CARL L. BECKER AND THE GREAT WAR: A CRISIS FOR A HUMANE INTELLIGENCE

IN 1906 Wendell Phillips Garrison relinquished the editorial control of the Nation. He had served that magazine since its beginnings in 1865, and his health was beginning to fail him or so he told the many friends of the Nation in a former letter, a copy of which went to Assistant Professor Carl L. Becker at the University of Kansas. Becker was then thirty-two years old and had been a book reviewer for the Nation since 1903. Carl Becker responded to Garrison's note. He wrote: "The announcement of your retirement from the Editorial control of the Nation comes with the shock almost of a personal bereavement. No one, I am sure, has ever more fairly than yourself won relief from the strain of the world's work; but in my own case at least you have so constantly repaid a slight official service with genuine personal kindliness that I cannot easily separate the one from the other. Accept my congratulations on having fought, for so many years, and no less uncompromisingly than your illustrious father, the Enemies of the Republic. May your remaining years be many, bringing you the rewards which distinguished service merits." 1 Carl Becker's detached skepticism is one of the most prominent features of his writings. The Becker who joined with the son of William Lloyd Garrison as a battler of the "Enemies of the Republic" is not the Becker