Wilson's Way in War
Title
Wilson's Way in War
Creator
Lane, Franklin Knight, 1864-1921
Identifier
WWP15426
Date
1917 June 17
Source
Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia
Language
English
Text
The New York Times
MAGAZINE SECTION
sunday
WILSON’S WAY IN WAR
A Character Analysis of the
President by One of His Intimate Advisers, Secretary Franklin K. Lane
"To such a man it is not a dangerous thing to give great power.”
Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior and member of the National Council of Defense, was answering a casual question as to the recent criticism by certain Senators and Representatives that President Wilson had become too autocratic. The Secretary’s talk then developed into what might be described as a character analysis of Woodrow Wilson in wartime, by a man who has been in the Cabinet since the beginning of the first Wilson Administration.
“The power that the President exercises in war time,” said Mr. Lane, “is the greatest power that can be vested in any one man under a democracy. For the President has been made the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. The Constitution impresses him with this duty and this responsibility. This was the outgrowth of General Washington’s experience. He had seen the disadvantages and the embarrassments of confused councils. And so, when it came to the drafting of the Constitution, a departure was made from the general scheme of things, and the President was made solely responsible for the conduct of a war. He is necessarily subjected to criticism, and properly should be so subjected if he makes willful mistakes.
“We are a nation of a hundred million people. All of us have been raised in a school of intense individualism. Democracy makes individuals, men who regard themselves seriously and regard their opinions seriously. We have been taught to think for ourselves, not to follow a leader. We have been trained in the idea that each of us is capable of performing some real function in government. It is this development of the individual, this realization of the possibility of the individual, that makes a democracy great. The first step in the making of a good democrat is giving him the basis upon which to criticise what is done. Wasn’t it Patrick Henry who said, ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’? And so each man in a democracy is a vigilante.“After criticism, the next step in our growth is constructivism. Who can do better? What is the better plan? Could the better plan have been foreseen? Is it practicable? From the psychological standpoint, will the people stand for it? This all goes to the efficiency of democracy. And democracy is not as efficient as autocracy. Men offer their services liberally to the Government, thinking, no doubt, that a plan has already been prepared by which the talents of each individual can be made the highest use of. They sometimes feel hurt when they do not find that such a pigeonhole program has already been prepared. These same men would be in a state of rebellion if they found that they had been classified and were put into slots upon the basis of somebody else’s judgment.
“The theory of our Constitution is that the largest possible executive power is to be lodged in the President in time of war, because it was realized by the Constitution makers that some man must be responsible for the job, and that this man could only be the President. So, while mistakes may be made during this war and honest criticism may be evoked which is justifiable, it must be remembered that a democracy does not live in anticipation of war, that the programs which a democracy makes are program of peace. If the United States had been surveyed in 1860 to find a man who, in temperament, would be most adapted to carry on a great civil war, the probability is that no committee of award would ever have united on Abraham Lincoln as the right man. He was a philosopher primarily, as was President Madison, who conducted the war of 1812—a man whose mind had the right slant, but who did not represent the military spirit or those qualities of blood and iron which marked Bismarck.
“We must now look to the qualities of the Commander in Chief, who is our President in the present war, and the first of those qualities is an unflinching courage. I have watched him for four years with the greatest interest, and have never seen him hesitate a second to do a thing that he believed to be right because either of political influence or of any effect it might have upon his own personal destinies. In the last campaign he was more indifferent personally as to the outcome than any other man in the Government. It takes time to consider. Sometimes he is too patient to satisfy those who are impetuous but, once he has reached a conclusion, that conclusion becomes a part of his nature. He is inflexible. Those who are our allies and those who are opposed to us should by this time realize that the Commander in Chief of the United States is a man who sees a thing through always, without hesitation, without compromising, without fear. He has in his nature no consciousness whatever of what it is to fear man, which in itself is not a bad characteristic of a soldier.
“And he has a direct objective. He knows where he is going. It takes time for him to reach his conclusion as to what is the right objective, but when he has determined that for himself he follows that line, and he follows it through.“His first try-out was on the Federal Reserve act. All said this was impossible. But eventually he got the most discordant elements to support him. As to courage, take the challenge that was given over the McLemore resolution. He believes now that a Food Control bill is vitally necessary, and he will get it.
