The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
purpose in making it, perhaps the end that is desired might be
reached by a statement that you are not undertaking to write the
platform, but that at the request of some of the leaders you are
giving them a concrete statement of your foreign policy.
Faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO MRS. FRANKLIN K. LANE
ESSEX ON CHAMPLAIN, N. Y.
Washington, June 22, 1918
MY DEAR ANNE,--I am just back this minute from Brown [University]
where I had a right good time. I arrived in the morning early and
kept the Dean waiting for me for a half an hour. ...
After breakfast I went over to the University grounds, which are
very quaint, on the crest of a hill with fine old buildings, and
there found that Hughes was the hero of the day, of course; every
step he took he was cheered. He was very genial about it. We
marched in our robes, down through the winding streets of this old
New England town to a meeting house one hundred and seventy-five
years old, and there we sat in pews, while the President of Brown,
Mr. Faunce, gave the degrees in Latin. I have not heard so much
Latin since I left school. There were a pretty good looking lot of
boys, about half of them New Englanders and about half of them
Westerners. We heard some orations by the students and then
marched up the hill again where we had lunch, and then went over
to a great tent on the campus where William Roscoe Thayer--who
wrote the life of Hay--President Faunce, Judge Brown, Mr. Hughes,
and I spoke.
I spoke for about half an hour. My speech fitted in very well,
because Thayer preceded me, and he spoke of the lack of an
American spirit; I had already prepared a speech upon the
abundance of American spirit, [Footnote: Speech published in book
entitled, The American Spirit.] so that I answered Thayer, and
answered him with scorn. I told him that if New England was
growing weak in her American pride or her vigor that we would take
these boys and carry them out West where there was not any lack of
virility or hardiness or red blood, and that if they wanted to
know whether the American was willing to fight or not, to go to
any recruiting office of the United States to-day and see how
crowded it was. I told them about our pioneers, who were taking up
ten or twelve million acres of land, the men who had gone to
Alaska, and then turned upon the real proposition which was that
there was a difference between national spirit and martial spirit.
War used to be the only opportunity for glory or romance or
achievement, while there are a million other opportunities now
open, because man's imagination has grown. In the morning the
College had given honorary degrees of LL.D. to Brand Whitlock and
Herbert Hoover. So when I came to the close of my talk I told them
about Hoover's Belgian work, and that Brand Whitlock had refused
to leave Brussels; and while there was no English and no French
and no Italian and no Spanish and no other flag in Brussels, the
Stars and Stripes in front of the American Legation had never come
down, and the Belgian peasant when he went to his work in the
morning took his hat off in honor of our flag, and I asked those
people to stand with me in front of that peasant to take their
hats off and take heart.
Well, I had the crowd with me right along. Then Hughes came and he
took American Spirit as his text, and he made it quite evident
what his campaign is going to be; that it is going to be a charge,
veiled and very poorly supported by facts, that we have not known
where we were going, that we were vacillating, that we did not
have any enthusiasm, that we did not arouse the people and make
them feel proud that they were Americans. How in the mischief he
is going to get away with this, I do not understand. Whom were we
to be mad at--England, or Germany, or everybody in the world? Were
we to war with the entire outfit? He seems to be able to have
satisfied the Providence Journal, which is run by an Australian
who has been running the spy system for the British Embassy, and
has been printing a lot ... about Germany and all the German
press. If he can get away with this he is some politician. I see
that Teddy has had an understanding with him. Von Meyer was there
yesterday to hold a conference with him.
But I do not think that we lost anything in the discussion of
yesterday. There were not any Democrats there who were not on
their toes at the end of the meeting; but, of course, practically
everybody in Rhode Island is a Republican. It is the closest thing
to a proprietary estate that I have ever seen.
... I left at 6 o'clock and on my way back met President Vincent,
of Minneapolis, and George Foster Peabody. You knew that Frank
Kellogg was nominated, [Footnote: For the United States Senate.]
didn't you, Clapp running third? ...
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO MRS. ADOLPH MILLER
Washington, July 4, 1916
... I see you with blooming cheeks and star-lit eyes peeping out
from under a sun-bonnet, enshrined in all the glories of the
mountain redwoods, and I long to be with you if only to get some
of the freshness and joy of the California mountains into my
rather desolate soul.
How is the old clam? Do his lips come together in that precise
Prussian way, and does he order the universe about? Or does a new
spirit come over him when he gets with nature? Is she a soothing
mistress who smooths his stiff hair with her soft hand, and pats
his cheek and nestles him in her arms, and with her cool breath
makes him forget a federal, or any other kind, of reserve?
Why has nature been so unkind to me as to make me a lover but
always from afar, never to come near her, never to compel me to a
sweet surrender, never to give me peace and contentment, never to
so surround me as to keep out the world of fools and follies and
pharisees?
