and had
made the air as subservient as the sea to man s will. The world
sped forward years in that day and a half, carried along by
the will of youth.

I first saw Lindbergh in the American Embassy on the
Avenue de lena. Two or three days had passed since he had
landed at Le Bourget and my first glimpse of him was obtained
as he stood on the stairs of Ambassador Herrick s house and
answered questions that the press of the world hurled at him
a tall almost awkward figure who, hesitating, replied to inane
inquiries. And yet there was the charm and bashfulness of

{382

Charles A. Lindberg

boyhood, the bewilderment of one who had done something
of which he did not fully recognize the signifigance. It bore
out the story that before setting flight he had gone to young
Colonel Roosevelt and asked for a letter of introduction to the
American Ambassador.

After the reporters had left I went up to his room with
him. The haze of perplexity was still evident. In body he
had come to earth, mentally he was still at sea. And yet
there was a discernment of realities and a keenness sufficient
to prompt him to put himself in the trusted hands of the
Ambassador. True to youth, Lindbergh had shifted respon
sibilities. And tired Herrick, reclining in his bed and eating
his petit dejeuner in true French fashion, as he picked up large
strawberries by their stems and dipped them in sugar,
expressed fear that Byrd might land before he had finished
with Lindbergh.

It was a new experience for the American representative.
Men did not drop from the skies every day and the rigid rules
of etiquette were stretched. Diplomacy is not accustomed to
dealing with the unexpected. Yet Herrick liked it though it
tired him. He liked the boyishness of the adventurer and the
almost childlike obedience which he gave.

Weeks afterwards, hunched, snarling Briand said in his
office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: "The first reception
which we gave to Lindbergh we would have given to any one
who had made the trip; the following ovations were as much
for the sweet, simple boy as for the daring aviator/ From an
appreciation of bravery it became a glorification of youth.

And it was youth that I saw in that upper room in the
American Embassy on that May afternoon in 1927. It was
youth, forgetful of the dangers, though still stunned. It was

f 385]

youth, anxious about a new suit of clothes which he had just
ordered, for the very ones on his back were borrowed and fitted
none too well.

He is not articulate. He seems unimaginative. And yet when
I asked him when he first got the idea of crossing he said:
"I was carrying the mail. In the daytime I could see what was
below me. But in the nighttime it was different. Looking down,
often there would be nothing but blackness, and I had to
strain my eyes to catch some familiar light which would be
my guide.

"One night I was traveling eastward. It was terribly dark
and I had to keep my eyes wide open to catch the guiding light.
As I flew through the blackness and saw nothing, suddenly
the idea came to me. Suppose I should miss my bearings and
keep on flying eastward. Eventually I would strike Europe."
He smiled. It was a sort of shamefaced smile, as if he were
half-ashamed for having let himself go. And then the talk
changed and he spoke of the crossing. The shield was once more
in place and it was "We" not "He" that said words. It was
not revealing, it served to carry him further away than did the
silence.

Often I have thought of that time, of the crowds outside
the embassy iron gates, of* the only talk that one heard on the
boulevards and avenues, of the conversation over the tables
outside the cafes. Paris forgot she was French, the drone of a
motor had drowned out even the "Marseillaise." I had seen
Paris in war time. While bombs from German airplanes over
head were dropping, old men pruned rose bushes in the garden
of the Tuileries. But even the shears, which would not stop
for the enemy, halted as this messenger from over the seas
sailed through the skies, and business which carried on as best
f 386 J

it could under German guns, ceased in homage to youth and
bravery.

It was the world s expression of praise of accomplishment.
And yet even as I sat in that room drawing the first human
being who had flown alone across the ocean, as the cheers of
thousands were still literally sounding in his ears, memories arose
of Langley and his dashed hopes as his airplane crashed into the
Potomac, and Lillienthal and his death as he tried to soar in a
motorless plane. And the thought came, too, that one sudden
gust of treacherous wind, over which no one had control,
might have put an end to this flight before its object was
accomplished.

How close are failure and success.

f 387

The type used for the text is Monotype No. 37 E. Set,
electratyped and printed by The Maple Press Company,
York, Pa. Illustrations reproduced and printed by the
Fredrick Photogelatine Press , Inc., New York, N. Y.

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