ll of excitement and meaning because of Walt Whitman. Just as
Stratford is Shakespeare, so is Camden Whitman. Some supercilious
observers, flashing through on the way to Atlantic City, may only see a
town in which there is no delirious and seizing beauty. Let us remind
them of Walt's own words:

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole
world.

And as I came back across the river, and an airplane hovered over us at
a great height, I thought how much we need a Whitman to-day, a poet who
can catch the heart and meaning of these grievous bitter years, who can
make plain the surging hopes that throb in the breasts of men. The world
has not flung itself into agony without some unexpressed vision that
lights the sacrifice. If Walt Whitman were here he would look on this
new world of moving pictures and gasoline engines and U-boats and tell
us what it means. His great heart, which with all its garrulous fumbling
had caught the deep music of human service and fellowship, would have
had true and fine words for us. And yet he would have found it a hard
world for one of his strolling meditative observancy. A speeding motor
truck would have run him down long ago!

As I left the ferry at Market Street I saw that the Norwegian steamer
_Taunton_ was unloading bananas at the Ericsson pier. Less than a month
ago she picked up the survivors of the schooner _Madrugada_, torpedoed
by a U-boat off Winter Bottom Shoal. On the _Madrugada_ was a young
friend of mine, a Dutch sailor, who told me of the disaster after he was
landed in New York. To come unexpectedly on the ship that had rescued
him seemed a great adventure. What a poem Walt Whitman could have made
of it!

II

It is a weakness of mine--not a sinful one, I hope--that whenever I see
any one reading a book in public I am agog to find out what it is.
Crossing over to Camden this morning a young woman on the ferry was
absorbed in a volume, and I couldn't resist peeping over her shoulder.
It was "Hans Brinker." On the same boat were several schoolboys carrying
copies of Myers' "History of Greece." Quaint, isn't it, how our schools
keep up the same old bunk! What earthly use will a smattering of Greek
history be to those boys? Surely to our citizens of the coming
generation the battles of the Marne will be more important than the
scuffle at Salamis.

My errand in Camden was to visit the