You know, I would like to write some servant girl novels. I
believe I could do it. My love-making would either be rather tame
and stiff or too intensely early Victorian. But I should like to
swing off into an ecstasy of large turgid words and let my mind
hear the mushy housemaid cry, "Isn't that just too sweet!" ...
I enclose a copy of my speech made at Brown University. Perhaps it
will interest that old farmer potato bug. He does not deserve to
have it said, but I miss him very much. Please obey him an you
love me. Cut out all social activities, giving yourself up to the
acquisition of a few more of the right kind of corpuscles in your
too-blue blood. As always, yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Mrs. Franklin K. Lane
Essex-on-Champlain
Washington, July 4, 1916
... There is no news that I can give you. The weather is very
warm. Politics is growing warmer. I think Heney will run for
Senator in California, probably against Hiram Johnson. Will
Crocker is also said to be a candidate for the Republican
nomination. I could get the nomination by saying that I would
accept. Phelan told me yesterday that he would see that all the
necessary money was raised,--that I could win in a walk.
Dockweiler says the same thing. The latter is here and we have
seen much of each other. What do you say if I run for Senator? I
really feel very much tempted to do it at times because things
have been made so uncomfortable by some of my fool colleagues who
have butted in on my affairs; and then I feel I would like the
excitement of the stump and to make the personal appeal once more.
You could go round with me over the State in an automobile. While
I would not insist upon your making speeches for me, I know that
your presence would add greatly to my success.
There is no telling what way this campaign may go. It may be a
landslide for Wilson, it may be a landslide the other way. We have
the hazards because we have the decision of questions. There is
bound to be a lot of objection to whatever course we take with
regard to Mexico. I fear from what Benjamin Ide Wheeler told me
the other day that Germany any day may decide to put her
submarines into active service again on the old lines, especially
if things on land go as they have been going lately against the
Teutons.
... I shall not decide in favor of accepting the nomination until
I hear from you. In the meantime don't lose any sleep over it. And
so my Nancy has a beau? Well, the little rascal must be given some
good advice now. So I shall turn my attention to her ...
F.K.L.
Washington, July 24, 1916
... To-day I have spent most quietly,--had Bill Wheeler up for
breakfast and then went to the Cosmos Club for lunch with
Dockweiler. He is very anxious to get a Catholic on the Mexican
Commission and so am I. I want Chief Justice White, but I fear the
President won't ask him ...
Dear old Dockweiler is an awfully good man ... From youth he has
gauged every act by his conception of the will of God, and in
doubt has asked God's representative, the priest. What a
comforting thing to have a church like that; it makes for
happiness, if it does not make for progress. Why is it that
progress must come from discontent? The latter is the divine spark
in man, no doubt,
"O to be satisfied, satisfied,
Only to lie at Thy feet."
is a hymn we used to sing in church. We yearn to be satisfied and
yet we know because we are not satisfied we grow . ...
"The mystical hanker after something higher," is religion, and yet
it should not be all of religion; for man's own sake there should
be some cross to which one can cling, some Christ who can hear and
give peace to the waves. I wish I could be a Catholic, and yet I
can not feel that once you have a free spirit that it is right to
go back into the monastery, and shut yourself up away from doubts,
making your soul strong only through prayer. There are two
principles in the world fighting all the time, and the one makes
the other possible. There is no "perfect," there is a "better"
only. And in this fight one does not become better by prayer--
prayer is only the ammunition wagon, the supply train, where one
can get masks for poison gas and cartridges for the guns.
Pfeiffer said a good thing the other day, quite like him to say
it, too. We were talking of churches and he said he never went to
one because he did not believe in abasing or prostrating himself
before God, he saw no sense in it; God didn't respect one for it,
and moreover he was part of God himself and he couldn't prostrate
himself before himself. I asked him if he didn't recognize
humility as a virtue, and he said, "No, the higher you hold your
head the more God-like you are."
Humility, to me, seems to be the basis of sympathy. We stoop to
conquer in that we are not self-assertive and self-assured, for if
we "know" that we are right we can not know how others think or
feel. We can not grow.
You know there are two great classes of people, those who are
challenged by what they see, and those who are not. Now the only
kind who grow are the former. But what is it to grow? If we
"evermore come out by that same door wherein we went" surely there
is no object in being curious. Can there be growth when we are in
an endless circle? ...
Now after all my struggle, I fall back not on reason but on
instinct, on a primal desire, and perhaps this is my rudimentary
soul, the mystical hanker after something higher. That is a real
thing. The purpose of nature seems to be to put it into me and
make it very important to me. That being so I can not overlook it,
and must obey it. The thing that pleases me as I look back upon
it, is the thing I must do; that sets the standard for me; that is
morals and religion. If there is any chap who the day after sings
with joy over being a devil--that man I never heard of--but if he
takes delight in what he did that was fiendish, then he must
follow and should follow that bent until he SEES that it is