Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 143, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1914 — GREAT MEN MERELY HUMAN [ARTICLE]

GREAT MEN MERELY HUMAN

We Are All Too Apt to Forget Those Traits Which Link Them With Their Fellow*. In spite of the saying that no man is a hero to his own valet Napoleon’s man servant has given us a reverential account of his master from his own point of view, and now, simultaneously, there appear a life of King Edward by his chauffeur and a book about Cecil Rhodes by one of his seven private secretaries. King Edward was not a history maker in the accepted sense of the words, but a peacemaker, and the story of his life is anecdotal rather than epic. That even kings are not exempt from engine trouble and tiro trouble and the rest of the ill* that flesh is heir, to is seen in his chauffeur’s description. Here we have Cecil Rhodes as he was fn life-yin fatigue uniform, as it were. When they told hlm that the Dutch in Africa were salt of the earth, he remarked: "I’d like to know where I come in!” He was not unmindful of his own merits. "Creative genius, that'* what I’ve got,” he would say. “It’s a great thing to have." But he was not of the number of those who do not recognize an infinitely higher power than tbeiUown. "Let a man be a Mohammedan, let him be a Christian, or wbat you will;

if he does not believe in a Supremo Being he is no man—he is no better than a dog.” f ’ All too soon the impersonal chroni cle of the era in which a strong mas dwelt, the era profoundly affected by his indomitable will and resolute purpose, forgets those natural trait* which link him with his fellows. We behold him larger than life and hie “vast shadow glory crowned." It is of peculiar Interest to ordinary mortals when he is restored to a truer perspective ip relation to the universe, so that he is seen no longer as a demigod, but a* a man.