John Wingate Weeks

Five years ago, one solemn morning, many a statesman, many 'a senator, many a silk-hatted diplomat wound slowly through Washington's broad streets, crossed the green slopes beyond to Arlington, stood uncovered before the casket of the Unknown Soldier. John Wingate Weeks defied physicians' instructions, stood bareheaded that awesome morning, shortly afterwards became ill. Last week he died.

Newton (Mass.) Club members today relate to skeptical listeners how their President Weeks canceled the club's $30,000 bonded debt by persuading the members to burn their bonds. They do not tell how later the anecdote was offered to Uncle Joe Cannon as recommendation for Congressman Weeks' candidacy for the Naval Affairs Committee. "My God," said Uncle Joe, "We'll put him on the Banking and Currency. That man with those methods will soon wipe out the national debt." Mr. Weeks alone possessed the honor of having one of his big appropriation bills ($240,000,000) pass both houses unaltered.

Born in 1860 when Ulysses S. Grant was a clerk at Galena, this cool-headed Yankee pursued his blue-eyed way through school, through Annapolis, on to the Senatorship and Cabinet Portfolio as Secretary of War under Harding and Coolidge. Meanwhile he had become a millionaire--Hornblower & Weeks, bond house. Political observers in 1921 saw for John Weeks a flower-strewn path to the White House.

And soon friends will carry him down a flower-strewn path--to the White House, past it and, again, as five years before, over the green slopes beyond to Arlington.