Evening star., 1939-12-03
LincoIn's Dual Peace and War
Character Puzzles Sondburq
Emoncipotor Still
A Mystery to
Bioeropher
8y the Associated Press.

Biogropher
By the Associated Press.
HARBERT, Mich, Dec. Scar
Sandburg asserts that after II year;
of literary labor on Abraham Lin.
coins war years, the Emancipatol
remained mysterious and an al
most unbelievable" combination Of
peace man and war-maker
At the same time, said the poet
historian, he had been able to learn
relatively little about the deep down
reascss why men 60 to war.
The Lincoln book does not give
exhaustively the anatomy of war,
the how and why of a war starting,
going on. ending For all his re-
search and meditation, MIR. Sand
burg averred, there yet remain wide
margins where man "is profound
ly ignorant of war"
The author, lounging in favor
lite chair and facing Lake Michi-
gan, a white-capped green mass,
swelling and subsiding under a vola-
tile November sky, fashioned a mo-
sale of spoken thoughts about is
sues new and old No handy pigeon
holing of men and motives and ideas.
No precise system sharply separat-
ing the sheep ard the goats, the
present from the past.
"Mell of Hess"
"The world touay is what the COM
les in the old minstrel shows used
to call Mel OF a hess" Mr..
Sa1dburg continued, but as a Ma
tion I think we have learned much
in the last Is years. One nice thing
to look at now. in connection with
the present European war, is the
keen awareness everywhere of the
dislocations of normal life which all
have to make in adjusting them
selves to the war
THE emphasis from so many
quarters is that there will be pen
alties with the sudden stoppage of
war production and that populations
will suffer when expansions crum-
pie
AS Mr.. Sandburg sees it, passing
from conflicts of today to battles and
hatreds of another century, Lincoln
had two sides to him and was a man
of peace and war maker-two in
one-and the combination is one
to amaze the student of character
and history.
He was hard and brutal fight
er," Mr.. Sandburg described his
hero. He stuck to Grant when mil
lions were calling Grant a reck-
less butcher He telegraphed Grant
to 60 on as bulldog in chewing and
choking the enemy.
Ridiculed on Peace Ideas.
"Yet the strange and unusual
thing is that while Lincoln could
make war cruelty and mercilessly,
he never let his head nor heart lose
sight of what the eventual peace
terms should be. The radicals OF
his own party ridiculed his peace
ideas and gave him the horselaugh
on his picture of reconstruction of
the Union. They wanted war guilt
trials and death on the gallows for
the Confederate leaders.
His wife, too, favored this pol
Icy of the radicals and Charles Sum-
ner later told of how he heard Lin
coin say to her regarding this course
OF retaliation and punishment,
Judge not that We be not judged
It's a long story and not easy to
tell. 1t involves what is called a
paradox. To make war on a people
means killing And how can you
kill 'em if you love 'em?
Strange as marvellous dream is
1t that the foremost lighted and
cherished memory of the Confed-
crate cause, Robert E. Lee, had In
himself these same mysteries of love
and reconciliation that moved the
leading Northern figure, Abraham
Lincoln"
AS a biographer, Carl .Sandburg
has passed by far the larger part of
the last 20 years in Lincoln's COM
pany. His first section of the life
of the rail-splitter President ap-
peared in 1924 as The Prairie
Years" He wrote numerous articles
about Lincoln, stepped himself in
Lincoln lore. In 1928 he began the
spade work on the monumental Sec
ond section, which will be published
next month.
l, 100000 Words.
Apart from the high literary
quality of the work, The War
Years. is a physical tour de force. |
Believed to be the longest biog-
raphy ever written in the Western
Hemisphere, and certainly to be
counted among the giant tones of
the world in any age, the four VOL
umes embody 100000 words. or
nearly twice the number in the Bible
With the Apocrypha, and more than
a quarter million more than Shake
speare's total output of slightly in
excess of 100000 words. The COM
bined sections of Mr.. Sandburg's
Lincoln total nearly 100000 words.
Originally, the author explained.
ne thought he could cover Lincoln's
war years in few long chapters
'upplementing The Prairie Years."
but found he was lacking in any
grasp at all of what made Lincoln
Of heroic stature"
Il found, for instance" he OBJ
that the Gettysburg speech
was little book in itself. I was a
little tired, too, of hearing that the
econd inaugural address was a
lassic whereas the first inaugural
vas seldom mentioned. The first
inaugural was really statement of
Why Lincoln started war of his own