John Wallace Riddle, a comparatively poor man, with no great political backing, no one has associated him with any immediate appointment to an embassy where his predecessors have probably spent their entire salary in house-rent alone. Most patently this appointment rests on no campaign contribution nor any financial influence. If Mr. Riddle cannot vie with his predecessors in display of wealth, he can equal their personal service in a position which perhaps almost more than any other has required the exercise of infinite patience, tact, spirit, resource, and firmness. While he was serving as Secretary at the St. Petersburg embassy some years ago, having been promoted from the Constantinople secretaryship, his first office, the oppression of the Jews at Kishinev and other Russian cities -attracted Colonel Hay's attention and indignation. The result was a message, including a petition in behalf of the Jews, from the President to the Czar, which, in the American Ambassador's absence,

Mr. Riddle was to deliver personally to Count Lamsdorf, the Russian Foreign Minister. Mr. Riddle promptly went to the Foreign Office and read the entire despatch to Count Lamsdorf, including the petition, and then asked whether the Russian Government would be pleased to receive it. The Foreign Minister peremptorily declined, but Mr. Riddle had accomplished the object for which the President and his Secretary of State had striven. When Mr. Riddle left St. Petersburg, it was to go as Agent and ConsulGeneral to Egypt, where he remained until he became Minister to Rumania and Servia, his present position. Mr. Riddle represents real, potent worth as do few.

Of course Henry White's is the longest and most distinguished record. He has been in the American diplomatic service over twenty years. He was, first, a Secretary at Vienna, then Second Secretary at London, and then First Secretary, a position which he held so

long as seemingly to have a life tenure. He repeatedly acted as Chargé d'Affaires, and was also our representative at the International Conference for the Abolition of Sugar Bounties. Two years ago Mr. White became Ambassador to Italy. His Roman service has been characterized by the same broad grasp of subject and thorough attention to detail that characterized his London service. As regards long experience, knowing and appreciating the qualities of many men representing many social and political shades, Mr. White is emphatically an allround diplomat. His aptness in correctly judging the persons with whom he is brought in contact is a quality which we like to think peculiarly American. It has been called a Yankee shrewdness, and so it is, but it is characteristic of many men born outside of Rudyard Kipling's pie-belt, as is seen in the present instance. If Mr. White is a born judge, he is also an entire democrat. Although accustomed to move everywhere in aristocratic circles, he is absolutely free from "a certain condescension," and has always served the poor man and the nobody as well as he has the rich man and the somebody. No one who has ever seen him in the official discharge of his duties at London or Rome can regret his appointment to a position where the demands upon him will be even greater, for, despite his long foreign sojourns, no more whole-souled American represents America abroad.

During the past twelvemonth Mr. White has enjoyed one distinction perhaps as great as any which may come to him in his new station, namely, participation in the International Moroccan Conference at Algeciras, Spain, as Special Ambassador from America. In the

discharge of this duty Mr. White found himself in a peculiar position. He represented a country the interest of which in Morocco was almost entirely commercial. When the issue between France and Germany regarding that corner of Africa became acute, and even war was talked about by alarmists, Mr. White was the one, more than any other Ambassador at Algeciras, to whom the representatives of those two Powers turned as to an umpire. Largely, perhaps chiefly, through his efforts, an agreement was reached, hardly attainable otherwise. It is not too much to say that when the position of American Ambassador at London becomes again vacant there will be no more deserving candidate than Henry White.

In 1900 John Hay, alone of Foreign Secretaries, pursued a policy respecting China which was first scorned and scouted by the others, and finally adopted by them. Mr. Hay's clear prevision, resource, and frank courage placed America in the diplomatic world where she had never been before.

In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt, by the exercise of a diplomacy as persuasive as it was strenuous, brought together in a peace treaty the combatants in the greatest and fiercest war of modern times. Had there been any doubters as to America's diplomatic leadership, that leadership was then positively confirmed.

As we think of those two events, we Americans must also feel that the future may bring events in which it may be our privilege and our duty also to play a leading part. We shall always be ready with agents for that part if, in our Government service at home and abroad, we cast off whatever remains of the spoils system and perfect the merit system.

