The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political Part 50

The autumn has been one long procession of gay banners on the hillsides, and now that the snow has come the pines are blue and the mountains purple; and mountains five thousand feet high are just as good, more companionable, than mountains fifteen thousand feet high. What is more lovely, stately and of finer color than a line of these receding hills which walk away from you, as if they continued clear across the continent?

I must get out against my wish, to have a lot more testing done-- for this doctor differs with the others--and I rather think he is right. But I hope to get back here and enjoy this air. No wonder this stock was for prohibition, the air itself is an intoxicant, especially when the snow is on the ground and it comes to you gently; it is as bracing as a c.o.c.ktail, not a sensuous wine like the Santa Barbara air--tell Vogelsang this--but I presume more like the High Sierras, where the fishing is good.

I shall read your speeches with the deepest interest. Keep up the publicity. It affects Congress and it justifies the good doctrine we have preached. Cordially,

F. K. Lane

Have read the speeches and they are everything they should be.

Right theory, clear statement, conclusive facts. A few too many figures perhaps, you should keep your prime figures in the air longer so they can be visualized. This may be called juggling figures in the right sense.

Lane

To George W. Wickersham

Bethel, Maine, 18 [November, 1920]

My dear G. W.,--I have your good letter. By 'good' I mean many things--well done as a bit of sketchy composition, a welcome letter, kindly also in spirit, cheering, timely, telling of things that interest the receiver, one, too, having the flavor of the household whence it comes, altogether a good letter. I had one also from Her; which I brutally answered with a preachment--in pencil, too, for I can't write with comfort at a desk and, after all, what have white paper and ink in common with these woods? I am for harmony--a reconciler, like Harding. ...

Root, as you say, would give a good smack to the meal. The country would at once say Harding knows how to set a good table. But tell me--will he be a Taft? a McKinley? a Hayes? or a Grant? Pshaw! why should I ask such a question? Who knows what a man will turn out to be! Events may make him greater than any, or less. A war, a bullet, a timely word of warning to a foreign power, a fierce fight with some unliked home group, the right sort of a deal on postal rates with newspapers and magazines--any one of these might lift him into a national hero; while a sneaking act revealed, a little too much caution, a period of business depression, would send him tumbling out of the skies.

These be indeed no days for prophesying--Wilson gone, Clemenceau gone, Venizelos gone,--Lloyd George alone left! The wise boy had his election at the right moment, didn't he? Surely statesmanship is four-fifths politics. Harding's danger, as I see it, will lie in his timidity. He fears; and fear is the poison gas which comes from the Devil's factory. Courage is oxygen, and Fear is carbon monoxide. One comes from Heaven--so you find Wells says,--and the other would turn the universe back into primeval chaos. Wilson, be it said to his eternal glory, did not fear. They send word to me from the inside that he believed in c.o.x's election up to the last minute, although the whole Cabinet told him defeat was sure. He "was right, and right would prevail"--surely such faith, even in oneself, is almost genius!

I am glad you put Lincoln first in your list of great Americans. I decided that question for myself when I came to hang some pictures in my library. Washington or Lincoln on top? And Lincoln got it. I have recently read all his speeches and papers, and the man is true from the first day to the last. The same philosophy and the same reasoning were good in 1861 as in 1841. He was large enough for a great day--could any more be said of any one?

Lincoln made Seward and Chase and Stanton and Blair his mates. He did not fear them. He wished to walk with the greatest, not with trucklers and fawners, court satellites and panderers. His great soul was not warm enough to fuse them--they were rebellious ore-- but his simplicities were not to be mastered by their elaborate cogencies.

McKinley was simple in his nature, at bottom a dear boy of kind heart, who put his hand into the big fist of Mark Hanna and was led to glory.

