I saw him the night following the election—a strikingly frail figure, a little sad but not too sad to smile and joke in his accustomed way, greatly disappointed but not so much so as to be embittered. After six years of the most strenuous service, yielding his strength ungrudgingly to the demands of his people, and vindicating the confidence of his supporters by attaining as commanding a position in the senate as was ever held by an Indiana senator, he now faced private life with equanimity, poor of purse, broken in health, and nearing three score years and ten.
His deepest concern that night was his failing health, and it was his intention when congress convened for the short session in December to resign the leadership and husband his strength. During the month of November he did not greatly improve and he returned to his post of duty in December in a serious condition.
CHAPTER XIX
The Closing of a Career
THE close of the campaign left Senator Kern in such a state of physical debility that he was fixed in the determination to withdraw from the duties and responsibilities of the leadership of his party in the senate with the view to conserving his health. From this he was dissuaded by party leaders and the opening of the short session of the sixty-fourth congress in December found him at his post as usual. The session promised to be a crowded one. In his message at the opening of the session President Wilson had insisted that the congress proceed to the immediate enactment of the supplementary legislation to the Eight-Hour Railroad bill pushed through in the early autumn to prevent the strike, and there was no certainty that this could be done without a prolonged contest on several points. The congress in response to popular clamor had provided for enormously increased expenditures for the army and navy, and now the problem of raising the revenue correspondingly was demanding attention. This promised to partake of the nature of a party contest as all revenue measures do. The historic importance of the session, however, was not foreshadowed, for on the December day in 1916 when the gavels fell there was little reason to assume that the nation was rushing toward war.
It is not my purpose to follow Senator Kern in the discharge of his duties as majority leader. These differed in no wise from those of the preceding years. But as the days went by and instead of improving in health he either made no progress toward recovery or seemed to be losing ground, he compromised with his sense of duty to the extent of spending less time in the stuffy senate chamber. In the afternoons when the senate had struck its routine pace he retired more and more frequently to his room at Congress Hall, or to the seclusion of his committee room on the gallery floor. His loss of voice immediately after the campaign, which might have been ascribed to over use, persisted with an ominous suggestion of a recurrence of the trouble which had driven him to Asheville ten years before. This, with his loss of weight and unhealthy color, caused him deep concern, which was not relieved by the necessity imposed by his lack of fortune of returning to his profession at the age of sixty-eight. Greatly weakened, he met all the obligations imposed upon him by his party associates and the administration uncomplainingly and gladly. While the irony of defeat had sunk deep, the life-long chivalry asserted itself in the generous praise of his successor, and if there was any bitterness in his soul it failed to find expression on his lips. Realizing that his political race was run, he failed to respond to unfriendly comments of his most virulent political enemies. Nothing could have been more perfect than his deportment in defeat.
Early in the session grounds for grave apprehension concerning our relations with Germany developed, and Senator Kern looked upon the probability of war with dread. Aside from the usual horrors of armed conflict, he keenly felt the situation in which the hundreds of thousands of Americans of German decent would find themselves should we be forced into the war by the mingled stubbornness, stupidity and perfidy of Berlin. When on that morning in January the word flashed over the capitol that Vice-President Marshall had received a note from President Wilson informing him of his desire to address the senate, Senator Kern was one of many who was depressed at the possibilities of the message. Contrary to custom, he had not been previously consulted by the president concerning his intentions, and neither had the chairman of the committee on Foreign Relations. The president had kept his own councils and the note to the vice-president but hinted at the general nature of the communication. That morning senators generally were prepared for something smacking of a preliminary to a war declaration. It was a solemn assemblage of senators that witnessed the entrance of Woodrow Wilson to the chamber, and a breathless audience both on the floor and in the galleries that listened to the remarkable peace plea, couched in the president’s characteristically beautiful English, read in a measured beautifully modulated voice. No one was more delighted than Senator Kern. But there was to be no peace, neither in Europe or for America, and as the session drew to a close, with no certainty that the congress would again meet for nine months, and with Germany persisting in her mad course with her submarines, the president again appeared, this time before both branches, with a request for congressional authorization for the arming of our merchant ships in self-defense. This request, made on February 26, did not reach the senate for discussion until March 1st, and the last three days of the session were days of excitement and bitterness born of the indisposition of some few senators to arm the president with the power he asked and in the way he asked it. The debate, which was not, as usually charged a fillibuster in the ordinary meaning of the term, in that none of the speeches of the “eleven wilful men” were of great length, was of significant duration to prevent a vote before the expiration of the congress at noon March 4th. Senator Kern, who favored the granting of the power, did not participate in the discussion, taking the position that the friends of the measure would serve it best by consuming no time in talk.
It was in the midst of this bitter battle, on March 3, that he delivered a brief valedictorian address which was a heart expression on the pain of parting from associations that had become dear to him. This, his last utterance in the senate of which he had been the leader for four years, called forth at least one tribute that he greatly cherished. He said:
“Mr. President, before taking leave of this body, I desire to take a very few moments in which to express partially my deep appreciation of the many kindnesses and courtesies shown me since I have been a member of the senate. It will be only a partial expression, for there are no words in which I can tell you fully of that which is in my mind and heart.
“I have no thought, sir, that my leavetaking is a matter of any great moment either to the country or the senate, for senators have come and gone since the foundation of the government, and the republic has survived the loss of the greatest and the best, but I feel that it may not be deemed inappropriate for me before leaving to try to tell you, not how greatly you will miss me, but rather how I will miss the association and companionship which has so enriched my life during the last six years.
“Mr. President, it will be with a sense of relief that I lay aside the burdens and responsibilities incident to the duties of a senator. My work here may not have been very effective, but for the last four years it has been hard, continuous and very earnest work, taxing heavily at times my health and strength, and I shall lay my armor by in happy anticipation of rest and the enjoyment of the delights of home life.