and lasting affection. I recognized constantly as his successor that I was the beneficiary of the good will which he did so much to create. He had the respect and something more of all ranks of society. Perhaps the instant widespread response in Great Britain to the suggestion of a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey is the most striking tribute ever paid to an American diplomat.
Many other expressions it would have been only too easy to gather from friends and associates, but let it suffice to rend one more from another son of North Carolina, himself fitted for any public responsibility, however grave or however delicate—Edwin A. Alderman:
Intense practical patriotism was incarnated in Walter Page. There was nothing provincial about him in this manifestation, for his mind was a world mind and his interests cosmic interests—though he brooded over the region that gave him birth like a mother over her children, trying always to aid it, even if he had thereby to incur unpopularity and outspoken criticism. He was a persistent and intelligent radical in the best sense of that incisive word, always upon an unending quest for excellence, and a serious crusader against vain pretension. His passion was rebuilding old commonwealths, rural life, education systems. His faith was in trained men.
It is the man in his intrinsic worth that we honor, and it is the pride of our American democracy that it nurtures such men. Here was a man who did his work as he was impelled to do it, and who followed the bent of his own genius. He sought no honors, yet his name is held in grateful esteem throughout the English-speaking world, and it will have its secure place in the history of America's effort to make its own democratic faith a universal religion.
He himself would say that we are brought back to the lesson that the boys and girls of North Carolina are worth all that the State can learn how to expend wisely for the training of their minds and hands, and the shaping of their ideals. The history of a State like this is a never-ending drama. Its present grows out of its past, and the scenes and acts of the future must be here within the fixed boundaries that will continue for ages to come.
The work, therefore, of societies like yours is one of patriotism and devotion, not less than one of rational pleasure and durable satisfaction.