Is Harding great and masterful in his simplicity, or trustful and yielding? and if the latter where is the Hanna? Well, I don't want to die in these next few months, anyway, till some questions are answered. This would be a part of my Cabinet if I were Harding:-- Root, State; Hoover, Treasury; Warren of Michigan, Attorney- General; Wood, War; Willard (of Baltimore)

You enviously write of my opportunity to read and contemplate. I have done some of both. But that's a monk's life, and even a monk has a cell of his own, and a bit of garden to play with; and he can think upon a G.o.d that is his very own, an Israelitish Providence; and, in his egotism, be content. Yes, with a cell and a book and a garden and an intimate G.o.d, one should be satisfied to forego even health. But I hold with old Cicero that the "whole glory of virtue is in activity," and therefore I call my discontent divine.

You speak of great Americans, and have named all four from political life. I concur in your selection. Now what writers would you say were most distinctly American in thought and most influential upon our thought, men who a hundred years hence will be regarded not great as literary men but as American social, spiritual, and economic philosophers? It occurs to me that this singular trio might be selected--Emerson, Henry George, and William James. What say you?

Say "h.e.l.lo" to the young Colonel for me.

F. K. L.

Lincoln haunted Lane's imagination, the humor, friendliness, loneliness, and greatness of the man. This--written for no formal occasion but to express part of his feeling--has found its way to others who, too, reverence the great American.

Lincoln's Eyes

I never pa.s.s through Chicago without visiting the statue of Lincoln by St. Gaudens and standing before it for a moment uncovered. It is to me all that America is, physically and spiritually. I look at those long arms and long legs, large hands and feet, and I think that they represent the physical strength of this country, its power and its youthful awkwardness. Then I look up at the head and see qualities which have made the American--the strong chin, the n.o.ble brow, those sober and steadfast eyes. They were the eyes of one who saw with sympathy and interpreted with common sense. They were the eyes of earnest idealism limited and checked by the possible and the practicable. They were the eyes of a truly humble spirit, whose ambition was not a love for power but a desire to be supremely useful. They were eyes of compa.s.sion and mercy and a deep understanding. They saw far more than they looked at. They believed in far more than they saw. They loved men not for what they were but for what they might become. They were patient eyes, eyes that could wait and wait and live on in the faith that right would win. They were eyes which challenged the n.o.bler things in men and brought out the hidden largeness. They were humorous eyes that saw things in their true proportions and in their real relationships. They looked through cant and pretense and the great and little vanities of great and little men. They were the eyes of an unflinching courage and an unfaltering faith rising out of a sincere dependence upon the Master of the Universe. To believe in Lincoln is to learn to look through Lincoln's eyes.

To Benjamin Ide Wheeler

Bethel, 18 [November, 1920]

MY DEAR B. I.,--From both ends of this continent we talk to each other. We have both retired from active things and can with some degree of removal, and from some alt.i.tude, look upon the affairs of men. Frankly, it challenges all my transcendental philosophy to convince me that "deep love lieth under these pictures of time."

And yet I must so believe or die. It is a disheartening time-- Wilson, a wreck and beaten. Clemenceau, beaten and out. And now Venizelos gone. Only Lloyd George, the crafty, quick-turning, sometimes-lying, never-wholly-frank politician left, because he called his election when spirits had not fallen.

And little men take their places, while Bolshevism drives Wrangel into the sea, possesses all Russia and Siberia, and is a success politically and militarily, tho' a failure economically and socially. We have pa.s.sed the danger of red anarchy in America, I think, tho' no one should prophesy as to any event of to-morrow.

Communism, and socialism with it, have been made to pause. Yet nothing constructive is opened by the world for men to think upon, as a means of bettering their lot and answering the questions flung to them by Russia, Germany, England, and our own home conditions.

