The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
continents. (And I wonder if the gardens of the British--their
week-ends at home with flowers and birds, may not bring them down
to those little things which make for good sense, sanity, wisdom!)
But I fear me I may never so indulge myself, and that is wrong--
that a man should live for fifty-seven years and never thrust his
hand into his own bit of his country's soil--such condition makes
against loyalties that are essential.
Now I have talked with you for a long time, but not long enough.
How I should like to sit in the big re-upholstered chair beside
the lamp, beyond the fire, and throw a match into your brain stuff
that would start it blazing. Yes, and I would like to gather
around that fire a few whom I love. You and Aleck and Sid. and
Pfeiffer and Jack Hallo well and John Burns and Brydon Lamb and
Lathrop Brown and Cotton Smith and John Finley and Dr. Gehring and
John Wigmore--the real world is very small, isn't it?
It just may be that the verdict here will be one of exile to
California, to my brother George's farm; ah, yes he should be with
the few great, and I say 'exile' for I wonder if I should ever see
any of you then? My doctor in Pasadena said that I should live as
a country gentleman, and I answered, "But that takes money." Yet I
would not know where the farm should be, for climate is not all.
So long, old man.
F.K.
Many months later, writing to Mrs. Lane this friend of many years
says, "I want also to recall the remark Frank made when you and
Mary, and he and I, were rain-bound in the little chalet at St.
Mary's in Glacier Park, nine years ago. That was an outstanding
experience in my long friendship with Frank. We had many hours to
discuss things, and no matter on what road we started, we always
came back to a discussion of life; what it was all for, and what
it was about, and what principle a chivalrous man should take in
adjusting himself usefully to the going world. I remember late one
night we sat in the dimly lighted room after a long discussion, he
arose, and turning to me said: 'Doesn't it, after all, just come
to this,--To spend and to be spent--isn't that what life is?'
Every subsequent experience with Frank confirmed me in the belief
that that was his personal philosophy. That is why he lived
greatly while he lived, and died nobly when his life was spent."
To Robert Lansing
Rochester, Minnesota, May 2, [1921]
MY DEAR LANSING,--I am to be operated on on Friday and so send you
this line that you may know that I have yours of April sixteenth,
and have rejoiced very much at its good news, that you were
better, and that you were not bitter because of the come-back
campaign.
Really, I think Harding is doing well, or rather that the whole
administration is being supported well by the country. Oh, these
Republicans have the art of governing, and we do so much better at
talking! No one knows just what his foreign policy is, but
something will work through that will satisfy a very tired people.
There seem to be comparatively few out of work now. We are not out
of the woods yet. But the Lord will take care of them. He may even
keep Johnson from bolting Harding. They will temporize through;
that's my guess.
Good English the people don't know. Ideality they have had enough
of for a time. They just want to get down to brass tacks and make
some money, so that the Mrs. can have more new dresses. I do
earnestly wish them luck. God gave us the great day, and you and
I, anyway, are not ashamed of the parts we played. In fact, the
party loomed pretty large those days--the whole country breathed
lung-fuls and felt heroic. We shall not look upon such another
time nor act for a people so nobly inspired.
Please give to Mrs. Lansing my very best regards--fine spirit,
that she is--and to you, as always, dear Lansing, my affection and
esteem.
LANE
To James D. Pkelan
Rochester, Minnesota, May 2, 1921
MY DEAR JIM,--Glad to hear from you and to get so cheerful a word,
for surely you are justified in looking upon the world as very
much of a friend of yours. You have a rare home, in which to
gather your many friends, and you have had honors in abundance,
and now may rest and write and speak and adjust yourself to
things--terrestrial and celestial--and other service will call
you. There must be some Democrats appointed to adjust European or
other difficulties, even by a Republican, and you will be the
prominent one. So I can look across the mountains to Montalvo and
find you ripening into a fine old mellow age, conscious of
usefulness, in health and in happiness. May it be so!
Just as soon as my boy gets here, I shall be operated on. ... Ned
is now on his honeymoon with his darling little bride, a Catholic
Irish girl named Catherine McCahill, whose grey-whiskered
grandfather of ninety quite took the shine off the bride at the
wedding. He is a Democrat (State Senator for thirty years) a Sinn
Feiner of the most robust sort, and a fanner of many acres.
Poor Anne, she is in for a bad time, with Nancy sick, but she has
a good stout heart and a most adequate and comfortable religious
faith, which throws things that are personal into a very minor
place. The theory of relativity has more than one expression
indeed, and things are small when looked at from a height. And it
is good to find one who can be both religious and large.
The country seems to be liking Harding and his cabinet more and
more. They do have a faculty for getting things done, those
Republicans, and they are subjected to so little criticism. It is
really good to see them do their work and get away with things so
neatly. ... As always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hertle Gunston Hall on the Potomac
Rochester, Minnesota, May 2
DEAR PEOPLE,--What good angel ever put it into your heart to wire
us--and such a warm electric message!
