The New York herald., 1922-10-08

and believed in life, and life more abun-
dant.
After Walter Pages death President Al
derman of the University of Virginia, in a
memorial service, asserted his belief that
when Pages correspondence came to be
published he would be found to be one of
the great letter writer's of his time, if not
of all time. Mr.. Hendricks biography JUS
titles this prediction.
Page was essentially a literary man;
that is to say, he believed that literature
is the expression of life. He was familiar
with poetry and prose of both ancient and
modern times. But he was very far from
highbrow. He wrote in terse and pull
sating English that lives. and moves, and
breathes He was not afraid of metaphors
taken from common life or even of slang
phrases when they expressed his meaning.
To his old publishing and editorial COL
leagues he wrote:
1 don't mind telling you nobody else)
that the more / see just how great
statesmen work and manage great gov
ernments-the more see of them at
close range-whether in Washington or
London or Berlin OF Vienna or Con-
stantinople (for these are my Capitals),
the more 1 admire the methods of the
Long Island farmers. Boys, l swear /
could take our crowd and do a better
job than many of these great men do
OF course everybodys worked to
death. But something else ails lot of
'em all the way from Constantinople to
London. Leaving out common gutter
af ~ t1aa cha
stupidity of Governments is amazing.
They are all so human, so mighty human.
1 wouldn't be a Government for any
earthly consideration. I'd rather be a
brindle dog and trot under the wagon.
Yet his spirit was not captious or criti-
cal or self-laudatory. He speaks of himself
somewhere as "greenhorn picked off the
plain of Long Island" and in another letter.
referring to the problems and work Of the
embassy during the neutrality period, he
indulges in this demurrer:
So far as 1 know, we've done fairly
well; but always in proportion TO silence.
1 don't want any publicity. / don't want
any glory. 1 don't want any office. L
don't want nothin'-but TO do this job
squarely, to get out of this scrape, to go
see if 1 can slip back into my old self
and see the world sane again. Yet I'm
immensely proud that 1 have had the
chance to do some good-to keep our
record straight-as far as I can, and to
be of what service 1 can to these heroic
people
A delightful letter to his year old grand
son is quite comparable to the immortal
letters of Theodore Roosevelt to his chill
dren. Indeed, one cannot help wondering
what extraordinary epistolary literature
might have been produced if Theodore
Roosevelt had been President in Washing
ton and Walter Page Ambassador In Lon
don during the period Of the war. How
they would have rejoiced each others
hearts by comments, criticisms and COM
mendations on human frailties and human
virtues, punctuated by occasional explo-
sions of uproarious laughter
Walter Page died before he reached his
64th birthday, killed in the war as much
as If he had been the victim of a German
shell in a trench on the Western front
His countrymen respected him, but did not
know him as well as they knew some of the
other great civilian figures of the conflict
Cardinal Mercier, for example. This book
will reveal to American readers that they
had a representative near the fighting
front who loved human liberty and the
divine rights of man as deeply as did the
great Cardinal.