CRIMSON BOOKSHELF

The Letters of Franklin K. Lane offer three points of approach, none of which can be overlooked, all of which are interesting. Letters as such, if they are looked upon from the standpoint of literary interest are apt to prove disappointing, though not necessarily so. As a running commentary on the life and times of a certain period, the letters of one man are often inadequate, too close to affairs, and subject to the prejudices of the times. But it is as showing a remarkable and possibly great personality at first hand that a volume of collected letters such as those of Franklin K. Lane has its chief interest and its chief reason for being. The one thread running through the whole and giving the volume body is the personality of the man who wrote the letters.

The value of Lane's letters lies in the intimacy with which we meet the man and incidentally hear his comment on affairs. If the man himself were not so interesting, reading his letters would be very much like listening to one end of a telephone conversation.

Enthusiasm is the keynote which is found running through Lane's public life, and with it go the courage and optimism, the love of service to which his other qualities were only tributary. His motto was "Be for things", and he lived up to it enthusiastically. As a journalist, lawyer, city attorney in San Francisco, member of the Interstate Commerce Commission and Secretary of the Interior, Lane had a varied experience as a public servant, and he gives us the full benefit of that experience in his letters.

When Lane writes "Having just returned from luncheon and being in the enjoyment of a cigar of fine aroma I sit me down for a quiet talk. I am visualizing you as by my side and addressing you in person", we enjoy alike his gossip and his serious discussion, "the general look-in on my mind". His charm arises from the fact that the "look-in" although meant for one person, is not confined to thoughts that only two understand and enjoy. Profoundly serious Scot or light hearted, fanciful Irishman, or the American that was the balance between the two, he has something to say that is worth listening to. Whether slamming Hearst or praising Roosevelt or Wilson, philosophizing over politics or religion, setting forth plans of state or dreaming dreams, his mind and his heart is completely open to us.

Perhaps this is sometimes unfortunate, for toward the last Lane wrote at times in a tenor of depression, at times under a great nervous strain in a tenor of lightness bordering on hysteria. Here the reader will feel that he is not with the Lane whom he has followed for the years of his public life.

There are some really great letters in

the volume, notes of sympathy for bereaved friends, letters of state to men like Walter Hines Page, letters of advice to young men who asked for it. But some of the best are purely personal letters. To "Elizabeth" Lane directed messages which give a slant at the man from a unique angle. We find this hard-headed two-fisted public servant a poet at heart, rising above the prosaic environment he regretted.

Franklin K. Lane was a poet, philosopher, a constructive statesman, and a business man according to the time of day, the mood, or the occasion. The importance of the volume of his letters is that he here translates his enthusiasm, his philosophy, personal and political, and above all his life into a work where we meet him on as intimate terms as a friend would, "and after all" as he says, "a man does not do any better in any year than make a friend"