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In the Franco-Prussian War, out of 129,000 casualties, 13,000 were returned as missing;" and who shall say what agony those unfortunates suffered? Every war of the future, however, will see the dog mitigating its horror. In Germany the education of the war dog is at this moment undertaken by a voluntary society with nearly two thousand members, among them some of the most distinguished officers in the world's greatest army.

The idea is not new. Xenophon tells us of Spartan dogs that wore huge spiked collars, and were probably used much as we used bloodhounds years ago against the once powerful Seminoles and Sioux. Again, there were the mastiffs that followed the Knights of Rhodes and scented out Turks miles away. The Dutch used them also in their age-long war with the Achinese, both as ambulance dogs and as dogs of war.

For there is a difference. The war dog proper is used for sentry, messenger, and scouting service; while the ambulance dog's training impels him only to scour the battlefield in search of the wounded and missing. That it is unsafe to use one dog for another's work was seen in the recent great German maneuvers, when an ambulance dog was sent on a message, and, having found a man really wounded, through being dismounted and trampled in a cavalry charge, he remained pathetically behind with him, and forgot all about the real business upon which he had been sent!

The exigencies of modern warfare not only necessitate an enormous extension of the battlefield, but also compel the troops to take every possible advantage of natural cover. This and the fact that wounded men will use their last strength to seek protection from artillery fire, cavalry charges, and the wheels of galloping guns, in such places as thick bushes, ditches, and natural holes, will show how difficult it is for the overworked stretcher-bearers of the Red Cross Department to notice prostrate figures not readily seen. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that modern warfare is carried on very largely by night attack, and at night, too, the wounded have to be collected.

The clever modern electric and acety

lene searchlights are useful only for open country; and in broken ground the brighter the light, the darker are the shadows thrown. The ambulance dog, however, is entirely independent of artificial light, and relies only on his extraordinary power of scent. Last year, during the great Austrian maneuvers, two hundred men were left lying on the field to represent the wounded; and the stretcherbearers, working against time, overlooked thirty-eight of these. Within twenty minutes the Viennese dogs had discovered them all.

Each dog carries about his neck a flask containing brandy or soup and also a roll of bandages. The wounded man, having made what use he can of this relief, gives the dog his cap or belt, and the intelligent

creature at once races off with it to the ambulance attendants, whom he conducts to the rescue with all speed.

tion to the firing line. The French in Algeria have also used dogs in this way in their warfare with the Arabs. One canine favorite with the Oran garrison was three years ago decorated with the stripes of a corporal, and has just been raised to the rank of a full "sergeant " on account of his preternatural sagacity! He is one of those rare dogs who can be used indifferently as scout, sentry, despatch-bearer, or seeker for the wounded on the battlefield.

His name is "Toto," and his education commenced at the age of eight months.

He is a Russian

Borzoi, and he and his inseparable mate, a German boarhound, are considered among the most valuable members of the garrison. They do not even mind being harnessed to light ambulance carts and assisting to haul the wounded to the hospital tent or wagon, after they have found them prostrate on the field.

But it is the German army authorities who have adopted

war dogs on the largest scale, and thus

A great authority on the dogs of war, like Surgeon-General Haecker or General von Hergetboth of the German Staff can tell marvelous stories of the dogs which the Allied Troops took with them to China for the suppression of the Boxer rebellion. The Italian dogs especially distinguished themselves, having had great training on the mountains of Savoy; they were collies chiefly, and had long been employed with the Bersagliere troops in their operations on the Italian side of Mont Blanc. These dogs had frequently rescued soldiers who had tumbled into crevasses or had fallen frostbitten on the march.

Some of them, by the way, took a very active part in the mimic warfare, for they carried a canvas satchel connected across their loins with a belt of light bent-wood, intended for the conveyance of ammuni

tion with the seal of permanent value.

General von Herget, speaking after a series of experiments with ambulance dogs, remarked: "However great the progress made in the Army Medical Department in the treatment of wounded, the comforts of science can only be applied when the wounded have been found; and this question is an exceedingly difficult one in modern war, with a vastly extended battle-front, night attacks, and the imperious necessity for taking cover. Indeed, in many cases the rendering of aid to missing wounded is impossible without some special help such as is ideally afforded by these dogs." Austria, Switzerland, Great Britain,