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Cleveland received a grilling to which his experiences in the White House were "as child's play," as he expressed it. The two men, the editor and the former President, were now bracketed as copartners in crime in the eyes of the club-women, and nothing too harsh could be found to say or write of either. Meanwhile Bok had been watching the petitions for his removal which kept coming in.
Once in a while a bit of untold history crept into a letter sent to Bok; as for example in the letter, referred to in a previous chapter from General Jubal A. Early, the Confederate general, in which he gave an explanation, never before fully given, of his reasons for the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: "The town of Chambersburg was burned on the same day on which the demand on it was made by McCausland and refused.
Despite advice to the contrary, Bok decided, after consulting a number of mothers, to establish the system. It was understood that the greatest care was to be exercised: the most expert advice, if needed, was to be sought and given, and the thousands of cases at the Babies' Hospital were to be laid under contribution.
The public spends its largest money on necessities: on what it can't do without. It must telegraph; it need not read. It can read in libraries. A promising boy such as you are, with his life before him, should choose the right sort of business, not the wrong one." But, as facts proved, the "little wizard of Wall Street" was wrong in his prediction; Edward Bok was not choosing the wrong business.
Bok scanned the rather crowded field of thought very carefully, and selected for discussion in the magazine such questions as seemed to him most important for the public to understand in order to face and solve its impending problems. The outstanding question he saw which would immediately face men and women of the country was the problem of Americanization.
Bok stood transfixed. In sending men over in the service of the Y. M. C. A. he had several times told them to be ready for any act that they might be asked to render, even the most sacred one. And here he stood himself before that duty. He felt as if he stood stripped before his Maker.
Here he found special difficulty in that the aged author could not speak English, and Bok knew only a few words of casual French. Finally a neighbor's servant who knew a handful of English words was commandeered, and a halting three-cornered conversation was begun.
It is an instance not of Bok taking the initiative that had already been taken but of throwing the whole force of the magazine with those working in the field to help. It is the American woman who is primarily responsible for the safe and sane Fourth, so far as it already exists in this country to-day, and it is the American woman who can make it universal. Mrs.
One afternoon as he wandered into Bok's office, he was just putting his pipe away. The pipe, of the corncob variety, was very aged and black. Bok asked him whether it was the only pipe he had. "Oh, no," Mark answered, "I have several. But they're all like this. I never smoke a new corncob pipe. A new pipe irritates the throat.
The result, as one now looks back upon it, was truly amazing; an uncanny timeliness would often color material on publication day. Of course, much of this was due to the close government co-operation, so generously and painstakingly given. With the establishment of the various war boards in Washington, Bok received overtures to associate himself exclusively with them and move to the capital.
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