The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
democracies. We take up new machinery of government so slowly. But
industrially it is also true. When told to change step we shift
and stumble and halt and hesitate and go through all kinds of
awkward misses. This has been true as to ships and aeroplanes and
guns, big and little, and uniforms. Whatever the government has
done itself has been tied by endless red tape. It is hard for an
army officer to get out of the desk habit, and caution,
conservatism, sureness, seem even in time of crisis to be more
important than a bit of daring. In my Department, I figure that it
takes about seven years for the nerve of initiative and the nerve
of imagination to atrophy, and so, perhaps, it is in other
departments. It took five months for one of our war bureaus to get
out a contract for a building that we were to build for them.
Fifteen men had to sign the contract. And of course we have been
impatient. But things are bettering every day. The men in the
camps are very impatient to get away. But where are the ships to
do all the work? The Republicans cannot chide us with all of the
unpreparedness, for they stood in the way of our getting ships
three years ago. The gods have been against us in the way of
weather so we have not brought down our supplies to the seaboard,
but we have not had the ships to take away that which was there;
or coal, sometimes, for the ships.
From now, however, you will see a steadier, surer movement of men,
munitions, food, and ships. The whole country is solidly, strongly
with the President. There are men in Congress bitterly against him
but they do not dare to raise their voices, because he has the
people so resolutely with him. The Russian overthrow has been a
good thing for us in one way. It will cost us perhaps a million
lives, but it will prove to us the value of law and order. We are
to have our troubles, and must change our system of life in the
next few years.
A great oil man was in the office the other day and told me in a
plain, matter-of-fact way, what must be done to win--the
sacrifices that must be made--and he ended by saying, "After all,
what is property?" This is a very pregnant question. It is not
being asked in Russia alone. Who has the right to anything? My
answer is, not the man, necessarily, who has it, but the man who
can use it to good purpose. The way to find the latter man is the
difficulty.
We will have national woman suffrage, national prohibition,
continuing inheritance tax, continuing income tax, national life
insurance, an increasing grip upon the railroads, their finances
and their operation as well as their rates. Each primary resource,
such as land and coal and iron and copper and oil, we will more
carefully conserve. There will be no longer the opportunity for
the individual along these lines that there has been. Industry
must find some way of profit-sharing or it will be nationalized.
These things, however, must be regarded as incidents now; and the
labor people, those with vision and in authority, are very willing
to postpone the day of accounting until we know what the new order
is to be like.
Well, I have rambled on, giving you a general look--in on my mind.
Don't let any of those people doubt the President, or doubt the
American people. This is the very darkest day that we have seen.
But we believe in ourselves and we believe in our own kind, and
believe in a something, not ourselves, that makes for
righteousness,--slowly, stumblingly, but, as the centuries go,
surely.
I have not yet seen the Archbishop of York. He has not been here.
But he has made a most favorable impression where he has been, and
so have the English labor people.
Poor Spring-Rice did good work here. Washington felt very sad over
his death, and is expecting that England will evidence her
appreciation of the fact that he did nothing to estrange us by the
way in which his widow is treated.
Reading has been received and fits in perfectly. With warm
regards, as always, Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To John Lyon Machine Gun Company Camp McClennen, Alabama
Washington, March 15,1918
MY DEAR JOHN,--I know how you must feel. Every particle of my own
nature rebels against the horror of this war, or of any war, and
against the dragooning by military men. I had rather die now and
take my chances of Hell, than doom myself and Ned and those who
are to come after, to living under a government which is as this
government is now and as all governments must be now,--autocratic,
governed by orders and commands. But this is the game, and we have
got to play it, play it hard and play it through. Manifestly we
cannot quit as Russia did without getting Russia's ill-fortune.
There was a great empire of a hundred and eighty million people.
They mobilized twenty-five million men. Six million of them are
dead. The Czar was overthrown, a new government was set up, one of
conservative socialism, and that was swept aside and a group of
impractical socialists put in its stead, and where is Russia now?
Broken to bits, its population dying of hunger, its industries
unworked, its soil untilled, and Germany coming on with her great
feet, stamping down the few who are brave enough to interpose
themselves between Germany and her end. If we were to quit,
Germany would do to us, or try to do to us, what she has done to
Russia.
If there ever was a real defensive war it is the one that we are
engaged in, and we must sacrifice, and sacrifice, and sacrifice,
not merely for the world's sake but for our own sake. Ned is in
France. He went through England. He tells me that everybody is
serious, solemn, purposeful. They would rather all die than live
under Germany's mastery of the world.
