GENERAL DIAZ

As the years of peace have streamed by, bringing new problems and new crises, the world has come to forget many of the names that blazed before it a decade ago, Wilson is dead. Lloyd George is following the faint glow of his political star, that once shone like a sun; Clemenceau, in quiet oblivion, is writing his memoirs; the magic name of Hindenburg alone has been strong enough to call a wartime hero from retirement back into the world. But a few weeks ago Earl Haig, who had once fought the old Prussian general died; and Wednesday another of those whose courage stood the crucible test of 1917 and 1918 followed him.

General Diaz stands out as the greatest of Italy's generals in the World War. The Ceneral Powers beat his soldiers back almost to Venice, but with supreme skill and assurance he struck the Austrian forces the blows that drove them from Italy and that meant the fall of the Double Eagle and the withdrawal of Austria from the combat. After the Armistice he received the highest honors from his allies, among them the United States, which he visited in 1921.

And now another of the galaxy of 1918 has passed into history. The war is moving farther and farther into the past; it is unfortunate that the death of one of its heroes should bring the revival of the terms "despoilers" and "barbarians" that one finds in the Diaz dispatch. The hatreds of a decade ago are slow enough in dissolving without the resurrection of the epithets of that time.