Life — April 3, 1913 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Aww 3, 191 “While there is Life there's Hope” Published by LIFE PUB J. A, Mrtennta. Prevt. ISHING COMPANY A. MILLER, See'y and Treas. 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Cannon House. M® RICH- ARD OLNEY has found himself unable to ac- cept the invitation of the President to represent our Government at the Court mes, and the papers say the place to ident has offered the President Eliot. So! Well Dr. Eliot would fill the place very handsomely. It does not seem entirely easy to fill. We like to send a person of distinction to repre- sent us in London; some one, if pos- sible, who is, beyond discussion, a gen- tleman and a scholar, and is, besides, a man of light and leading, used to affairs and polite life, and something of a statesman. And it helps a little if he can somehow lay hands on twenty or thirty thousand a year to pay for house rent in London and eke out the insufficient salary that Congress allows our Ambassador. Without considering the money that is desirable, there seems a curious scarcity in the Democratic party, and indeed in all the parties, of men who have the other qualifications. Mr. Ol- ney has them; President Eliot has them, and it has been suggested that they might be found in Mr. Charles Francis Adams. Consider these gen- tlemen: Dr. Eliot is seventy-nine and the other two are a little under sev- enty-eight, and Mr. Choate, lately Am- bassador, is eighty-one These be venerable men. Why is it, do you think, that when we are looking for an eminent man who Has grace, distinction, sophistica- tion, a gift of speech and some mes- reams’ Wiidgs., Loodon, E. C. sage to mankind, we have to go back two generations to find him? Of course, such men are scarce, al- ways, and in any country. Great Brit- ain never sent one to us until she sent Mr. Bryce. Of course, we have able and presentable Democrats who can do creditably the business of the Embassy in London, but is it not true that when it comes to picking out an American gentleman of dignity, distinction and public fame, between fifty and seventy years old, the search is a pretty anx- ious one? We have rich men to burn, good imen—-enough, competent men—a great many, but men of high distinction, with something else in their heads than the way to manage a railroad or make a bank big. very few. Mr. Choate, Dr. Eliot, Mr. Olney and Mr. Adams are men who started in life before the Civil War, and were taught in the schools and stamped with the ideals and the training of that gen- eration. Men twenty years younger matured in a time when Dr. Eliot had improved education, athletics and ap- paratus had begun to run away with the colleges, and the dominant inter- ests of the country had come to be commercial; when the great need was the development of an industrial ap- paratus and the captains of industry had dwarfed the scholars, and money had beaten manners out of the game. That period lasted from 1865 to about 1895. It was a great time and saw vast labors accomplished. Commercialism claimed all the best talent, and used it, doubtless. to good purpose. But the consequence is that when we look over our men of middle age we find lots of able bankers, lots of highly competent business lawyers, some wonderful rail- road men; abundance of shrewd manu- facturers and great corporation mana- gers and department store prodigies; but very few conspicuous men of emi- nent intellectual distinction. Probably we have the men, but they are comparatively obscure. They have been unadvertised among the vaunted, and poor among the rich. They have led the simple life because they had to, missed much of social experience that would have broadened them and done them good, and missed the atten- tions of the newspapers Such a man was Woodrow Wilson, when seven years ago he first became the object of Colonel Harvey's remark- able gift’ for political advertisement. But we have turned the corner, and the success of that remarkable feat of exploitation is evidence of it. In an- other twenty years it won't be so hard to find the product that is so scarce to- day, and perhaps in the course of an- other twenty years, Congress will con- sent to own a modest house in London and pay our Ambassador such a sum as will obviate the present painful quests for a distinguished man of good manners and high character, whose wife has got some money. see it reported that our good Secretary Bryan has got into private disfavor with several newspapers in Great Britain because of something he said somewhere, at a St. Patrick's Day dinner, about Home Rule and the House of Lords. It seems that these British papers object very much to his remarks, and think them unseemly in a Secretary of State of our Government We are glad to take this carly oppor- tunity to set our British friends right, once for all, in this matter. Colonel Bryan, as an employee of our Govern- ment, comes, of course, under the eight-hour law that limits the labors of all the Government help. What he says or discloses, while in Washington. between nine in the morning and six WE some comicbooks.com