The Appeal., 1911-05-20

inele are soldlers and sailors of high rank, men
gray In service and gray in years who have never
neen aole 10 i've down some little act of their
hVes at either the naval or military academy
"hlcn maze them unpopular with their fellows,
ana tne efect OF which lasts to this day
Namlng no names and giving no specific case
Win oate and circumstances it may be said that
III one Oh the greatest controversies which ever
Vexeo tne 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 smply
because they thought that the thing he was
charged with doing was in keeping with
he committed as boy an 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 streak of timidity that is called by a
harsher word, who does some other thing that
boys in their boyish humor do not like. When a
man graduates and gets into the service he Is no
longer cut, but his society is not sought and as
result perhaps Of mere momentary weakness,
or a mere monentary thoughtlessness, whole
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. ..t
William w. Russell not long ago was this gov
ernment's envoy extraordinary and minister plen-
ipotentiary to Venezuela. He was in the South
American country at the time Of the strained rela
tons which existed for a while between Uncle
Sam and President Castro. Il
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 he
was not always grave one burdened with the
affairs of state Once upon time he was pete
Russell, midshipman at the United States naval
academy. William was changed into 'Pete" the
minute that he reported at Annapolis, but truth
compels the statement that neither the official
archives the middies' archives disclose the
for turning William into Pete" Suffice is
to know that the middies would have it that way,
and that way it went Eta VIE
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 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
Midshpman Russell had way with him, and
the middies and the authorities were not long in
finding it out. Pete had difficulty in restraining
himself on occasions, as Witness
One Sunday at Annapolis the chaplain preached
long and droningly. The listening middies were
tired with the heat of the day the
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 chapain's DISCOURSE started In to sing Sun
of Ny Soul" He went through the first line un
trippingly and then struck into the second TT is
not night" he sang Then he repeated. 1T & not