Gutzon had an immense faith in Paderewski. One day in Washington during the First World War, he stated his theory to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane. “One of these days,” he said, “you people will realize that imagination and disinterestedness are powerful factors in the building of a state. I believe Paderewski is capable of rebuilding Poland and of rebuilding Europe if the occasion demanded. He is capable of any sacrifice, and he has the mind and soul to keep him going.”
“You artists always talk in big terms,” said Lane. “So far I am with you. But there’s a great practical side to nation building.”
“Don’t you think Paderewski has that, too?”
“Yes,” said Lane, “and that’s why I’m interested. That’s why he’s succeeding. They tell me he’s abandoned music and set aside his entire fortune to arm Poland and place her on the side of the allies. Just as certainly as I’m sitting here, this great artist is going to be the liberator of modern Poland. This artist!”
“Yes,” commented Gutzon. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. He’s an artist.”
When the next great crisis came for Poland, there were no great artists to deal with it—only politicians.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FOR THE PARKS
It is one of the amazing things about a sculptor that the more work he does and the more recognition he gets, the more his friends demand that he stick to his proper business. And it is probably just as amazing that the sculptor doesn’t want to and seldom does. Somebody, commenting on the varied activities and interests of Gutzon Borglum, quoted a bit of apt philosophy: “I am a man; nothing human is alien to me,” which was Borglum’s estimate of the situation, all right. The constant urge to Art was something, he thought, that made his friends seem normal.
He might have been an aviator had his reflexes been faster at the time the Wright brothers made their test flights at Kittyhawk. His studio at Stamford was big enough to be a fine air laboratory, and for years it was cluttered with an odd assortment of things that were going to make flying better ... and quicker, and cheaper, and easier and safer.
Gutzon was one of the observers of Orville Wright’s first sustained flight at Fort Myers when the inventors were trying to prove the value of their plane to the United States Army. He saw “a little mechanism that looked like the wreck of a covered wagon” travel around a half-mile course for sixty-seven minutes. Then, after an enthusiastic greeting to the pilot, he and Orville, Colonel Bromwell, Captain Squier and Lieutenant Selfridge rode into town aboard a streetcar. As a representative of the Aeronautical Society of America, he saw the collapse of the plane the next day and the tragic death of Lieutenant Selfridge.