TO JOHN H. WIGMORE

Washington, December 8, 1915

My dear John,—­ ...  Things are not looking at all nice as to Germany and Austria.  I know that the country is not satisfied, at least part of it, with our patience, but I don’t see just what else we can do but be patient.  Our ships are not needed anywhere, and our soldiers do not exist.  To-day brings word of the blowing up of an American ship.  Of course, we do not know the details but the thing looks ugly.

Wasn’t the President’s message on the hyphenated gentlemen bully?  You could not have beaten that yourself.  And your dear friend T. Roosevelt, did certainly write himself down as one large and glorious ass in his criticism of the message.  He hates Wilson so, that he has just lost his mind.  I wish I didn’t have to say this about Roosevelt, because I am extremely fond of him (which you are not), but a poorer interview on the message could not have been written. ...  As always yours,

F. K. L.

The following letter was written to Mrs. Adolph Miller when she was in a hospital in New York.

TO MRS. ADOLPH C. MILLER

Washington, December 12, [1915]

My dear Mary,—­We have just returned from Church and all morning I have been thinking of you and Adolph—­praying for you I suppose in my Pagan way.

Poor dear girl, I know you are brave but I’d just like to hold your hand or look steadily into your eyes, to tell you that you have the best thing that this world gives—­friends who are one with you.  I can see old Adolph with his grimness and his great love, which makes him more grim and far more mandatory, what a sturdy old Dutch Calvinist he is!  He really is more Dutch than German—­Dutch modified by the California sun—­and Calvinist sweetened by you and Boulder Creek, and Berkeley and William James and B. I. Wheeler and his Saint of a Mother.  Well, let him pass, why should I talk of him when you really want me to talk of myself!

Last night we had the gridiron dinner, and the President made an exalted speech.  He is spiritually great, Mary, and don’t you dare smile and think of the widow!  We are all dual, old Emerson said it in his essay on free will, and Adolph can tell you what old Greek said it.  And this duality is where the fight comes in, and the two people walk side by side, to-day is Jekyll’s day, and tomorrow is Hyde’s, and so they alternate.

Well, the gridiron was a grind on Bryan and Villard and Ford, and a boost for preparedness and Garrison and the Army and Navy.  Tell Adolph they had a Democratic mule, two men walking together under a cover, the head end reasonable, the hind end kicking—­the front end of course represented the Wilson crowd and the hind end the Bryan-Kitchin,—­and the two wouldn’t work together.  The whole thing was splendidly done and was a lesson to the few Democrats who were there—­which they won’t learn.