The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1918-12-11
Manning and Kilner.

troops 100000 marks.
Manning and Kilmer.
The New York Times.
Of the men who went straight from
the editorial Offices of the New York
Times into the wear Of khaki, two
have been killed, two of the brightest
minds that ever served this news
paper. The first was Sergt. Joyce
Kilmer Of the Sunday department,
who was killed while performing du-
ty of special danger at the battle of
the Ourcq in July. Now comes news
of another, Maj. William Sinkler
Manning of the Washington bureau,
killed only five days before the end
of the war. Manning's work was
known to hundreds of thousands who
did not know his name or that he ex-
listed; for after being a reporter in
New York he wrote, for years, the
news coming out of the United States
senate.
About these two young men there
hangs an odd similarity. Both wer9
gentlemen to the fnger-tips, of atl
almost dilettante sort of gentlehoof.
Kilmer was from the North, Man.
ming from the South; New York and
South Carolina were their States.
! Both seemed to be appointed for
greater things than they were doing,
and to be idling along pathway
waiting for a call. The moment the
call came they answered with a 5ten-
torian voice, and were transhg1dred.
They did not seem to be the same
men. Manning thought he heard the.
call to Mexico in 1915, and bade
adieu to the senate for boo Is and
saddle. That was a short, strangled
campaign, and he came home( bitter
ly disappointed after his shard in the
Villa hunt resuming with difficulty the
humdrum life; 1917 sounded the real
call, and this time there was no mis-
take.
The promise Of both THESE lives
wilted before German bullets In Man
ning's case it is easy to see where
the fulfllment of that promise would
have lain; South Carolina could not
have done too much for the gallant
representative of this fifth generation
bof soldier Mannings, whose blood has
honored every war from the Revo1u-
ton. He was man, too. born to dis
tinction, with a ICE and figure
meet for it. with a heart of iron under
the gentlest of manner kllmer, al
ready of celebrity as a poet, but ca
pable of vastly greater things than he
had ever done, and neeFding only the
contact with the reality of life which
the war gave him-as His letters show
to rise to great heigh3s in his chosen
Field after battle should be ended,
had already given proof of the prom
Use he held out.
Manning, the son Of Ia governor, the
scion of notable Southern family,
had always about him a half-grave
insouciance which gave character to
his manners. He seemed to take life
idly, an5 not to be sure that it was
not wholly humorous; until. indeed.
some incident crossed his way that
called for the dropping Of the velvet
/ glove, and then a hand of steel
sprang forth. Rougher men, deceiv-
ed by his manner, sometimes under
valued him and found it a costly mis-
take. There were cases where such
1 CSNe~AAAS
friends and devoted admirers for
fife, though he and they continued to
speak different language. He had
! the keenest Of wits, and a gentle hu-
NOR which, when the chance offered,
shone Unexpectedly through his writ
ings on the gravest subjects. AS
reporter of national conventions, the
hardest and yet most delicate work
known to the newspaper business, he
developed Immediately what other
men learn through long experience.
the ability to seize instantly the CEN
ter or cause of every incident in the
PANORAMA and make it vivid to: his
readers.
OF these two brilliant men, for
whom the future held promises SO
high, which had the hardest fate, he
| who fell at the beginning Of American
campaign, or he who saw all of it but
| five days? The hardest fate fell to
| Manning, if we are to follow James
Whitcomb Riley's Goodbye, Jim:
Think of him-with the war plum
through
And the glorious old Red, White and
Blue.
A-laughin' the news down over Jim.
And the old men, bendin' over him.
And yet Kilmer's fate was the
fate of Ellsworth and Baker and
Theodore Winthrop in 1861, and there
was a. time when the nation thought
theirs the hardest of fates. Of both |
these men it may be said that the
chief sufferer is their country, which !
would have had great things from
them, but which yet has had from
them the purest and highest gift, the
gift of young. spotless, and noble
lives: Curtins' gift. the greatest ever
offered to the altar Of Rome.
Capt. H. /. Shaw. r. NJ. c.. who has