I tell you this is not Gunston Hall--so few birds, flowers, trees
--but I like the great sweep of the sky out here. There is nothing
mean about this land of ours. It gives you something, and gives it
to you generously, something lovable wherever you are.
The Doctors have not decided what to do with me. ... But we'll be
out of suspense this week, I expect.
I can see your garden now--fountain, hedge, roses, bird-boxes,
pergola, box and all--with the dignified, stately Potomac way out
yonder, beyond the cleared fields and the timber. Lucky people,
and you deserve it all. No one, not even the Bolsheviks, would
take it from you. Cordially yours always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Alexander Vogelsang
Rochester, Minnesota, May 4, 1921
DEAR ALECK,--I must pass under the knife, that is the verdict. On
Friday morning the act takes place. And out will come gall-
bladder, adhesions, appendix and all things appertaining thereto,
including hereditaments, reversions, lives in posse, and
sinecures. So that's that!
They say that my heart has grown much worse in the last three
months, but that I probably have four chances out of five of
pulling through, which is more chance than I ever had in politics
in California. I believe I am to be operated on while conscious,
as they fear to give ether. I trust my curiosity will not
interfere with the surgeon's facility.
Ah well, this old shell is not myself, and I have never felt that
the world's axis was located with reference to my habitat. But
this is so interesting an old world that I don't want to leave it
prematurely, because one does run the risk of not coming upon one
equally interesting. So I shall think of you and try to see you
later, in the new offices in the Mills Building. May clients come
thick as dogwood in Rock Creek Park; and trout streams in hidden
places be revealed unto you, within an hour's flight by aero.
Affectionately,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
P. S. Give my regards to the boys with you and in the office, when
you see them--and to Wade Ellis and Ira Bennett and others who may
be interested. Love to your dear Lady!
To John Finley New York Times
Rochester, Minnesota, May 4, [1921]
MY DEAR FINLEY,--I have your postal from London and it cheereth
me--Yea, thou hast done a kindly act to one who is sore beset. ...
When you and I can talk together I want to urge a new field upon
your great paper. Perhaps you can take it up with Mr. Ochs and
perhaps he can see how he can add to his usefulness and to the
glory of his paper's name.
My thought is that there should be somewhere--and why not in New
York?--a Place of Exchange for the New Ideas that the world
evolves each year, a central spot where all that is new in
science, philosophy, practical political machinery, and all else
of the world's mind-products shall be placed on exhibition where
those interested may see. Why should not the Times do this?
It would cost very little. All the plant needs would be a building
which would contain one or two fine halls for public speaking, and
a few properly appointed apartments. No faculty--but a super-
university with all the searchers and researchers, inventors,
experimenters, thinkers of the world for faculty. No students--but
every man the world round interested in the theme under
consideration, welcome, as student without pay. The only executive
officer a Director, whose business would be to see that the great
minds were tapped,--a high class impresario, who would know who
had thought thoughts, developed a theory, found a new problem, or
a new method of solving an old one, and [would] bring the thinker
on the stage and present him to those who knew of what he talked;
and could intelligently, quickly, distribute it to the ends of the
earth.
Money? The lecturer would get his expenses from his home and back
again, and be cared for appropriately in one of the apartments.
Otherwise the incidental expenses of administration. Aside from
the single and simple building the whole thing should not cost
more than $100,000 a year.
To illustrate--it took years for the world to know what Rutherford
was doing with radium. Why should he not have been brought to some
central place and there, before all the students who might choose
to come, tell his story? Pasteur, Einstein, Bergson, Wright
Brothers, Wells (theory of Education). These names are suggestive.
The great of the world could walk, as it were, in the groves with
their pupils and critics, and we could have a new Athens. Whatever
progress the world had made, in whatever line, would be reported
at that time. And the world would know in advance that this was to
be so. Germany has been the world thought center for forty years.
England is now planning to take Germany's place. Why not America?
But the government has not the imagination, and this must be done
quickly.
Why not the Times? And why shouldn't you start it for the Times--
be the first Director?
Then I want someone to take over another of my ideas--a sort of
Federal Reserve Board on the good of the nation, an unofficial
group of men with foresight, who would be a spur to government and
suggest direction. Somebody whose business it would be to attend
to that which is nobody's business and so waits, and waits, until
sometimes too late. Why should we have had no plans for caring for
our soldiers as to employment and giving them the right bent on
their return?
There was no one to concentrate attention--the attention of
Congress and the public--on any definite plan. I tried it with my
scheme for making farms for soldiers, but Congress, as soon as it
found that I was really agitating, passed laws making it
impossible for me to use a sheet of paper or the frank for the
purpose. I do not say my plan was the best possible. Then someone
should have come forward with another, and pushed it against a
Congress made up of Republicans who feared that Democrats would