The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political Part 26

DEAR MR. DIXON,--I have your letter of October 1st. You have asked me a very difficult question, which is really this:--How to get into a man's nature an appreciation of our form of government and its benefits?

I cannot answer this question. There are certain natures which do not sympathize with the exercise of or the development of common authority, which is the essence of Democracy. They are instinctively monarchists. They love order more than liberty. They do not see how a balance can be struck between the two. By force of environment and education their sons may see otherwise. I know of no other way of making Americans, than by getting into them by environment and education a love for liberty and a recognition of its advantages. Cordially yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

TO ROBERT H. PATCHIN

Washington, November 27, 1915

MY DEAR PATCHIN,--Mrs. Lane and I would be delighted to join in your fiesta to Mrs. Eleanor Egan, but we just can't. Why? Because we have a dinner on December 2nd, also because we are neutral. ...

We can not countenance any one who has been in jail. To have been in jail proves poverty. Nor do we regard it as fitting that a young woman should have been torpedoed and spent forty-five minutes in the water splashing around like Mrs. Lecks or Mrs.

Aleshine. If she was torpedoed why didn't she go down or up like a heroine? Then she would have had an atrocious iron statue erected in her honor among the other horrors in Central Park. After her experience she will doubtless be more sympathetic toward those of us who are torpedoed daily and weekly and monthly and have to splash around for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a curious public.

I hope your dinner of welcome and rejoicing will be as gay as the cherubic smile of the Right Honorable Egan. Cordially,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

TO FRANCIS R. WALL

Washington, November 27, 1915

MY DEAR WALL,--I wish that I had time for a long letter to you, such as yours to me. But I am only to-day able to get at my personal correspondence which has acc.u.mulated in the last six weeks. These have been times of annual reports and estimates, and we have a large number of internal troubles which need constant attention.

I am afraid that we are going to have a great deal of trouble in getting our preparedness program through, because of dissension in our own ranks and because the Republicans are so anxious to take advantage of this emergency to raise the tariff duties and to gain credit for whatever is done in the way of preparation. We are too much dominated by partisanship to be really patriotic. This is a very broad indictment, but it seems to be justified. Of course, the people like Bryan and Ford, and the women generally, are moved by a philosophy that is too idealistic, and some of them are only moved, I fear, by an intense exaggerated ego. If I would have to name the one curse of the present day, I would say it is the love of notoriety and the a.s.sumption by almost everyone that his judgment is as good as that of the ablest. Of course, the trouble with the ablest people is that they are so largely moved by forces that do not appear on the surface, that one does not know that the views they express are really their own judgment. Democracy seems to be government by suspicion, in large part. We have faith in ourselves, but not in each other. A man to be a good partisan seems called upon to believe that every man of different view is a crook or a weakling. This is the Roosevelt idea. And half of it is the Bryan idea.

I wish that I could see you, old man, and have one of our old time talks. ...

I shall bear in mind what you say as to the availability of your service, but I hope it may not be necessary to take you from that land of sunshine and dreams that seems so remote from this center of intrigue and trouble. Affectionately yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

TO JOHN H. WIGMORE

Washington, December 8, 1915

MY DEAR JOHN,-- ... Things are not looking at all nice as to Germany and Austria. I know that the country is not satisfied, at least part of it, with our patience, but I don't see just what else we can do but be patient. Our ships are not needed anywhere, and our soldiers do not exist. To-day brings word of the blowing up of an American ship. Of course, we do not know the details but the thing looks ugly.

Wasn't the President's message on the hyphenated gentlemen bully?

You could not have beaten that yourself. And your dear friend T.

Roosevelt, did certainly write himself down as one large and glorious a.s.s in his criticism of the message. He hates Wilson so, that he has just lost his mind. I wish I didn't have to say this about Roosevelt, because I am extremely fond of him (which you are not), but a poorer interview on the message could not have been written. ... As always yours,

F. K. L.

The following letter was written to Mrs. Adolph Miller when she was in a hospital in New York.

TO MRS. ADOLPH C. MILLER

Washington, December 12, [1915]

MY DEAR MARY,--We have just returned from Church and all morning I have been thinking of you and Adolph--praying for you I suppose in my Pagan way.

Poor dear girl, I know you are brave but I'd just like to hold your hand or look steadily into your eyes, to tell you that you have the best thing that this world gives--friends who are one with you. I can see old Adolph with his grimness and his great love, which makes him more grim and far more mandatory, what a st.u.r.dy old Dutch Calvinist he is! He really is more Dutch than German--Dutch modified by the California sun--and Calvinist sweetened by you and Boulder Creek, and Berkeley and William James and B. I. Wheeler and his Saint of a Mother. Well, let him pa.s.s, why should I talk of him when you really want me to talk of myself!

