Recreation by Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G.

by Viscount Edward Grey Grey of Fallodon

But points of view are different in different countries. We may find ourselves looking, not only at political questions, but at incidents in natural history from a different point of view when we are on different sides of an ocean. The other day I was in a contemplative mood not far from Washington. I was thinking what a great country I was in, how much larger the rivers were and how vast the distances, and generally working up in my own mind an impression of the great size of the country. Then I happened to recall this incident of the golden-

crested wren, and I found myself thinking, of course, in a tiny little island like Great Britain, where one cannot go in an express train at fifty miles an hour from east to west or from north to south in a straight line for more than fifteen hours without falling into the sea, the only song we could have in common with a great continent like this would be the song of the smallest bird.

One trivial incident there was in our walk which gave us some amusement. We were going by footpaths down a river valley, a very beautiful, but a very tame and settled country, where anything like an adventure seemed impossible. We were on a path which I had known for many years, and along which I had walked many times, not only without adventure, but without even incident. Suddenly we found ourselves stopped—the path was flooded, some weeds had blocked the river close by, and instead of a dry path we had about

twenty yards of water in front of us. The water was not very deep, certainly not above our knees, but I had not intended that there should be any wading in our walk nor had I prepared for it. I asked if he would mind going through the water, to which, of course, he replied that he would not. So we went through, got wet, and in the course of the afternoon got dry again as we walked. Nothing of the same kind had happened there before; nothing has happened since. I think there was some magnetism about Colonel Roosevelt's personality which created incidents.

After going a few miles down the valley we got into our motor, which was waiting at a village inn, and drove to what is called the New Forest, though it is more than eight hundred years old. We were now in a country of wild heath, quite uncultivated, and the part we went through was mostly natural forest. Here we heard some birds

different from any we had heard in the valley of the Itchen, and got to a little inn standing on the open heath about nine o'clock in the evening. We had dinner, and next morning we breakfasted together and went to Southampton, whence Colonel Roosevelt returned to America.

I am not attempting here a full appreciation of Colonel Roosevelt. He will be known for all time as one of the great men of America. I am only giving you this personal recollection as a little contribution to his memory, as one that I can make from personal knowledge and which is now known only to myself. His conversation about birds was made interesting by quotations from poets. He talked also about politics, and in the whole of his conversation about them there was nothing but the motive of public spirit and patriotism. I saw enough of him to know that to be with him was to be stimulated in the best sense of the word

for the work of life. Perhaps it is not yet realised how great he was in the matter of knowledge as well as in action. Everybody knows that he was a great man of action in the fullest sense of the word. The Press has always proclaimed that. It is less often that a tribute is paid to him as a man of knowledge as well as a man of action. Two of your greatest experts in natural history told me the other day that Colonel Roosevelt could, in that department of knowledge, hold his own with experts. His knowledge of literature was also very great, and it was knowledge of the best. It is seldom that you find so great a man of action who was also a man of such wide and accurate knowledge. I happened to be impressed by his knowledge of natural history and literature and to have had first-hand evidence of both, but I gather from others that there were other fields of knowledge in which he was also remarkable. Not long ago when an English

friend of mine was dying, his business agent came over to see him. One of the family asked the agent whether he had come on important business. "No," he said, "I have come for a little conversation because I was feeling depressed this morning and I wanted to be made to feel two inches taller." That saying would, I think, have been specially applicable to Colonel Roosevelt also. He could make people feel bigger and stronger and better.

And now my last discourse shall be on one sentence from Colonel Roosevelt which I saw quoted the other day. It is this: "He is not fit to live who is not fit to die, and he is not fit to die who shrinks from the joy of life or from the duty of life." Observe that the joy of life and the duty of life are put side by side. Many people preach the doctrine of the duty of life. It is comparatively seldom that you find one who puts the joy of life as something to be cultivated, to be en