Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/144

108 lo8 HARVARD LAW REVIEW Professor Westengard, on being consulted about the sending of students to be educated in foreign countries, never exercised his personal influence upon the officials who had the choice in their hands in favor of sending them to his own country in particular. Yet many of the officials as well as the parents of other students were persuaded to send them to this country; in the first place, of course, by the desire to avoid the war conditions of Europe, but not to a small degree by attraction to the personality of the former American adviser. People in Siam, knowing America only from what was left in their memory of the geography lessons and the atlas in school, hardly realize the enormous expansion of this country; so that we often find, among students coming to study at the University of California, for instance, a man who prides himself on having a letter of introduction to Professor Westengard, and was told to drop around on Sunday afternoon to visit him when the Professor is not so busy. All his friends in Siam, whether connected with him in their official capacities or only socially, are anxious that their sons should not miss the opportunity to pay a visit to the General Adviser in his home country, and thus enjoy even only just a Httle of the privilege of being his friend's friend. None of the students who ever have reached him were dis- appointed, for each and all of them he would greet with the same characteristic gentleness that so much pleased the Siamese at home. He asked them of their parents and relatives, often remem- bering and pronouncing correctly names most unpronoimceable to other Westerners. His memory for faces and names set us in aston- ishment; he would recall every kindness he received from the Siamese people with touching appreciation. The Professor's intimate knowledge of the persons and their good and bad characteristics is well illustrated by this little anecdote, which perhaps, with some apology, can be quoted here: A certain Siamese student, S, came to Cambridge and asked to be taken to be introduced to Chow Koon Kalyan, as we called him by the title given to him by the King of Siam. As soon as I introduced the young man as the son of Admiral S (who was, by the way, as many sailors, inclined to profanity in his expressions), "Ah yes," exclaimed our Professor, "I am very glad