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You have no love for Czarism any more than you have for Kaiserism. You do not care to make the world righteous by dictatorship, because you know that it is not growth or the basis of growth, but the foundation of hate. Now the very cornerstone of Bolshevism is smartness-the get-even spirit. Because the Czars and the Dukes have oppressed the poor, because when this land was divided among the serfs the division was not what it pretended to be, and because the German business managers made Russian wages and conditions that were brutal and brutalizing, the peasants and workmen have said, "Let us have done with the whole crew, and take all land and industry into our own hands, killing those who were our masters under the old economic system. Let us turn the whole world topsy-turvy in a night, and bring all down to where we are. In our aspiration for Beauty, let us kill what has been created. In our hunt for Justice, let us disregard fair dealing. In our purpose to level down, let us do it with the knife ruthlessly and logically." Thus disregarding the teachings of time, that men are not the creatures of logic, of passionless or passionate theses, but are the expression of an unfaltering Spirit. Whenever men have been the victims of logicalness they have been wrong. For instance, read the story of the Inquisition. They saw what they wanted clearly, those old Fathers of the Church. They knew their objective, which was to save men's souls. And they thought they knew the way. Logic told them that those who preached heresies were bringing men's eternal souls to everlasting hell-fire. And they set about to stop the preaching. Had I believed as they did, 1 doubtless would have done as they did. But to be infallibly right is to be hopelessly smart. Thus it is with all who take a paper system and apply it to that strange thing called life.

This is the defect of the Intellectuals, the "parlor" Bolsheviks. (Better by far be an outdoor Bolshevik, a Red Guard, if you please, one who is in and out of fighting, who acts, who lives the theory!) They do not think in terms of human nature, of natural progress, of real facts. They say, "all men are born free and equal," and at once conclude that the stable boy can step from the stable door to the management of a factory or into the legislature. Now experience teaches that this is a very dangerous experiment, both for stable boy and society. The true philosophy of Democracy teaches that the stable boy shall have, through school and the step-ladder of free institutions, the chance to rise to the management of industry or the leadership of the Senate. That is why the foundation of Democracy is political. For out of political freedom will come social and economic freedom. That is why I favor woman suffrage, it gives women a chance to grow, to think along new lines and grow into new capacities.

To feel acutely that things are badly ordered, and to feel that you know what opportunities men and women and boys and girls should have, is not a program of salvation, it is only the impulse toward finding one. Why then, because we do feel so, should we harness ourselves to a word that implies methods that we would not countenance, and give character to a movement that is at absolute defiance with America's spirit and purpose? There is danger, grave danger, in doing this. For we can upset our own apple-cart very easily these days. I have no more of this world's goods than the humblest workingman. No man is poorer than I am, measured by bank account standards. The education that I have, I fought for. Therefore I do not speak for a class. To defend the methods by which some men have made their money is not at all to my fancy. I see as clearly, I think, as one can, the necessity for the strong arm of society asserting itself, thrusting itself in where it has not been supposed to have any business. Yet I know that a Bolshevik movement, a capturing of what others have gained under the system which has obtained, and the brutal satisfaction of "getting even with the wage-masters" and making them feel to the depths of their souls and in the pain of their flesh every humiliation and torture, will permanently set nothing right. America is fair play. Is it a failure? Have you tried it long enough to know that it will not serve the world, as you think the world should be served? Is there any experiment that we cannot make? Are our hands tied? True, our feet may lag, our eyes may not see far ahead, but who should say that for this reason man should throw aside all the firmness and strength and solidity of order, forget all that he has gone through, and start afresh from the bottom rung of the ladder-from the muck of the primitive brute?

There are things that we would not hold, that we think unworthy of our philosophy, that must be changed or else our sympathies and abiding hopes will be forever offended. And this would be to live right on under the pointing finger of shame. So we know it cannot last, this thing that offends, the badness and brutality of injustice, of unfairness to the weak, their inability to get a fairer chance.

Yet this does not compel us to forsake the hopeful thing we have, for which all men have striven, these centuries through. Must we confess that revolution is still necessary? Are we no further ahead for all that Pym and Hampden and Sam Adams and Washington and all the rest of the glorified ones have done? This land is truly a land of promise because it may be a land of fulfilment. It shows the way by which without robbery and class hatred and the burning up of what has been, men may go right on making experiments, and failing, making others and failing, and learning something all the time.

