Evening star., 1925-02-03
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
/. G.. M.
WILLARD STRAIGHT. Herbert Croly.
The Macmillan Company.

When President Coolidge goes
| a-walking along the street, interest
spontaneous and general turns upon
| him. The President Of the United
| States is passing by. In diminished
degree lesser notables also command
prompt and eager attention. Here
| IN Washington, Senator'S, diplomats,
military heroes. even millionaires,
come In for a goodly share Of curios-
| ity and concern. Personal achievement
| recognized and acclaimed, is an ire
| sistible lodestone toward which the ma
Jority drifts in ready homage. But be-
| low these superexcellencies of attain
| ment, always relatively few in num-
| Der, there are thousands less notable
who, upon some chance Of discovery,
| some accident of contact, are found
| to be fronting upon the great busi-
ness of being alive in a manner of IL
| Elimination and significance to the
! rest of the world.
| AS 1t Is with men, SO it is with
| books about men. The life story of
a great man is an already discovered
| country, it's richness Of resource and
promise well known. Around it
crowds of eager readers and listen
| ers gather in a surety of substan-
\ tial reward. On the other hand, the
| biography of an uncelebrated man,
| unless II speedily uncover some spe-
| cial lure of gesture, some striking
promise Of good returns, remains
neglected region into whose doubt
| illnesses few are inclined to ven
| ture.
Willard Straight is an unknown
| man. So, study of his life must, at
first, depend upon externals to bring
| one to attention before II. If mere
4 ool Ia To OF
| gesture of arrest and consideration,
| this book may be counted upon to do
| 1t. A dignified volume, possessed of
| personality, this one-aIl of it's parts
| contributing to such an effect. AS
one leafs it, feeling its suave quality,
/ relighting in its innumera BILE
sketches-Straight's own-that help
| points. one Is very likely to say.
| What a beautiful book" And 1t is
+, On the front page Is the picture Of
| a young man. The face finer and
more sensitive than II Is merely hand
| some. Eager, questioning eyes look
! straight at you out Of this picture
And I. personally, recall one of tive
| inspired teachers that IT was my
| good fortune to meet in a profession
dealing exclusively with teachers
| There, the same sensitive face the
| same ardent absorption in the eyes.
Willard Straight's father, this, who,
in a little city of New York State,
| spent himself in a passion Of zeal for
| education just as Willard Straight
| spent himself in other fields. Ex-
actly the same spirit inflamed. and
1 consumed, the two.
! X X
| Inside the book, in the hands of the
| story itself, you are carried along
| enthralled with its youth and ardor
| with its adventure and romance and
| drama. It is like the swift passing
of some bright and shining figure
| that by its own high spirit and dar-
| ing seizes upon life itself and holding
1t high sweeps onward like some
| storied hero of legend or of myth.
| Yet this is plain accounts plain
| as the documented facts of daily
record and the evidence of witnesses
| and the testimony of friends can
| make an account reliable and true.
1t is the essence OF willard Straight's s
! life distilled through the usually in
| adequate medium of words that de-
! liyers over to US this figure out Of
| chivalry and romance.
X =
And what did he do, this Willard
Straight? He only partly did each of
| several things. No, this does not
| mere CONNOte vaccination ana lnSld-
bility of purpose. Rather does it give
the effect of some flying creature. its
! wings perpetually astretch for the
| attainment of still greater heights,
| for the trying out of still rarer
zones. And more-for it portrays
| fearlessness in the face of change,
that dread thing before which the
| rest of us are so altogether fearful
An architect by college training,
l
| ing fast, however, to the art culture
that this training involved. For the
man is, clearly an artist talking
easily with a pencil as about every
| page of this book discloses. At 21
! he was in China, an official IN the
| Chinese customs service, putting in
| hours and hours each day to the
! study Of the Chinese language. In
| 1904 he left this service to become a
| correspondent for the period of the
| Russo-Japanese war Next, he was
vice consul at Seoul. After that he
| served in Korea, in Washington, In
Cuba, representing the home Gov
ernment Then in Mukden as consul
| general. Then into the World War
| Then into death itself-still a young
| man, still eager and ardent and
/ pressing.
His most considerable work-this,
too an unfinished enterprise-was
! done, one judges. when Willard
| Straight was consul-g general at Muk-
! den. An American of highly patri-
otic feelings, he readily brought him
| self to the conclusion that the United
States in its policy toward China was
less self-seeking than the other
| countries were in their designs upon
| this crippled country. To catch a
belief was, for Willard Straight. like
! catching the fiery zeal of a crusader
At once he set to work, in an effort
the circumvent the encroachments Of
| these other countries. Where he
| could he sought an out-and-out CO.
operation with the best of these,
| with those which he considered the
| best, the most unSelfish. With the
others he tried such measures as he
| thought best suited to their own
! methods. No one man in the world
| could achieve what he set out to do.
| No one man could travel this road
for any lengh of time without COM
| ing upon hindrances and harrass-
/ ments calculated to thwart his de-
| signs and to cut short his own career
! in that particular field. Undaunted,
| he abandoned the consular service in
order to interest American capital in
| the development of China This new
venture became the foremost object
of his Immediately succeeding years,
an object to him justified through
| seven years of study in China, of ex-
perience and experiment there. His
/ vision for China was that of a coun-
| try opened to opportunity through
| the honest development of its ma
| tural resources, through the found
i ing of industries, through a changed
political and social organization to
. !, -.
| He could work in a frenzy of energy
| to materialize that vision. But under