The New York herald., 1922-10-08

hearten the faith of those who
believe in democracy. 1t furnishes
lifelike and speaking portrait. largely
painted by himself, of devout and de-
lghtful democrat. 1t shows that a man of
good TASTE intellectual power. classical
culture, and statesmanlike capacity and
genius, may spring from the soil and may
mature, unspoiled by the hurly burly of
life, as well as from a pedigreed lineage
and in an aristocratic atmosphere. There
is a school of philosophy which holds that
while democracy may increase the aver
age of human comfort and happiness. it
levels down the highest types of human
beings in the process of raising the lowest
types. Even so wise and eminent an
authority as James Bryce thought that
humdrum mediocrity is the greatest
danger that social and political democracy
has to face Certainly Walter Page was
neither humdrum nor mediocre. although
he sprang from pioneer soil and pioneer
parentage. His ancestors for several gen.
erations were of good stock, but his father
was of the pioneer variety of man. battling
with the rocks in the Cape River. or pene-
trating the virgin pine forests. telling trees,
and converting its raw materials to the
uses of a growing civilization; like many
of the Page breed, this Page was a giant in
size and in strength, as sound morally and
physically as the mighty forests in which
a considerable part of his life was spent,
brave. determined, aggressive. domineering
almost to the point of intolerance. deeply
religious and abstemious-a mixture of
the frontier and the Old Testament
prophet
Walter Hines Page, son of this pioneer.
was born in North Carolina and in 1865,
at 10 years of age, found himself in a
home of a family formerly comparatively
rich, but reduced by the civil war to
comparative poverty. Nevertheless the
future Ambassador to England was sent to
school probably at some self-sacrfice. as
so many Southern boys of that time and
lineage were. After an experimental and
unsatisfactory trial of a North Carolina
college he went to Randolph Macon, in
Virginia, where his classical training, es-
pecially i'm Greek was so good that when
he was not quite 81 years of age, he
won a fellowship in Greek at the newly
established Johns Hopkins University of
Baltimore At one time he intended to
be Methodist minister Later this plan
was changed to that of training himself
to be professor of Greek: and still later
when Professor Gildersleeve would as
him to study the peculla of its use
from Homer down to the byzantine
writer's, he really found himself in pretty
deep waters. Was it conceivable that a
man could spend his lifetime fin an oc-
cupation of this kind?'
Although his love of Greek poetry. and
indeed of literature in general. remained
with him throughout his life, he was really
not essentially a classicist He was a
thoroushsoing modern. interested in the
problems and progress of modern life.
1t was therefore, natural for him to be-
come a journalist In pursuit Of this
trade he wandered about the country.
editing here and there, and writing news
paper correspondence here and there; but
II was not until he became editor of the
Forum, monthly review like the English
Fortni0hHU and Contemporary, that he