The Days of a Man 



D914 



At the 



Boston 



Economic 



Club 



Dr. Albert 



In Boston I spoke at a dinner of the Economic 

 Club, an affair which yielded one of the most dramatic 

 moments in my career. Four others also addressed 

 the gathering — Professors Albert Bushnell Hart, 

 Leo Wiener, and Kuno Francke of Harvard, and Dr. 

 Charles J. Albert of Berlin, recently arrived in 

 America with the ostensible purpose of awakening 

 sympathy for the German cause. 



Hart made a forceful indictment of German war 

 methods. Wiener discussed the envious and quarrel- 

 some temper which he claimed to be characteristic 

 of individual Germans, saying among other things 

 that "the majority of German police cases were 

 of the nature of provoke," and that "in America 

 quarrels among German professors gave university 

 presidents more trouble than any other single cause 

 whatever." Francke, a sweet-tempered gentleman, 

 spoke with kindliness and dignity of the better 

 qualities of the German people. I dealt with the 

 crushing biological effects of war, and condemned 

 the policy which had imposed this fatal condition 

 on Europe. 



Albert, a fluent and plausible young attorney, 

 claimed to have brought with him facsimiles of 

 documents found in the national archives at Brussels 

 which, he alleged, incriminated the rulers of Belgium 

 by proving a secret understanding between them 

 and the British government. What right the Ger- 

 mans had to the loot he did not explain, though 

 insisting that all their operations were perfectly 



but an assembly of good men devoted to the common welfare. The peoples will 

 be weaker, exhausted in money, in courage, in intelligence, in hope. The stand- 

 ards of life will all be lower. War relaxes the stamina of coming generations. 

 The 'human harvest' that war must yield is that of lessened human efficiency." 

 (As accurately reported in the New York Evening Post of November 17.) 



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