Biggest Digging

A small grey man, with eyes as grey as new wrought awls, backed against a handrail of the Italian liner Conte Rosso when she dropped anchor at quarantine in New York Harbor last week* and permitted reporters to tease noncommittal smiles from him. "Mr. Woods," they chirruped, "who was the person who provided $2,500,000 for the American School for Classical Studies at Athens to excavate the ancient public market place of Athens?"

Professor Edward Capps of Princeton and the school at Athens had announced a few days before that Arthur Woods, onetime (1914-18) police commissioner of New York City, had already furnished checks approximating $250,000 to begin the project, largest and most costly archeological diggings ever undertaken. Two and a quarter millions more would come as work progressed. Professor Capps had planned to get the money from U. S. universities and patrons of Archeology. Solicitation, he knew, would be difficult. U. S. schools have their domestic money needs. Mr. Woods' checks physicked the trouble.

But who had given the great sum? John Davison Rockefeller Jr., John Pierpont Morgan, Thomas Lincoln Chadbourne (lawyer, onetime of Chicago, now of Manhattan) and the Carnegie Corporation had already donated money for similar, although piecemeal excavations in Greece. Certainly Mr. Woods,* although rich, had no millions to give away. But he would not say. Professor Capps said only: "I do not know who the donor is. I might guess, but I might be wrong if I did."

*Ships, before docking in U. S. harbors, must wait in quarantine until health conditions aboard have been approved by port health inspectors. Only newspapermen and certain public officials from shore may go aboard during the wait. *Mrs. Woods is niece of J. P. Morgan.