The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-10-03

possessed, and able to parry and thrust
 in the great game with the utmost as-
 sllrance. He showed that should occa-
 sion arise he would know how to meet
 the bully with frmness. how to take
 fulsome declarations of friendship at
 their true value, and how to run great
 apparent risks without showing trace
 of uneasiness. With spectacle so nov
 el and so interesting before them, men
 asked in astonishment how it was that
 the poet and virtuoso could show such
 qualities and exhibit such perfect
 calmness in position of anxiety, diffl-
 culty and complication. Those who
 asked such question forgot MT. Hays
 training. They forgot that when young
 he had received the best possible edu-
 cation in affairs, had come under the
 influence of one of the ablest political
 minds of the century, andA became ac-
 quainted at first hand with great affairs
 during an epoch of stress and strain
 and of political danger and difficulty
 compared with which the Spanish war
 can have seemed hardly more than a
 storm in a teacup. MT. Hay had stood
 by Lincoln's side when the very exist
 ence of the Motherland was at stake.e Think what that three years vigil at
 Washington must have taught the pri-
 vte secretary of the president--a private
 secretary who shared to the full the
 confidence of his chief, knew his inner
 most mind, and watched how every
 crushing blow of the disaster in the
 field, or of folly and panic, doubt and
 suspicion, and even treachery at home,
 fell on the heroic soul of Lincoln A
 continent was on fire. and men seemed
 to feel the years reel and stagger be-
 heath them as one disaster came hud-
 ding on another. Washington was like an outpost pushed into the enemy's
 country. From the heights around had
 even thundered the cannon of the south,
 and the dead had been buried where
 they fell within a few miles of the
 town. Any night during the war a
 watcher from the white dome of the
 Capitol might have seen the campfires
 of the enamy. It was in such a place and in such an atmosphere of fierce war and flercer intrigue that the young Hay
 watched and shared the serenity with which MT. Lincoln faced and came yic-
 torious out of crisis after crisis.
 Though on the whole, the American
 people backed MT. Lincoln rlobly, there were moments when he had to confront a people angry, sullen and hysterical by turns, and when even the good and wise seemed to doubt the ability of the pilot to weather the storm. At such times, ad when to public distraction were add ed failures in the field and foreign com plications, it must indeed have been an education in affairs to see Mir. Lincoln turn his calm and uneager face nome to the instant need of things" and deal bravely with the actual and practical point in hand rather than with fears and hopes for the future. After such a training under such a master Mir. Hay had little to learn, A shallower man might possibly have unlearned this great lesson in a generation of leisured ease. But spirits are finely touched in fine issues, and the trne steel of MT. Hays character was brought by those terrible years to temper which 1t, had never lost e..4@sa .~S#
 We have perhaps said enough in praise of MT. Hay--certainiy more than enough if we were to consider MT. Hays own feelings-and of the wise and clear-eyed statesmanship with which he serves his country. We de- sire to add word or two on the gene- ral question Of political training in America There are too few men trained as Mir. Hay Was--i. e., by being brought early in contact with affairs. MT. Roosevelt, it is true, is an excep- tion, for he took part in public affairs at an early age, and so justifies every word that we desire to say in favor of early training in statesmansiiip. As 1 rule,s however, an American statesman knows nothing of great affairs till he has reached middle life. To put our into concrete shape, there are not enough political private secreta- ries in America; and, by private secre- taries' we mean, of course private see- retaries in the British sense, not mere clerks. We are speaking, | that is, of young men of ability and | and with the desire to serve