“His guide is his conscience, and the one word that most nearly summarizes his nature and expresses his career is the word ‘duty.’ Tell him what his duty is, and he does it. But he won’t take any direction as to what his duty is from any one, no matter how intimate he may be. It must strike a response in his own conscience. How strong a hold he has upon himself, how much he is master of his own thought, is illustrated by this—that during the period of our neutrality, in two years and half of Cabinet meetings and of personal conversations, I never heard him utter a word that was contrary to his own plea for neutrality made to the people at the beginning of the war. This seems like an impossible thing, but it is literally true. He could narrate facts without bias; he could express the reactions of the American people under given circumstances; he could present the law with relation to the facts presented; but, no matter what was underneath, he held strictly to the rule which he asked others to follow. And this at a time when he was subjected to the most serious criticism from some who said that he was pro-German and others who said that he ws pro-English. This shows how completely his is master of himself.
“He meets situations by asking very concretely, ‘What is the thing that I can do in this situation that will make for the perpetuation of real democracy?’ That is his interest in this war. When he said in his remarkable message that he wanted this world made safe for democracy, he expressed the very deepest feelings of his nature. Thomas Jefferson was not more truly a democrat, nor was Lincoln. He visualizes the world not as so much money, land, or machines, but as so many men and women and children. He believes that under democracy these can have their chance, that the expression of the human spirit is the purpose for the existence of this world, and that that only has its chance under a Government such as ours—or ours, let me say, with modern improvements—for a democracy is not a perfected instrument or machine. It, too, is subject to growth, and will grow. It is not to be mastered by money. There is no use in having free institutions if men who are politically free are to be controlled in their expression of themselves by an arbitrary control of credit. There must be no masters in a democracy except the people, and these can only be masters if they are masters of themselves. If they are not hysterical, not violent in their passions, if they can look around things and through things, they will come to right conclusions. They must have the background and the information upon which sane reactions can be secured. Under these circumstances they will come to judgments that will make for their own welfare.
“So, then, we have a Commander in Chief who has these qualities: Courage, patience, steadfastness, far-sightedness. These are the qualities of a great commander. He knows now what he wishes to secure for democracy out of this war, and he is not thinking of the war in terms of personality or of personal triumph or of national triumphs, but of the world future, a freer opportunity for the spirit of man. This is where his ideality comes in. He is a man who knows where he wishes to go, and he has the determination to get there if it is possible, and nothing can stand in his way if his will, backed as it always is by his conscience, makes it possible to reach that end. To such a man it is not a dangerous thing to give great power. He can be depended upon to use it conservatively. He will use whatever power is given to him too conservatively to please many of our people. He would hold in his hand the thunderbolts of Jove, but he would never let one pass from his hands unless he saw that it was vitally necessary.
“I am saying these things not in a spirit of a partisan but to hold up before you the picture of the man who is fitted in the supreme qualities that I have mentioned for the conduct of a war upon which our fortunes turn. He never seeks his end by the indirection of the politician. I have no hesitancy in saying that he never conceived of himself as playing such a part as that which he now plays in world affairs, but, if he had, every move that he made in the past would have been consistent with the position he holds at present.
“Now, this is the greatness of democracy, or it ought to be—that it can adjust itself to a situation, but it should not adjust itself too quickly or too seriously. As I have observed this war in Europe, the democracies of France and England have found in their internal organization a weakness in the shifting of Ministries in time of stress. I have always believed in Cabinet responsibility. But if there is to be such a system, manifestly there should be a provision by which, when war comes, there should be one man over all, a stable Government, not subject to the fluctuations that necessarily come with the ups and downs of the war drama. In this respect our Constitution makers were again far-sighted, for they gave us a stable Executive and gave to him powers the extent of which never has been determined by our courts, but which go far beyond those that the President enjoys in peace times. He is now a dual Executive—the President of the country and the Commander of the Army and the Navy. Congress has declared its position. It has accepted his leadership. It has generously called upon the resources of the country to give him support. Mr. Balfour was surprised, and I think every statesman must be surprised, at the progress Congress has made, the readiness with which it has acted.“It is the desire of the people that this war shall be so conducted as to place the responsibility upon the one man in the Government whom the people can see—their President and their Commander in Chief. And when it comes to the day of reckoning, I believe that the people will be satisfied that the expenditures they have made, in men and in money, have been made conscientiously, efficiently, and in the attainment of the end for which they hope, a more certain peace for the world.”
