To—
Washington, February 29, 1916
… It is none of my business, but I have just seen an article coming out over your name respecting Pinchot, the wisdom of which I doubt. I have never found any good to come by blurring an issue by personal contest or antagonisms. You asked me when you left if you might not come in once in a while and talk with me, and I am taking the liberty in this way of dropping in on you, for I am deeply interested in water power development and want to see something result this Session.
I have no time to waste in fighting people, and I have found that by pursuing this policy I can promote measures that I favor. To fight for a thing, the best way is to show its advantages and the need for it, and ignore those who do not take the same view, because there is an umpire in Congress that must balance the two positions, and therefore I can rely upon the strength of my position as against the weakness of the other man’s position. If those who are in favor of water power development get to fighting each other, nothing will result.
I am giving you the benefit of this attitude of mine for your own guidance. It may be entirely contrary to the policy that you, or your people, wish to pursue and my only solicitude is that the things I am for, should not be held back any longer by personal disputes. Cordially yours,
Franklin K. Lane
To Hon. Woodrow Wilson
The White House
Washington, March 13, 1916
MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT,—I shall be pleased to go to the San Diego Exposition, on my way to San Francisco, and say a word as your representative at its opening.
I hope that you may find your way made less difficult than now appears possible, as to entering Mexico, My judgment is that to fail in getting Villa would ruin us in the eyes of all Latin-Americans. I do not say that they respect only force, but like children they pile insult upon insult if they are not stopped when the first insult is given. If I can be of any service to you by observation or by carrying any message for you to anybody, while I am West, I trust that you will command me. I can return by way of Arizona and New Mexico. … Faithfully yours,
Franklin K. Lane
Lane re-opened the California International Exposition at San Diego, where, voicing the President’s regret that he could not himself be present, Lane said,—“He had intended to make this trip himself; but circumstances, some to the east of him and some to the south of him, made that impossible. … Pitted against him are the trained and cunning intellects of the whole world, … and no one can be more conscious than is he that it is difficult to reconcile pride and patience. I give you his greeting therefore, not out of a heart that is joyous and buoyant, but out of a heart that is grave and firm in its resolution that the future of our Republic and all republics shall not be put in peril.”
From San Diego he went north to San Francisco, to see his brother Frederic J. Lane, who had been ill for some months. After a few days with him Lane returned to his desk, in Washington.