Newspaper Men All Mourn Maj. “Archie” Butt

Memorial Services in Honor of Hero Who “Died Like a Man” Proposed by Members of Fourth Estate
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In little back offices, littered with paper and adorned principally by typewriters, in bustling news bureaus, in the press room of the White House, and in the War, State and Navy Building---wherever newspaper men foregathered---the name of Maj. “Archie” Butt, once synonymous of laughter and jest, now suddenly half understood, symbolic of heroism, was repeated last night while eyes blurred and voices became queerly strained and husky.

Everywhere in this city the newspaper men sought to get word through New York of the story of the fate of Maj. Butt. The oldest men on the Row and the youngest cub reporter, the correspondent with the classic eyeglasses, and the bewhiskered man who remembers the civil war---on through a list of men who had met Maj. Butt while covering their stories or who had helped him to cover his own---all these remembered him.

There is talk of a memorial service when his fate can be determined for all time. And this talk brought up stories of him, his unfailing kindliness, his friendship to newspaper men whom he barely knew, and, above all, his paramount gentility.

The older men talked of him as “Archie,” the correspondent. The younger remembered gratefully how, when terrified by their first assignment to a Presidential function, he had helped them out. They summed up all with this oft-repeated phrase:

“He was a good, square man---too good a man to die.”