Mrs. Grundy. (Tracy City, Tenn.) 1903-1930, 1911-05-25

mere are soldiers and sailors of high rank men
gray IN service and gray in years who have never
been able TO live down some little act of their
hVes at elther the naval or military academy
which made them unpopular with their fellows
and the effect of which lasts to this day
Naming no names and giving no specific case
with date and circumstances 1t may be said that
IN one OF the greatest controversies which ever
vexed the service one man won out with the
country, but did not win out with his fellow Off
GERS, and he did not win out with them simply
because they thought that the thing he was
charged with doing was in keeping with one act
he committed as a boy act that lost him stand
ing with his fellow students.
At West Point and Annapolis they have habit
Of cutting" the boy who bears tales, or who
shows a streak of timidity that is called by
harsher word, who does some other thing that
boys in their boyish humor do not like, When
man graduates and gets into the service he is no
longer cut, but his society is not sought and as
a result perhaps of a mere momentary weakness
or mere monetary thoughtlessness whole
career from the social point of view may be
blasted. There are some cases in the army and
navy today, and pretty fair measure by which
to Judge of mans personality is the measure Of
regard in which he is held in later life by the
men who went to school with him in the day Of
the boy.
William w Russell not long ago this gov
ernment's envoy extraordinary and minister pen-
| ipotentiary to Venezuela. he was in the South
American country at the time of the strained rea-
lions which existed for while between Uncle
| Sam and President Castro,
William W. Russell is popular In the navy and
| his popularity dates back to his school days. He
is grave diplomat with light In his eye that
neither gravity nor position put out But ne
was not always a grave one burdened with the
affairs of state. Once upon time he was Pete
| Of he limited States naval
academy. William was changed into Pete" the
minute that he reported at Annapolis. but truth
compes the statement that neither the official
archives nor the middes archives disclose the rea
son for turning William into Pete" Suffice is
to know that the middies would have 1t that way,
and that way 1t went
Some time ago had dinner with graduate of
Annapolis who had known William w. Russell In
his Pete" days at the academy. Midshipman
Russell did not graduate, but he was long enough
at the academy to leave his mark upon the inst
tuition and to make his memory dwell lovingly
in the hearts of succeeding generations of mid
dies Possibly some of the stories that the gradu
ate told of Pete's school days may account in
| some measure for the fact that he became dip
lomat instead of becoming salt
Midshipman Russell had a way with him, and
the middies and the authorities were not long In
finding it out. Pete had difficulty in restraining
himself on occasions, witness
One Sunday at Annapolis the chaplain preached
| long and droningly. The listening middies were
tired out with the heat of the day and the bur
den of the sermon which lasted one hour and
ten minutes The sermon over, the soloist In the
choir undeterred and undismayed by the length
of the chaplains discourse, started in to sing Sun
Of NV Soul" He went through the first line un
trippngly and then struck into the second 1T is
not night" he sang Then he repeated, 1T is moi