MAGAZINE SECTION
sunday
WILSON’S WAY IN WAR
A Character Analysis of the
President by One of His Intimate Advisers, Secretary Franklin K. Lane
"To such a man it is not a dangerous thing to give great power.”
Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior and member of the National Council of Defense, was answering a casual question as to the recent criticism by certain Senators and Representatives that President Wilson had become too autocratic. The Secretary’s talk then developed into what might be described as a character analysis of Woodrow Wilson in wartime, by a man who has been in the Cabinet since the beginning of the first Wilson Administration.
“The power that the President exercises in war time,” said Mr. Lane, “is the greatest power that can be vested in any one man under a democracy. For the President has been made the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. The Constitution impresses him with this duty and this responsibility. This was the outgrowth of General Washington’s experience. He had seen the disadvantages and the embarrassments of confused councils. And so, when it came to the drafting of the Constitution, a departure was made from the general scheme of things, and the President was made solely responsible for the conduct of a war. He is necessarily subjected to criticism, and properly should be so subjected if he makes willful mistakes.
“We are a nation of a hundred million people. All of us have been raised in a school of intense individualism. Democracy makes individuals, men who regard themselves seriously and regard their opinions seriously. We have been taught to think for ourselves, not to follow a leader. We have been trained in the idea that each of us is capable of performing some real function in government. It is this development of the individual, this realization of the possibility of the individual, that makes a democracy great. The first step in the making of a good democrat is giving him the basis upon which to criticise what is done. Wasn’t it Patrick Henry who said, ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’? And so each man in a democracy is a vigilante.“After criticism, the next step in our growth is constructivism. Who can do better? What is the better plan? Could the better plan have been foreseen? Is it practicable? From the psychological standpoint, will the people stand for it? This all goes to the efficiency of democracy. And democracy is not as efficient as autocracy. Men offer their services liberally to the Government, thinking, no doubt, that a plan has already been prepared by which the talents of each individual can be made the highest use of. They sometimes feel hurt when they do not find that such a pigeonhole program has already been prepared. These same men would be in a state of rebellion if they found that they had been classified and were put into slots upon the basis of somebody else’s judgment.
“The theory of our Constitution is that the largest possible executive power is to be lodged in the President in time of war, because it was realized by the Constitution makers that some man must be responsible for the job, and that this man could only be the President. So, while mistakes may be made during this war and honest criticism may be evoked which is justifiable, it must be remembered that a democracy does not live in anticipation of war, that the programs which a democracy makes are program of peace. If the United States had been surveyed in 1860 to find a man who, in temperament, would be most adapted to carry on a great civil war, the probability is that no committee of award would ever have united on Abraham Lincoln as the right man. He was a philosopher primarily, as was President Madison, who conducted the war of 1812—a man whose mind had the right slant, but who did not represent the military spirit or those qualities of blood and iron which marked Bismarck.
“We must now look to the qualities of the Commander in Chief, who is our President in the present war, and the first of those qualities is an unflinching courage. I have watched him for four years with the greatest interest, and have never seen him hesitate a second to do a thing that he believed to be right because either of political influence or of any effect it might have upon his own personal destinies. In the last campaign he was more indifferent personally as to the outcome than any other man in the Government. It takes time to consider. Sometimes he is too patient to satisfy those who are impetuous but, once he has reached a conclusion, that conclusion becomes a part of his nature. He is inflexible. Those who are our allies and those who are opposed to us should by this time realize that the Commander in Chief of the United States is a man who sees a thing through always, without hesitation, without compromising, without fear. He has in his nature no consciousness whatever of what it is to fear man, which in itself is not a bad characteristic of a soldier.
“And he has a direct objective. He knows where he is going. It takes time for him to reach his conclusion as to what is the right objective, but when he has determined that for himself he follows that line, and he follows it through.“His first try-out was on the Federal Reserve act. All said this was impossible. But eventually he got the most discordant elements to support him. As to courage, take the challenge that was given over the McLemore resolution. He believes now that a Food Control bill is vitally necessary, and he will get it.
