This positive statement stands in plain contradiction to the older records and it seems that the imagination of the valiant naval officer played his memory a trick after the lapse of nearly half a century. Perhaps it is impossible to evolve the exact truth definitely, but it seems to me that we must not estimate these later testimonies too highly, for it would be more difficult then to explain the actual condition of the statue and its agreement with the older descriptions, than now to account for these later depositions of a few excitable and imaginative men who feel that they have something of great importance to declare. Moreover, the most important witness, Lieutenant Matterer, is characterized in these accounts as “an officer of great merit but no literary cultivation,” which does not seem to make his opinion especially reliable. The _Sunday Record-Herald_ of Chicago (Nov. 24, 1912) contains a summary of this later phase of the discussion as to the condition of the Venus of Milo from which we quote a few passages that in spite of the sensational character of the account may be of interest. The American reporter, relying on his French sources, says: “The great Thiers began his start in journalism by a study of this Venus and the riddle of her arms. So when he became president of the French republic he ordered the ambassador to Greece, Jules Ferry, to make a trip to Melos and pick up local tradition. Ferry did better. He found the son and nephew still alive, Antonio and Yorgos Jr. ‘They have grown to be beautiful old men--white-bearded, ruddy, robust and bright-eyed,’ reported Ferry. ‘Examined separately before the French vice-consul at Castro they declared steadily, with minute details and explanatory gestures and poses, that Venus, when they found her, was standing upright on her pedestal, her right arm sustaining her draperies and her left arm raised and extended, its hand holding an apple.’” I assume that the old Greek peasants spoke Greek, and so M. Ferry probably understood their meaning mainly from their “explanatory gestures and poses” which might as well have expressed their idea of the original attitude of the statue as the way in which they actually saw it. “The popular story of the countryside also,” continued Ferry’s report, “is a tale of battle. At fifty years’ distance the recollection remains and tradition is not yet born. The discovery of the Venus Victrix, the dispute of which she was the object, the fight on the beach, the victory of the French and her final abduction violently impressed the islanders--and the impression remains.”