In the death of Col. Robert Bacon, of the Class of 1880, Harvard loses one of the finest and most truly representative of her sons. From the beginning he was a man of broad and varied interests, who undertook nothing in which he was not conspicuously successful.

While in College he was a member of the football team and rowed on the crew, also being Business Manager of the CRIMSON. He finally was elected First Marshal of his Class, the Class of which Theodore Roosevelt was also a member.

In later life Robert Bacon was a banker, first in Boston and, since 1894, with the Morgan firm in New York. Appointed by Elihu Root as his Associate Secretary of State, he later became head of the State Department under President Roosevelt. As Ambassador to France he served for three years with great distinction. An advocate of preparedness, he strongly supported General Wood's Plattsburg Officers' Training Camp System. Attending the first Plattsburg business man's camp, he became a major in May, 1919, and returned from France after the armistice as a Colonel on General Pershing's Staff. During the last few years Colonel Bacon has been serving his third term as Overseer of the University; and he has been a familiar figure about the Yard on Class Day and other graduate occasions.

It will be difficult at the University to become accustomed to the loss of Robert Bacon. We mourn him not only as a former editor and a former Harvard man, but also as a great American who has passed from among us.