Thomas F. Clark

The business life of Thomas F. Clark was spent in the service of the Western Union, of which he became Vice-President. But he seldom talked business at the Century, where, in his thoughtful and modest way, he was best known for his interest in art and public affairs, and where he faithfully served the interests of the Club on its committees. Mr. Clark was the more deeply interested in the course of the Great War because he saw it from a far distant country, and perhaps for that reason he predicted accurately the real manner of its ending, a year and a half before it came. Writing from Honolulu to a Century associate in March, 1917, he expressed his positive judgment that “if the Allies will keep up the pace on the Western Front and drive home the campaign in Mesopotamia, there will soon be cries for peace from Turkey and the Balkans that will leave Germany and Austria helplessly alone. This, as we all know, was precisely what happened in September, 1918; but in the spring of 1917 even Colonel Repington was writing disdainfully of the insistence of the British High Command on the campaign at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1921 Century Association Yearbook