The President is being bitterly criticized because he has taken
every opportunity to talk of terms and of ways out, but I think he
is right. He must make the people of the world feel that we are
not foolishly, and in a headstrong way, fighting to get anything
for ourselves or for anybody else, except the chance to live our
own lives. And we will show these Germans something. Our capacity
to produce aeroplanes is still altogether unrealized, and we will
have great guns a few feet apart along the entire front. We can
bomb German harbors where submarines are, and are made--that's
the work that Ned is going in for,--and we will hold that western
line until every resource is exhausted. And we will go through it
one of these days, perhaps not this year. But we must go through
it or else American ships will live on the sea by consent of
Germany, and Canada will become German territory. This is no
dream. Give Germany Paris and Calais and she can exact terms from
England. Why should she not ask for Canada? And give Germany
Canada and what becomes of the United States? An army of Germans
on our border, 5,000,000 men in arms in the United States always,
the army and navy budget taking thirty or forty per cent of every
man's income. Who wants to live in such a country? We are fighting
the greatest war that history has ever seen, not merely in numbers
but in principle. We are fighting to get rid of the most hateful
survivals from the past. The overlord, the brusque and arrogant
soldier, is the dominating factor in society and the government,
the turning of men's thoughts away from the pursuit of the things
of art and beauty and social beneficence into the one channel of
making everything serve the military arm of the nation.
This will be a better world for the poor man when all is over. We
must forget our dreams, what our own individual lives would have
been, and with dash, and cheer, and courage, and willingness to
make the ultimate sacrifice, set our jaws and go forward. The
devil is in the saddle and we must pull him down, or else he will
rule the world,--and you are to have a tug at his coat. And I envy
you. I'd take your place in a minute, if I could. Remember that
you are an individualist, not a collectivist naturally, but
individuals are of no use now. The war can be made only by great
groups who conform. The free spirit of man will have its way once
more when this bloody war is done.
I am glad you wrote me, and I want you to feel that you always can
write me, whatever is in your heart, and I will give you such
answer as my busy days will permit. There is only one way to look
at life and get any satisfaction out of it, and that is to bow to
the inevitable. We all must be fatalists to that extent, and once
a course has been determined upon, accept it and make the best of
it. The life of the old gambler does not consist in holding a big
hand but in playing a poor hand well. You and I are no longer
masters of our own fortunes. All that we can do is to abide by the
set rules of the game that is being played. I would change many
things, but I am powerless, and because I am powerless I must say
to myself each day, "All that God demands of me is that I shall do
my best," and doing that, the responsibility is cast upon that
Spirit which is the Great Commander. I like to feel at these times
that there is a personal God and a personal devil, and there has
been no better philosophy devised than that. God is not supreme,
He is not omnipotent, He has His limitations, His struggles, His
defeats, but there is no life unless you believe that He
ultimately must win, that this world is going upward, not
downward, that the devil is to be beaten,--the devil inside of
ourselves, the devil of wilfulness, of waywardness, of cynicism,
and the devil that is represented by the overbearing, cruel
militarism and ruthless inhumanity of Germany. You are a soldier
of the Lord, just as truly as Christ was.
I send you my affectionate regards, and with it goes the
confidence that you will, with good cheer and resolution, play
your part. Sincerely yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
This boy died in France. Lane wrote to his father of him:--
To Frank Lyon
Washington, [November 16, 1918]
DEAR FRANK,--Have just heard. Dear, dear Boy! I was so fond of
him. He had a brave adventurous spirit. Well, he has gone out
gloriously. There could be no finer way to go and no better time.
I know your own strength will be equal to this test--and the
wife, poor woman, she too is brave. My heart goes out to you both
very really, wholly. With much affection.
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Miss Genevieve King
Washington, March 16, 1918
MY DEAR MISS KING,--These are times of terrible strain and stress,
and we cannot easily fall back upon those sources of power which
seem so distant and unavailing. I like to think of you as in our
last talk in the Millers' drawing room, where you had a much
better opportunity to express yourself than in the one that we
later had out on the porch. You then seemed to live your thought
and to have the capacity for its expression. I think of you, too,
up on that beautiful mountainside, where things like war and guns
and bandages and hospitals and men without arms and the lack of
ships, the need for saying goodbye, are so remote.
We still keep up a semblance of social life by going to dinners
every night. It is the one relief I have, and yet each time I go I
feel ashamed at what appears like a waste of time, and yet I know
is not, and the waste of good food which is needed by others so
much more than by us. Still the people have come down to a strict
and modest diet with surprising firmness. There is little evidence
of what you would call luxury or extravagance, excepting in the
way a few people live. The place is filled with soldiers of many
colors, breeds, and uniforms.
... Anne is busy every day at her work, and I see little of anyone
who does not come to me on business. The country seems strongly
with the President, and while his spirits are not gay, his purpose