Elbert F. Baldwin

Elbert Francis Baldwin was a sympathetic, intelligent and companionable personality, quite of the type which used to be characterized as gentlemen and scholar. His professional career illustrated curiously the completeness with which the original purposes of many of us are altered and diverted by circumstance. Preparing for the Episcopal clergy and impressed with the need of thorough background of learning for that work, he devoted eight years to advanced studies in theology and philosophy at the Universities of Edinburgh and Berlin. Loss of orthodox belief brought sudden abandonment of his plan for a profession, yet the change left him with high linguistic and literary cultivation, with wide acquaintance abroad and with thorough knowledge of Europe’s political and social problems.

In these days and with such qualifications, a turn to the higher walk of journalism was natural and instinctive. Baldwin wrote for The Outlook, during more than thirty years, the best of its foreign editorials and foreign correspondence of the period. His knowledge of foreign language and familiarity with foreign institutions, combined with a certain ingratiating charm of manner, brought him the confidence as well as acquaintance of public men.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1928 Century Association Yearbook