New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-05-08
&c. w. S."
Some "reminiscences by Moreton Frewen, in
"The London Spectator"

George Washington Smalley has been for
now forty years a connecting link between
England and the United States, and think
few lines as to his last hours and where he
stood amid this amazing wreckage Of things
will be welcomed by his friends on both sides
During his last few days the writer was
fairly constant visitor. He was evidently ap-
preaching the great crossing, and this with
regret His faculties were quite unmpaired,
and his "unsatsfed curiosity as to what is
lust over the bar was extraordinarily stimu-
lated. Smalley's eyes had failed him, and it
was left 10 his friends TO construe for him
the march Of events which were clean outside
all his wide studies and experiences. Smalley
was always Pope. and his defect as an ex-
ponent Of international matters was in his
unwillingness 10 transmit news! What
chiefly alarms me-" Lincoln once said, "is not
the Judgment Day, but the day OF no judg-
ment" Smalley had for half a century been
reviewing those frequent spasms of mo Judg-
ment," TO which the American democracy is
much more prone than ours. lie was going
out. he felt, at a moment when all the weak
nesses OF the American Constitution stood re-
NealcQ. mus ne was BitaNiJ iHAPAtsotN ohN
greatly depressed. The entire moral idea"
for which The New York Tribune stood APP
peared to be doomed ! had known him very
intimately for a quarter Of a century. His
critical faculty and his uneasy political ex-
Attitudes made him, and particularly at
Washington, more enemies than friends
That il should have been left TO such a man
to balance for "The Times" the relations Of
John Hay and the Senate! Looking back on
it, the position was high comedy. Yet no one
knew the inner life there better, but his re-
luctance TO report what shocked his sense Of
the fitness Of things greatly reduced his value
as mere correspondent In times Of crisis.
To Lord Pauncefote he was invaluable at the
time when Holeben. the German Ambassador,
was quite openly laying the foundations at
enormous cost Of a reptile press and hyphen-
ated vote. But these are matters of history,
and the time has not arrived when they can
safely come under review.
! recall with much amusement meeting
him one evening at party in one Of the great
Fifth Avenue palaces. Smalley, with an old
mans air Of depreciation. said 10 his hostess:
your gatherings they are too large and too
late for me" That delightful companion, the
late senator OlcOtt, VINO was taking 20 me-
said: "But what he prefers TO the small and
early is the Earl and Smalley'! ! moved over
and told our friend this mot at his expense
He entered into the spirit Of it and said:
"Wolcott is right though something depends
on the EARL" The very last talk had with
him he devoted to the possibility of the nom
nation of Roosevelt this year. When Roose-
Welt went out in 1909. the Wing element in
the Republican party, which element, OF
course, Smalley voiced thought that night
mare administration which threatened every
thing valuable in the Constitution, and es-
pecially the judiciary, had gone and had done
its worst The other day was interested 20
find that. albeit his preference was for Root.
he had reconsidered his whole attitude as 20
Roosevelt. and he thought that the reunion
OF the Republican party under one or the
other was necessary II the United States were
70 survive