His
enthusiasms, his vigor, his fine passions, his fondness for
his friends, these, nor the joy he found in the pursuit of his
profession, had not faded. And there come to me now, as I
think of him filled with life, flashes from his writings that
have moved me, and move me indescribably still. "Le Style,"
as Rolland remarks, "c'est l'ame." It was so in Mr. Davis's
case. He had the rare faculty of stirring by a phrase the
imaginations of men, of including in a phrase a picture, an
event--a cataclysm. Such a phrase was that in which he
described the entry of German hosts into Brussels. He was not
a man, when enlisted in a cause, to count the cost to himself.
Many causes will miss him, and many friends, and many admirers,
yet his personality remains with us forever, in his work.
BY LEONARD WOOD
The death of Richard Harding Davis was a real loss to the
movement for preparedness. Mr. Davis had an extensive
experience as a military observer, and thoroughly appreciated
the need of a general training system like that of Australia
or Switzerland and of thorough organization of our industrial
resources in order to establish a condition of reasonable
preparedness in this country. A few days before his death he
came to Governor's Island for the purpose of ascertaining in
what line of work he could be most useful in building up sound
public opinion in favor of such preparedness as would give us
a real peace-insurance.
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