place that Poe had made for himself in the hearts of at least one of the
fighting countries.

"You know," said he, "that at about that time Americans were not very
popular. There seemed to be a feeling everywhere that we should have
been on the firing line. This feeling developed the fashion of polite
jeering to a point that made life abroad uncomfortable until Johnny Poe
fell fighting in the ranks of the Black Watch on the plains of Flanders.
In the dull monotony of the casualty list his name at first slipped by
with scant mention. It was the publication in the United States of the
story of his fighting career which stimulated newspaper interest not
merely in England, but throughout the British Empire. To Australia,
Canada, New Zealand and South Africa--into the farthest corners of the
earth--went the tale of the death of a great American fighter.

"I met one man, a lawyer, on his way to do some peace work, and he told
me that he thought Poe had no right to be in the ranks of a foreign
army. Probably most of the pacifists would have returned the same
verdict regardless of Poe's love for the cause of the Allies. Yet among
the thousands of Americans in Europe in the month following Poe's death,
there was complete unity of opinion that the old Princeton football star
had done more for his country than all the pacifists put together.

"'A toast to the memory of Poe,' said one of the group of Americans in
the Savoy, that famous gathering place of Yankees in London. 'His death
has made living a lot easier for his countrymen who have to be in France
and England during the war.'"

"There is not an army on the continent in which Americans have not died,
but no death in action, not even that of Victor Chapman the famous