The Fort Sumner review., 1911-05-20

There 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
lives at either the naval 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 it may be said that
in one of the greatest controversies which ever
veXed the service 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
charged with doing in keeping with one act
he committed 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, 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 mere momentary weakness,
a mere monentary thoughtlessness, a whole
career from the social point of view may be
blasted. There are 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
ernments envoy extraordinary and minister plen-
American country at the time of the strained rela-
tions 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 can put out But he
was not always grave one burdened with the
affairs of state. Once upon time he was Pete
Russell, mdshpman at the United States naval
academy. William was changed into Pete the
minute that he reported at Annapolis, but truth
oompels the statement that neither the official
archives the mddies' archives disclose the rea-
son for turning William into Pete" Suffice is
to know that the middes would have it 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 way with him, and
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 undsmayed by the length
of the chapain's DISCOURSE started In to sing Sun
of NV Soul" He went through the first line un-
trippjngly and then struck into the second. 1T is
not night" he sang. Then he repeated, 1T is not