Last night we had the GRIDIRON dinner, and the President made an exalted speech. He is spiritually great, Mary, and don't you dare smile and think of the widow! We are all dual, old Emerson said it in his ESSAY ON FREE WILL, and Adolph can tell you what old Greek said it. And this duality is where the fight comes in, and the two people walk side by side, to-day is Jekyll's day, and tomorrow is Hyde's, and so they alternate.

Well, the GRIDIRON was a grind on Bryan and Villard and Ford, and a boost for preparedness and Garrison and the Army and Navy. Tell Adolph they had a Democratic mule, two men walking together under a cover, the head end reasonable, the hind end kicking--the front end of course represented the Wilson crowd and the hind end the Bryan-Kitchin,--and the two wouldn't work together. The whole thing was splendidly done and was a lesson to the few Democrats who were there--which they won't learn.

Nancy went to her second party last night--a joyous thing in a new evening cloak of old rose, which made her feel that Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba and Mrs. Galt and all other exalted ladies had nothing on her. What a glorious thing life would be if we could remain children, with all the simple joys and none of the horrors that age brings on. There is certainly a good fifty per cent chance that this fine spirit will marry some d.a.m.n brute who will worry and hara.s.s the soul out of her. For so the world goes. I hope she'll be as fortunate as you have been.

To-night we go to the Polks to see Mrs. Martin Egan who was on a torpedoed ship in the Mediterranean, and although she couldn't swim floated forty-five minutes till rescued. You must know the Polks well. She has very real charm and your old Mormon of a husband will desert his other fairies for her.

Now I have gossiped and preached and prophesied and mourned and otherwise revealed what pa.s.ses through a wandering mind in half an hour, so I send you, at the close of this screed, my blessing, which is a poor gift, and I would send you the parcel post limit of my love if it weren't for Anne and Adolph, who are narrow- minded Dutch Calvinists. May good fortune betide you and bring you back very soon to the many whose hearts are sympathetic.

FRANK

TO MRS. MAGNUS ANDERSEN

Washington, D.C., December 24, [1915]

MY DEAR MAUDIE,--It is Christmas eve, and while Nancy and Anne are filling the mysterious stockings, I am writing these letters to the best of brothers and sister. It has been a long, a disgracefully long time since I wrote you, but I have kept in touch pretty well through George and Anne. ... So you have now a philosophy--something to hang to! I am glad of it. The standpoint is the valuable thing. There are profound depths in the idea that lies under Christian Science, but like all other new things it goes to unreasonable lengths. "Be Moderate," were the words written over the Temple on the Acropolis, and this applies to all things. This world is curiously complex, and no one knows how to answer all our puzzles. Sometimes I think that G.o.d himself does not. There is a fine poem by Emerson called, THE SPHINX, which is the most hopeful thing that I have found, because it recognizes the dual world in which we live, for everything goes not singly but in pairs--good and evil, matter and mind. Then, too, you may be interested in his essay on FATE.

Dear Fritz--dear, dear boy, how I wish I could be there with him, though I could do no good. ... Each night I pray for him, and I am so much of a Catholic that I pray to the only Saint I know or ever knew and ask her to help. If she lives her mind can reach the minds of the doctors just as surely as there is such a thing as transmission of thought between us, or hypnotism. I don't need her to intercede with G.o.d, but I would like her to intercede with man.

Why, oh why, do we not know whether she is or not! Then all the universe would be explained to me. The only miracle that I care about is the resurrection. If we live again we certainly have reason for living now. I think that belief is the foundation hope of religion. Anne has it with a certainty that is to me nothing less than amazing. And people of n.o.ble minds, of exalted spirits, not necessarily of greatest intellects have it. George has it in his own way, and he is certainly one of the real men of the earth.

The President has it strongly. He is, in fact, deeply, truly religious. The slanders on him are infamous.

... We are to have the quietest possible Christmas. No one but ourselves at dinner--I give no presents at all--for financially we are up to our eyebrows. I probably will work all day except for an hour or two which I shall use in playing with Nancy, for her gay spirit will not allow anything but the Christmas spirit to prevail. She is so like our Dear One, so determined, cheerful, hopeful, courageous, yet very shy. Ned will be out all night at dances and tomorrow too, for he is a most popular chap and very well-behaved indeed. His manners are excellent and he has plenty of dash. He is learning these things now which I learned only after many years, the little things which make the conventional man of the world.

I hope that you will find the New Year one of great peace of mind and real serenity of soul. May you commune with the Spirit of the Infinite and find yourself growing more and more in the spiritual image of the Dear One.

My tenderest love to you and to your good high-hearted man, and to the Boy.

FRANK

TO MRS. ADOLPH C. MILLER

Washington [1915]