Show by ELMO SCOTT WATSON t HAT will the final verdict of history on george washington bet man or if e are to believe alie early day biographers of the rather of ills country it will be superman a paragon of all the lr who was not only farst in war first in peace end first in the hearts of lila countrymen but lirt in faultless living buch la the model which parson weems who indented the cherry tree etory established and it haa been in copied by many later blog raphers especially those who write our school histories if we ore to believe a later gen of historians it will be mao a man of his times with the habits of a man of his times including its faults as well as its virtues in short george W ashington the human being I 1 or more than a century geore washington has baffled the historians in effort to present the real washington years ago one of m prof john bach mcmaster pointed out the difficulties which con front the biographer of washington ahn he slid general washington Is known to us and president washington but eorge washington Is an unknown man when at ladt he is set before us as he lived we shall read less of the cherry tree and more of the roan naught surely that Is heroic will be emitted but side by side with what Is heroic will appear much that Is commonplace common e behold the great commander repairing defeat with marclous man clous celerity healing the of his and aiming the passions of his mutinous troops bat we shall also henr his oaths and see him in the terrible outbursts of passion to which mr jefferson has alluded and one of which mr lear has described ve shall febe him refusing to be for alls sen ices by congress yet expecting from the family of the poor mason the shilling that was due we shall know of him as the cold and forbidding character with whom no fellow man ever ventured to ave on close and familiar beims we shall and honor him for being not the greatest of generals not the most 0 his race but a man with mani human frailties and much corn inon sense ahu rose in the fullness of time to be the political deliverer of cur country those written nearly half a century ago long before any effort had been made to dispel alie myths which had grown up around washington are strangely prophetic of the bents of the past year which have brought up again the question of the real washington and focused public attention upon it more sharply than it has ever been focused before out standing among those events was the cr which met the attempt by ne 0 americas best known novel ista to write the sort of washington biography of which speaks the novelist was hushes and his biography was george washington the human being and the biero published b william morrow corn anny of new york in fact looking back upon the year just past it Is curious to note how many times the two names bupt rupt rt II and george washington have appeared in the news dispatches together it began in january when hughes made a speech at a banquet of the sons of the american alon in washington D 0 in which he was described as having pictured washington as a po fane irreligious and pleasure loving man although 1 was learned eliat he had been misquoted the mischief was done as soon as the story went out immediately he was attacked and defended all over th world sermons were delivered on his speech ills name was heard in congress and put in the congressional senators denounced him and he received clippings of newe piper comment on his speech in every language french german spanish and italian in the controversy was re lived lu september when the book appeared een though it did not arouse such a as did his speech it too was met with opinion bogli censure and praise lift viewers tor the hobt part historians were far from unanimous in their verdicts where one praised the biographer for his painstaking care in minute documenting of his statements and refraining from matt las a statement without backing it op with authority another criticized him for fatal and false romance of the movies A harvard professor albert bushnell hart announced that he had found errors of fact in the book another reviewer declared that mr walks on all the eggs without breaking a single one een the most rabid biographical fundamentalist da will find little to complain about la athla book so there you arel the case of ro pert II the biographer la proof anew or the statement made by onri writer that george washington Is an elusive person for although for forty bears from early manhood until the time of alg death he was in in the public the real ann high on his pedestal ped stal of official and personal reserve has been hard to come at A part of this Is no doubt due to jhb early biographers such as parson deemi who began building up the myths about afro and the in creasing years only served to give them an increasing firmness of fixity in the popular mind has well expressed it when he wrote no other man in history has so much from malfeasance in office by historians nearly all of washington s biographers have felt it their duty not only to correct his writings but to blue prettify and falsify his character in their frantic zeal for denaturing this big blundering bewildered giant have done a further injustice to nil his contemporaries of whom they have made either dwarfs or acolytes and of ills sincere adversaries demons of malice and eny it Is poor paerl ridiculous idolatry and rank dishonesty to rob the host of other struggle rs for liberty and progress of their just and to perpetuate old slanders against his enemies nt home and in order to turn into a god As a god washington wai a woeful figure as a man he waa tremendous no wonder then that the real li yet to be delineated one type of mind would make him a superman another a man but the onal verdict of history probably will decide that lie vas i bit of both and the picture which t will draw of him I 1 he somewhere la between the two ert rimes |