Until Mr. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy he seems to have been regarded by many citizens of Raleigh, as a good, earnest, hard-working man, possessed of considerable personal magnetism and a good political nose--a man who could scent how the pack was running, take a short-cut, and presently appear to be leading. In other words an opportunist. Though he has not much education, and though as a writer he is far from polished, it is said that he has written powerful editorials. "When his editorials have been good," said one gentleman, "it is because he has been stirred up over something, and because he manages sometimes to get into his writing the intensity of his own personality." His office used to be, and still is, when he is in Raleigh, a sort of political headquarters, and he used to be able to write editorials while half a dozen politicians were sitting around his desk, talking. With his paper he has done much good in the State, notably by fighting consistently for prohibition and for greater public educational advantages. The strong educational movement in North Carolina began with a group of men chief among whom were the late Governor Charles B. Aycock, called "the educational governor"; Dr. E.A. Alderman, who, though president of the University of Virginia, is a North Carolinian and was formerly president of the University of that State; Dr. Charles D. McKeever who committed the State to the principle of higher education for women, and other men of similar high purpose. A gentleman who was far from an unqualified admirer of Mr. Daniels, told me that without his aid the great educational advance which the state has certainly made of recent years could hardly have been accomplished, and that the same thing applies in the case of prohibition--which has been adopted in North Carolina. "What sort of man is he?" I asked this gentleman. "He is the old type of Methodist," he said. "He is the kind of man who believes that the whale swallowed Jonah. He has the same concept of religion that he had as a child. I differ with his policies, his politics, his mental methods, but I don't think anybody here doubts that he is trying, not only to do the moral thing himself, but to force others to adopt, as rules for public conduct, the exact code in which he personally believes, and which he certainly follows. His mental processes are often crude, yet he has much native shrewdness and the ability to grasp situations as they arise. "He does not come of the aristocratic class, which probably accounts for his failure, when he first became secretary, to perceive the necessity for discipline in the navy, and the benefits of naval tradition.