“His guide is his conscience, and the one word that most nearly summarizes his nature and expresses his career is the word ‘duty.’ Tell him what his duty is, and he does it. But he won’t take any direction as to what his duty is from any one, no matter how intimate he may be. It must strike a response in his own conscience. How strong a hold he has upon himself, how much he is master of his own thought, is illustrated by this—that during the period of our neutrality, in two years and half of Cabinet meetings and of personal conversations, I never heard him utter a word that was contrary to his own plea for neutrality made to the people at the beginning of the war. This seems like an impossible thing, but it is literally true. He could narrate facts without bias; he could express the reactions of the American people under given circumstances; he could present the law with relation to the facts presented; but, no matter what was underneath, he held strictly to the rule which he asked others to follow. And this at a time when he was subjected to the most serious criticism from some who said that he was pro-German and others who said that he ws pro-English. This shows how completely his is master of himself.
“He meets situations by asking very concretely, ‘What is the thing that I can do in this situation that will make for the perpetuation of real democracy?’ That is his interest in this war. When he said in his remarkable message that he wanted this world made safe for democracy, he expressed the very deepest feelings of his nature. Thomas Jefferson was not more truly a democrat, nor was Lincoln. He visualizes the world not as so much money, land, or machines, but as so many men and women and children. He believes that under democracy these can have their chance, that the expression of the human spirit is the purpose for the existence of this world, and that that only has its chance under a Government such as ours—or ours, let me say, with modern improvements—for a democracy is not a perfected instrument or machine. It, too, is subject to growth, and will grow. It is not to be mastered by money. There is no use in having free institutions if men who are politically free are to be controlled in their expression of themselves by an arbitrary control of credit. There must be no masters in a democracy except the people, and these can only be masters if they are masters of themselves. If they are not hysterical, not violent in their passions, if they can look around things and through things, they will come to right conclusions. They must have the background and the information upon which sane reactions can be secured. Under these circumstances they will come to judgments that will make for their own welfare.
“So, then, we have a Commander in Chief who has these qualities: Courage, patience, steadfastness, far-sightedness. These are the qualities of a great commander. He knows now what he wishes to secure for democracy out of this war, and he is not thinking of the war in terms of personality or of personal triumph or of national triumphs, but of the world future, a freer opportunity for the spirit of man. This is where his ideality comes in. He is a man who knows where he wishes to go, and he has the determination to get there if it is possible, and nothing can stand in his way if his will, backed as it always is by his conscience, makes it possible to reach that end. To such a man it is not a dangerous thing to give great power. He can be depended upon to use it conservatively. He will use whatever power is given to him too conservatively to please many of our people. He would hold in his hand the thunderbolts of Jove, but he would never let one pass from his hands unless he saw that it was vitally necessary.
“I am saying these things not in a spirit of a partisan but to hold up before you the picture of the man who is fitted in the supreme qualities that I have mentioned for the conduct of a war upon which our fortunes turn. He never seeks his end by the indirection of the politician. I have no hesitancy in saying that he never conceived of himself as playing such a part as that which he now plays in world affairs, but, if he had, every move that he made in the past would have been consistent with the position he holds at present.
“Now, this is the greatness of democracy, or it ought to be—that it can adjust itself to a situation, but it should not adjust itself too quickly or too seriously. As I have observed this war in Europe, the democracies of France and England have found in their internal organization a weakness in the shifting of Ministries in time of stress. I have always believed in Cabinet responsibility. But if there is to be such a system, manifestly there should be a provision by which, when war comes, there should be one man over all, a stable Government, not subject to the fluctuations that necessarily come with the ups and downs of the war drama. In this respect our Constitution makers were again far-sighted, for they gave us a stable Executive and gave to him powers the extent of which never has been determined by our courts, but which go far beyond those that the President enjoys in peace times. He is now a dual Executive—the President of the country and the Commander of the Army and the Navy. Congress has declared its position. It has accepted his leadership. It has generously called upon the resources of the country to give him support. Mr. Balfour was surprised, and I think every statesman must be surprised, at the progress Congress has made, the readiness with which it has acted.“It is the desire of the people that this war shall be so conducted as to place the responsibility upon the one man in the Government whom the people can see—their President and their Commander in Chief. And when it comes to the day of reckoning, I believe that the people will be satisfied that the expenditures they have made, in men and in money, have been made conscientiously, efficiently, and in the attainment of the end for which they hope, a more certain peace for the world.”
Files
Collection
Citation
Lane, Franklin Knight, 1864-1921, “Wilson's Way in War,” 1917 June 17, WWP15426, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.