So, I'm for America, because, if nationalization of land and industry are wise experiments to make, no one can stop us from making them, if partial nationalization of either, or both, appeals to us as something that will right manifest wrong, we can try that solution. And to cry quits on the best that civilization has done, because all that is wished for may not be realized or realizable today, is to lose perspective and balance, and jump out the window because the stairs go round and round.

There is really no use, and therefore no sanity, in being too gay or too grave over this old world of ours. That smart Devil, who is for the static life, is just now particularly active in his favorite old line of propaganda. He knows that the fruit of the tree will bring the millennium. Eat it and you will be happy. He knows the short cuts to freedom and justice. He knows that the curses that are promised for the breaking of the laws of the hunt will be turned into songs. So he is urging and urging, telling you, with your imagination and sensitiveness, that all is so bad that it is best to take the great risk, telling the poor sightless ones that their primitive feelings and powers are the only safe guides, their last ultimate reliance and hope. And out of despair comes the bitter fruit we find in Russia, where they have wrought what they call an economic revolution, but have in fact produced nothing. The wise Tinker who wrote of the Pilgrim's Progress was too true a Christian Scientist, a Christian and a Scientist, if you please, to picture his hero reaching the gate of gold by adopting Despair as his guide.

Progress means the discovery of the capable. They are our natural masters. They lead because they have the right. And everything done to keep them from rising is a blow to what we call civilization. Bolshevism is the supremacy of the least capable, who have the most power, most physical power. The thing Democracy will do is to breed capacity, give capacity its "Show!" The premiums, the distinctions, must go to capacity to promote it, to bring it forth, to make it grow, to be its sunshine. A chance at the sunshine, that's the motto.

Sincerely yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE TO MRS. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT 1

(Pasadena), March 25, (1921)

Your letters, my dear Mrs. Franklin, are refreshing breezes. They are quite what breezes should be warm, kindly, stimulating; not hard, stiff, compelling things, off a granite Northern shore. Anne rejoices in them, without words.

I have been lately with my one brother on his ranch, — a large name implying vast herds quietly grazing over infinite valleys and mountains. But all farms here are ranches, as you doubtless know, as all weather is fine. My brother's ranchita is eighty acres of beauty; a stream below, running up to manzanita crowns on good-sized hills, and oaks and sycamores and bays, and many other trees between. He has a house, all of which he planned in fullest detail himself, with as lovely a site as anywhere, and a pretty and artistic wife;

From The Letters of Franklin K. Lane. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Reprinted by permission.

a good saddle horse, a noble dog, a loyal and most excellent cook, many books and what more could he have in heaven? Outside his dining-room window he has built a dining-table for the birds, and so as we dined within, they dined without. Each morning I saw the sun rise, and I whistled as I dressed. One morning I climbed the hills and found the cow and drove it in for the man to milk. But my only morning duty was to pick a golden poppy or a cherokee rose or a handful of wild forget-me-nots for my button-hole. All day I sat in the sun, or drove a bit or walked a little talking, talking, talking; of law, and Plato, and Epictetus, and Harry Lauder, (whom we imitated, at a distance; for my brother sings Scotch songs); and we talked too of our old girls and the early days of good hunting in this semi-civilized land, and of Woodrow Wilson and H. G. Wells and Emerson and King George, and of Billy Emerson, the negro minstrel, and William Keith our great artist. And we planned houses, adobe houses, that should be built up above, over the manzanita bushes, and the swimming-pool that should just naturally lie between the two live-oaks hidden behind the natural screen of mountain laurel, but open clear up to the sun. Each night we closed with a round of songs, and maybe a hymn. And bed was early. Now wasn't that a good place to be?

Not so very different in atmosphere from Hyde Park! But what would Broadway say of such a life! Oh, the serenity of it all, the dignity, the independence, the superiority over so much that we think important. There one could get a sense of proportion, and see things more nearly in their natural color and size. Truly, I could have been religious if I lived in the country and not been too hard driven for a living! (For one can't be anything good or great when pressed and bullied by necessity of any kind.)

So I grew in strength on the little ranch and unwillingly came back for treatment here, which is not half so good for soul or body as to sit in the sun and see the birds daintily pick their crumbs and know that the dog at my knee understood what I did not tell him.

Give to the Ducal lady at Hyde Park my spring greetings, and to the "young lord lover" who bears your name my re

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