The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political

by Franklin K. Lane

TO JOHN CRAWFORD BURNS

ROME, ITALY

Washington, March 13, 1915

MY DEAR JOHN,—I have received three letters from you within the last two weeks, greatly to my joy. Your first and longest letter, but not a word too long, I thought so very good that I had it duplicated on the typewriter and sent a copy to each member of the Cabinet, excepting Bryan, whom you refer to in not too complimentary a manner. On the same day that I received this letter I received one from Pfeiffer, presenting the American merchants' point of view, who desire to get goods from Germany, a copy of which I inclose. So I put your letter and his together, and told them all who you both are. Thus, old man, you have become a factor in the determination of international policy. Several members of the Cabinet have spoken with the warmest admiration of your letter, one scurrilous individual remarking that he was astonished to learn that I had such a learned literary gent as an intimate friend.

We are just at present amused over the coming into port of the German converted cruiser Eitel, with the captain and the crew of the American bark, William P. Frye, on board. The calm gall of the thing really appeals to the American sense of humor. Here is a German captain, who captured a becalmed sailing ship, loaded with wheat, and blows her up; sails through fifteen thousand miles of sea, in danger every day of being sunk by an English cruiser, and then calmly comes in to an American port for coal and repairs. The cheek of the thing is so monumental as to fairly captivate the American mind. What we shall do with him, of course, is a very considerable question. He can not be treated as a pirate, I suppose, because there can not be such a thing as a pirate ship commanded by an officer of a foreign navy and flying a foreign flag. But he plainly pursued the policy of a pirate, and I am expecting any day to find Germany apologizing and offering amends. But there may be some audacious logic by which Germany can justify such conduct. Talking of Belgium, I was referred the other day to the report of the debates in the House of Commons found in the 10th volume of Cobbett's Parliamentary Reports, touching the attack on Copenhagen by England in 1808, in which the Ministry justified its ruthless attack upon a neutral power in almost precisely the same language that Von Bethmann Hollweg used in justifying the attack on Belgium, and Lord Ponsonby used the sort of reasoning then, in answer to the Government, that England is now using in answer to Germany. I was distrustful of the quotations that were given to me and looked the volume up, and found that England was governed by much the same idea that Germany was—just sheer necessity. Of course, your answer is that we have traveled a long way since 1808.

Doesn't it look to you an impossible task for England and France to get beyond the Rhine, or even get there? England, of course, has hardly tried her hand in the game yet and if the Turk is cleaned up she will have a lot of Australians and others to help out in Belgium. Sir George Paish told me they expect to have a million and a half men in the field by the end of this summer.

Pfeiffer comes here to-day to spend a couple of days trying to do something for the State Department; I don't know just what, but I shall be mighty glad to see the old chap. I haven't seen anything of Lamb since his return.

Do write me again. Affectionately yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

On the sixteenth of March Lane again started for San Francisco, crossing the continent for the third time within a month. Vice- President Marshall, Adolph C. Miller, now of the Federal Reserve Board, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant Secretary of the Navy, who were going out to visit officially the Exposition, were the principal members of the party. In Berkeley, on March twenty- third, 1915, Lane received his degree from the University of California. In conferring this degree President Wheeler said:—

"Franklin K. Lane,—Your Alma Mater gladly writes to-day your name upon her list of honour,—in recognition not so much of your brilliant and unsparing service to state and nation, as of your sympathetic insight into the institutions of popular government as the people intended them. An instinctive faith in the righteous intentions of the average man has endowed you with a singular power to discern the best intent of the public will. Men follow gladly in your lead, and are not deceived.

"By direction of the Regents of the University of California I confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Laws:—

"Creative statesman in a democracy; big-hearted American." On December 7, 1915, upon receiving a copy of the diploma Lane wrote in acknowledgement to Dr. Wheeler,—"I have the diploma which it has taken all the talent of the office to translate. I had one man from Columbia, another from the University of Virginia, one from Nebraska, and one at large at work on it. Thank you. It takes the place of honor over my mantel."