I can see no evidence of constructive statesmanship on this side the water, excepting in Hoover. The best man in Congress is Lenroot, and he writes me that unless the Republicans do something more than fail to make mistakes that the Democrats will take the power from them in another four years. But I am nothing for parties. I cannot wait for an opposition to come in. I would like to see the Republicans now address themselves to the problems of the world at large and of this land. If Knox is to be Secretary of State, as the rumor is, we will have Steel Trust Diplomacy,--which will give us safety abroad, which is more than we have had for some years--but it will be without vision, without love for mankind. Root would give the Republicans great a.s.surance and confidence. He would make them smack their lips and feel that Harding was not afraid of the best near him. Hoover may or may not have a Cabinet place, but his brain is the best thing working in America to-day, on our questions. If Penrose and Co. beat him they will regret it,

If I were Harding I'd put Root, Lowden, Wood, Hoover, and Johnson if he wanted it, into my Cabinet and I'd gather all the men of mind in the country and put them at work on specific questions as advisors to me, under Cabinet officers. One group on Taxes and Finance, one on Labor and Capital, one on Internal Improvements, one on Education and Health. And have a program agreeable to Congress, which is sterile because it is a messenger-boy force for const.i.tuents.

The Democrats could do this if they had the men,--but look over the nation and see how short we are of talent of any kind. It may be an opposition party but it has no force, no will, no self- confidence. It hopes for a miracle, vainly hopes. It cannot gather twenty first-rate minds in the nation to make a program for the party. I tried it the other day--men interested in political affairs, outside Congress--try it yourself. Get twenty big enough to draft a national program of legislation for the party. I sent the suggestion to George White, chairman of the National Committee, and gave him a list, and at the head I put you and President Eliot, cla.s.sing you both as Democrats, which probably neither of you call yourselves now, tho' both voted for c.o.x. ...

If I get to California I must see you. But I shall play my string out here before trying the Western land. My best regards to the Lady. Yours always, LANE

To Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Bethel, Maine, [November, 1920]

To THE DEAR ROOSEVELTS,--... You realized what was coming, but I fear c.o.x did not; could not believe that his star would not pull through. I wish Georgia and Alabama had gone, too. The American born did not like Wilson because he was not frank, was too selfish and opinionated. The foreign born did not like his foreign settlements. So they voted "no confidence" in his party. What we will do in this land of mixed peoples is a problem. Our policies now are to be determined by Fiume and Ireland--not by real home concerns. This is dangerous in the extreme. Demagogues can win to power by playing to the prejudices of those not yet fully American. ... As always,

F. K. L.

To Lathrop Brown

Bethel, [November] 20, [1920]

MY DEAR LATHROP,--You are wrong, dead wrong, viciously, wilfully wrong. I do like this exact science business. I worked at it and in it on the railroad problems for seven years. There is only one thing that beats it, puts it on the blink, and that is inexact human nature which does wicked things to figures and facts and theories and plans and hopes. Prove, if you will, that there is no margin at all over wages, and a nominal return on capital, and you do not kill the desire of someone to run the shop. ... Talking of business men, what about the Shipping Board? O, my boy, they have something to explain--these Hurleys and Schwabs! ... How does this sound to you? They let their own tanks lie idle, commandeered those of Doheny and rented them to the Standard Oil--so that they could bid when Doheny couldn't--eh, what? ...

F. K. L.

To Timothy Spellacy

Bethel, [November] 22, [1920]

MY DEAR TIM,--I hear from Mike that you are not in New York, and so I am writing you out of "love and affection," as I hope to see Mike but won't see you when I go to New York for Thanksgiving. It was my hope that we three could have a good talk over Mike's Colombia plans, but do not trouble yourself with these business concerns. Get well--that's the job for both you and me. We have been too extravagant of ourselves, and especially you, you big- hearted, energetic, unselfish son of Erin! Eighteen years I have known you and never a word or an act have I heard of or seen that did not make me feel that the campaign for Governor was worth while, because it gave me your acquaintance, friendship, affection. And Ned and George love you as I do. When I get mad, as I do sometimes, over something that the Irish do, I always am tempted to a hard generalization that I am compelled to modify, because of you and Mike and Dan O'Neill, in San Francisco--and a few more of the Great Irish--. ...

Well, my dear fellow, drop me a line when you feel like it and be sustained in your weakness by the unfaltering affection of thousands who know you, among them--

FRANKLIN K. LANE

To Frank I, Cobb New York World