The Letters of Franklin K. Lane
Edited by and . Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1922. 8vo. xxiv+473 pp. $5.00.
THIS volume, unlike most books of its type, derives its interest from the substance and charm of the letters which it contains rather than from the eminence of the man who wrote the letters. Mr. Lane’s public career was not one of unusual distinction. As public careers go, it was neither extensive, varied, nor striking. It was associated with no great or constructive public enterprise except in so far as all the members of President Wilson’s cabinet were associated with the work of framing the national policy during the war. Many other American statesmen of Mr. Lane’s generation served longer, occupied a greater variety of offices, and were far more prominently in the public eye. But very few proved themselves to be so observant, or so sagacious, or so gifted with imagination as these letters show Mr. Lane to have been. And still fewer have been endowed with anything like his skill in letter-writing, which was Mr. Lane’s method of thinking aloud.
Most statesmen find letter-writing distasteful and irksome. They do no more of it than a sense of duty commands. They derive no pleasure from it and are inclined to be supremely cautious in committing themselves on paper lest an inadvertent phrase should return to plague them later on. Mr. Lane was just the reverse of all this. Letter-writing was one of his recreations. To Ambassador Page he confessed, in 1918, ‘I have a very old-fashioned love for writing from day to day what pops into my mind, contradicting each day what I said the day before, and gathering from my friends their impressions and their spirit in the same way.’ So he wrote letters on the train, or in bed, or wheresoever the incentive happened to find him. His circle of correspondents included not only his intimates but scores of others in all walks of life with whom his personal acquaintance was relatively slight. To all of them he gave whatever flew into his mind on any subject, and without the slightest reticence. For this reason the letters are autobiographical in a genuine sense, for the writer put into them the entire frankness and charm of his rare personality. They show Mr. Lane to have been a far bigger man than the world accounted him to be.
The statesman who puts on paper from day to day the thoughts which race through his mind is apt to disclose some inner history. Mr. Lane’s letters flisclose a good deal of it, particularly as respects the drift of the Wilson administration over the brink of war. Writers on governmental theory speak of ‘cabinet solidarity’ as an axiom of the American political system, but they often omit to mention that this may be only an optical delusion. The solidarity, as Mr. Lane’s letters of 1916 indicate, may be outward only. There may be deep-seated dissensions within. One reason for the distorted popular impression concerning the serene atmosphere of the council chamber is to be found in the simple fact that nobody heretofore has been so frank or so specific as Mr. Lane in narrating the actual conversation at cabinet meetings.
In this respect some of the letters are sources of information which no student of American government in its practical workings can hereafter afford to overlook. It is, indeed, small wonder that various members of the cabinet felt out of sorts at times, and talked of resigning; the surprising thing is that a member of the cabinet could write the things which are now published in this book and still feel constrained to remain a member. The time-honored rule that secretaries must agree or resign was gravely honored in the breach during these war years. It is an impossible rule, even in time of peace, if strictly construed.
The historical value of these letters is undeniably great, but it is not for this reason that they will be widely read and enjoyed. Others have given ns inner history from time to time without thereby gaining or holding an audience. The chief appeal of Mr. Lane’s letters is their cogency of expression, their vividness, and their high literary distinction. Therein this book is hardly surpassed by any of our war memoirs.
WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO.