The Days of a Man 1913 



Mary Putnam, 1 a fellow teacher from Los Angeles. 

 Guerard, for some years assistant professor of French 

 at Stanford, had shortly before accepted a chair in 

 Rice Institute, Houston, Texas. A native of Paris and 

 a graduate of the Ecole Normale of the University, 

 where he was for a time instructor in English, he 

 had also spent a year in London in settlement work 

 at Toynbee Hall all before accepting a college 

 position and marrying in America. As a student he 

 had been a pacifist, a democrat, and a " Dreyfusiste." 

 An admi- Master of a singularly clear English style, he was now 

 rabie work en g a g e( j j n p ar i s on his first important book, " French 

 Prophets of the Nineteenth Century," published soon 

 after (at my instance) by Unwin. 



Among all my French acquaintances I found no one . 

 more familiar than Guerard with modern France at 

 her best, and none could have been more wisely tact- 

 ful in dealing with the different elements concerned 

 in the delicate situation we jointly investigated. 

 For, as I should here explain, my purpose was to get 

 some first-hand knowledge of conditions then pre- 

 vailing in the sorely tried district of Alsace-Lorraine. 

 We accordingly proceeded to interview the leading 

 people of the province as well as many others 

 with a view to finding out the real feeling in regard to 

 past and future political relations. We took special 

 pains to acquaint ourselves with all phases of opinion 

 from the most ultra-imperialistic views of Professor 

 Harry Bresslau in Strasbourg to the extreme national- 

 istic stand of Abbe Wetterle, "Oncle Hansi," and 

 others in Upper Alsace. 



Usually I began the conversation somewhat as 

 follows : 



1 Now Mrs. Henck of Hemet, California. 



C 502 3 



