Evening star., 1922-11-07
Letters of Franklin K. Lane
Revelations of the War Cabinet and Intimate
Views of National and World Figures by the For.
mer Secretary of the Interior.
W.
Instaument No. E.
Copyright, Iss2. BY Anne W. L.ns.)

Installment No. E.
An intimate picture of the life Of
member OF the cabinet under the
pressure of war days Is given in the
following letter written by Mr. Lane
to Walter ii. Page. at that time
Americas ambassador at London:
WASHINGTON. March lS, 1918.
My Dear Mr.. Ambassador.-1 am
the poorest of all living correspond
ents. In fact, am a dead corre-
spondent do not function. II it
had been SO 1 would long since have
answered your notes, which have
been in my basket, but I have had no
time for any personal correspondence.
much as I delight in it, for l have
q very fashioned love for writing
from day to day what pops into my
mind, contradicting each day what l
said the day before, and gathering
from my friends their Impressions
the first time in three months l have
| leasure enough to acknowledge
a few Of the accumulated personal
| letters.
Let me give you a glimpse Of my
day, just to compare ii with your
| own and by way of contrasting life
| in two different spheres and on differ
| office at . in the morning and my
| day is broken up into fifteen minute
periods. during which I see either
my own people or others. ] really
| write none of my own letters. simply
I telling my secretaries whether the
answer should be yes" or no" l
| lunch at my own desk and generally
war work in the department. We
have over thirteen hundred men who
! have gone out of this department
! into the Army. . My day is bro
ken into by cabinet meeting twice
a week, meeting of the Council of
| National Defence twice week. and
latterly with long sessions every af-
ternoon over the question of what
railroad wages should be.
| My office is a sort of place of last
resort for those who are discouraged
elsewhere, for Washington is no
| longer city of set routine and fixed
habit. 1t IS at last the center of the
nation. New York is no longer even
the financial center. The newspapers
are edited from here. Society centers
j here. All the industrial chiefs Of the
nation spend most of their time here.
| II is easier to find a great cattle king
! or automobile manufacturer or rail-
road president or banker at the
! Shoreham or the Willard Hotel
| than it is to flnd him in his own town.
The surprising thing is that these
| great men who have made our coun-
| try do not loom so large when brought
to Washington and put to work.
Every day I find some man of many
millions who has been here for months
and whose movements used to be a
i matter of newspaper notoriety, but
| I did not know, even, that he was
here. 7 leave my office at :
! o'clock. not having been out of it dur
! ing the day except for a cabinet or
council meeting. take wink of sleep.
! change my clothes and go to dinner,
| for this, as you will remember, is the
one form Of entertainment that Wash
! ington has permitted itself In the war.
The dinners are Hooverized-three
! courses. little or no wheat. little or no
! meat, little or no sugar, a few serve
wine. And round the table will al
ways be found men in foreign. uni
! forms. or some missionary from some
great power who comes begging for
/ boats or food. These dinners used to
bo ,,f iy hi
administration gossip. but the
spirit Of the people is one of unequaled
F., loyalty. The republicans are as glad
! to have Wilson as their President as
are the democrats. I think sometimes
, a little more glad. because many of
the democrats are disgruntled over
patronage or something else. The
! women are ferocious in their hunt
for spies, and their criticism is against
what they think is indifference to
this danger. Boys appear at these
dinners in the great houses. because
of their uniforms, who would never
have been permitted even to come to
the front door in other days. for all
are potential heroes. Every woman
ca rries her knitting. and it is seldom
that you hear a croaker. even among
the most luxurious class. Well. the
dinner is over by half past 10. and
go home to an hour and a half's
work, which has been sent from the
office. and fall at last into a more or
less troubled sleep. This is the daily
round.
have not been TO New York since
the war began. l made one trip
across the continent speaking for the
liberty loan. day and night. And this
life Is pretty much the life of all of us
here. The President keeps up his
spirits by going to the theater three or
four times a week. There are no Off
cial functions at the White House, and
everybody's teeth are set. The allies
need not doubt our resolution. Eng
land and France will break before we