Doesn't it look to you an impossible task for England and France to get beyond the Rhine, or even get there? England, of course, has hardly tried her hand in the game yet and if the Turk is cleaned up she will have a lot of Australians and others to help out in Belgium. Sir George Paish told me they expect to have a million and a half men in the field by the end of this summer. Pfeiffer comes here to-day to spend a couple of days trying to do something for the State Department; I don't know just what, but I shall be mighty glad to see the old chap. I haven't seen anything of Lamb since his return. Do write me again. Affectionately yours, FRANKLIN K. LANE On the sixteenth of March Lane again started for San Francisco, crossing the continent for the third time within a month. Vice- President Marshall, Adolph C. Miller, now of the Federal Reserve Board, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant Secretary of the Navy, who were going out to visit officially the Exposition, were the principal members of the party. In Berkeley, on March twenty- third, 1915, Lane received his degree from the University of California. In conferring this degree President Wheeler said:-- "Franklin K. Lane,--Your Alma Mater gladly writes to-day your name upon her list of honour,--in recognition not so much of your brilliant and unsparing service to state and nation, as of your sympathetic insight into the institutions of popular government as the people intended them. An instinctive faith in the righteous intentions of the average man has endowed you with a singular power to discern the best intent of the public will. Men follow gladly in your lead, and are not deceived. "By direction of the Regents of the University of California I confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Laws:-- "Creative statesman in a democracy; big-hearted American." On December 7, 1915, upon receiving a copy of the diploma Lane wrote in acknowledgement to Dr. Wheeler,--"I have the diploma which it has taken all the talent of the office to translate. I had one man from Columbia, another from the University of Virginia, one from Nebraska, and one at large at work on it. Thank you. It takes the place of honor over my mantel." TO WILLIAM P. LAWLOR JUSTICE, SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA Washington, April 13, 1915 MY DEAR JUDGE,--I have read Eddy O'Day's poem with great delight. Along toward the end it carries a sentiment that our dear old friend John Boyle O'Reilly expressed in his poem Bohemia, in which he speaks of those, "Who deal out a charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ." I have never been able to write a line of verse myself, although I have tried once in a while, but long ago my incapacity was proved. Pegasus always bucks me off.