The Days of a Man D910 



Eohson Hobson is one of the wisest, most clear-headed of 



'^"^ British internationahsts and tlioroughly devoted to 



Brunner ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ y^fd^zt. In later visits I enjoyed his com- 

 panionship, and in 1920 Mrs. Jordan and I had the 

 pleasure of entertaining him and his wife in our home 

 at Stanford. Sir John was a staunch, energetic 

 business man, especially interested in the freedom of 

 the seas and a leader in the campaign for the abolition 

 of the so-called right of capture of merchant and 

 passenger ships. A strong move in this direction had 

 been made at the Hague Conference in 1907, but 

 unfortunately the British vote was cast against 

 abolition, favored by both Germany and America. 



At another time my hosts took me on a long trip 

 through central and western England. Whenever 

 possible we ate our midday meal in a forest. One 

 day we stopped on a wooded hill in Derbyshire about 

 two miles from the city of Rocester, which lies 

 across the river Trent in Staffordshire. Below on the 

 Ahhots- slope rose the Abbotsholme School for boys, founded 

 holme and conducted by Mr. Cecil Reddie, a man of 

 advanced educational ideas who tried to escape the 

 ruts into which the British so-called " Public Schools" 

 have fallen. His pupils camp and tramp, and fish 

 in the silvery Trent celebrated three centuries 

 ago by Izaak Walton. Reddie I have since met at 

 different times both in America and England, and 

 in 19 1 3 my family and I accepted his friendly 

 hospitality for a night. 

 The Cots- Our next lunch we ate on a forest-clad height of the 

 wolds Cotswolds overlooking a fair valley of Gloucester- 

 shire, a point which might well have been the one 

 where Ralph Hodgson had his vision in "The Song 

 of Honour Passing." Westward we tarried in the 



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