21
and at all times will follow the dictates of my own con-
science….I can honestly say that I have no greater ambition
in life than to be of use to my fellow men.”
Dr. Drury did all he could to help Winant, whom he
considered to be one of his best friends, despite their
11-year age difference. Winant embodied the Rector’s
aspirations not only to improve the academic and intel-
lectual standards of St. Paul’s, but also to expand his
privileged charges’ awareness of the wider world and the
necessity of working to improve it. When Winant began
his first run for governor in 1923, Dr. Drury wrote a letter
to the
Concord Monitor-Patriot
that also was circulated
as a campaign flyer.
“Mr. Winant’s candidacy for the governorship,” Dr. Drury
began, “is a matter of such personal satisfaction to me
that I venture to share with your wide circle of readers
some reflections on his character.”
Conjuring an image of Winant as vice rector (1919-
21), Dr. Drury described “a man standing quietly at my
office door, asking his characteristic question: ‘What
can I do for you?’” Lest Winant be thought meek, Drury
referenced his post-war success in the Texas oil busi-
ness and his courage as a pilot in World War I. Drury’s
conclusion condenses hauntingly the strengths and
weaknesses of Winant’s character: “There may be,
doubtless somewhere there is, a more unselfish man
than John Gilbert Winant – but I have yet to meet him.
His disregard of self…is complete, and strangely con-
vincing.…With Winant in the State House, we should
have there an absolutely fearless man, an absolutely
friendly man, a man who would devote all of his pow-
ers to public betterment….In him we have what Presi-
dent Coolidge has described as the country’s need: the
practical idealist.”
om History
complex; it reduced masters’ autonomy and eliminated
two powerful, secret student societies (the Hoi and the
Bog), which had enforced a student pecking order that
favored the socially prominent, well-to-do, and athletic.
The reformwas entirely in keeping with Winant’s emerg-
ing politics. It enlisted the young master’s extraordinary
talent for sympathetic persuasion. It shifted power from
the privileged, made the student government more open
and transparent, and assumed the essential good sense
of the governed. Similarly, in 1921, Winant – by then SPS
vice rector – introduced an honor system in examinations
for the Fifth and Sixth Forms, adapted from rules at Prince-
ton, which the Student Council administered and enforced.
By this time, Winant was applying his ideals and politi-
cal skills in a wider arena. In 1914, Winant had approached
New Hampshire’s Progressive Republican leaders, the
novelist Winston Churchill (no relation to Winant’s later
close friend, the British Prime Minister), and former gov-
ernor Robert Bass, who kept as a motto a quote from the
Italian patriot and philosopher Giuseppe Mazzini enjoin-
ing “a constant disposition to ameliorate the material
conditions of the classes least favored by fortune.”
Winant entered public life in 1917 as a Republican can-
didate for state representative from Concord’s Ward 7, a
varied region populated by farmers, foundry men, and rail-
road workers, along with the swells of St. Paul’s. His un-
pretentious demeanor and obvious sincerity struck a chord.
“You couldn’t just make an abstract argument,” explains
New Hampshire journalist John Milne. “You had to be
able to connect with blue collar, skilled workers. You had
to give them the idea that you would
do
something.”
In a brief message to his “fellow citizens,” Winant
spelled out his aims. “In so far as I am able, I shall be gov-
erned by the will of the people whom I hope to represent
Above:
Winant as U.S. Ambassador to Britain.
Left:
As a fighter pilot in WWI.
John Winant as a young New Hampshire governor
