Reginald McKenna's views were presented at some length last month in this publication, with a personality sketch; but it so happened that no mention was made of the fact that the former Chancellor of the British Exchequer is a baseball fan. Is a fan, we say, not was, as the sequence of tenses requires in the foregoing sentence; for at the time the Right Honorable Mr. McKenna was interviewed for The Nation's Business he was not a fan. He was a virgin to baseball. He had not seen a game, Big League or Little. On the last day of his stay he attended a set-to at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and the Yankees in that series which has not become history. A letter was received the other day from Mr. McKenna, acknowledging receipt of a baseball inscribed with the signature of George Herman Ruth, known for short as Babe. The ball was sent to him as a souvenir, and in his thank-you he said: "Never did anyone become a fully-developed 'fan' as rapidly as I. It was a case of love at first sight with Babe Ruth, and I shall cherish the memento you have sent me of that glorious afternoon."

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Reginald McKenna's views were presented at some length last month in this publication, with a personality sketch; but it so happened that no mention was made of the fact that the former Chancellor of the British Exchequer is a baseball fan. Is a fan, we say, not was, as the sequence of tenses requires in the foregoing sentence; for at the time the Right Honorable Mr. McKenna was interviewed for The Nation's Business he was not a fan. He was a virgin to baseball. He had not seen a game, Big League or Little. On the last day of his stay he attended a set-to at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and the Yankees in that series which has not become history. A letter was received the other day from Mr. McKenna, acknowledging receipt of a baseball inscribed with the signature of George Herman Ruth, known for short as Babe. The ball was sent to him as a souvenir, and in his thank-you he said: "Never did anyone become a fully-developed 'fan' as rapidly as I. It was a case of love at first sight with Babe Ruth, and I shall cherish the memento you have sent me of that glorious afternoon."" in the context of "Reginald McKenna, as quoted in "Through the Editor's Spectacles" by Merle Thorpe, in The Nation's Business (December 1922), p. 6" to mean that wisdom is timeless.