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Friday, June 23, 2017

FRANKLIN KNIGHT LANE DEFENDS WOODROW WILSON

JFK+50:  Volume 7, No. 2349

INTERIOR SECRETARY LANE HAS PRESIDENT WILSON'S BACK

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) One hundred years ago today, June 23, 1917, Interior Secretary Franklin K. Lane*, interviewed by Arthur Sears Henning of the Chicago Tribune, defended President Woodrow Wilson "against the criticism leveled at (him) in regard to the conduct of the war in its initial stages."

One Republican senator was quoted as saying...

"How can you expect efficient conduct of the war by a president who refused for three years to prepare the nation (for war)?"

Secretary Lane told Mr. Henning...

"It is the desire of the people that this war will be so conducted as to place the responsibility upon their president...and when it comes to the day of reckoning I believe that the people will be satisfied that the expenditures...in men and money have been made conscientiously, efficiently and in the attainment of...a more certain peace for the world."

*Franklin Knight Lane (1864-1921) was born on Prince Edward Island & moved to California in 1871.  FKL attended the University of California & became a NY reporter for the SF Chronicle.  FKL served as a commissioner on the Interstate Commerce Commission before his tenure as Secretary of the Interior 1913-1921.

"Lane Lambastes Wilson's Critics; Lauds Policies", by Arthur Sears Henning, The Chicago Sunday Tribune, June 24, 1917.



Franklin Knight Lane
US Secretary of the Interior 
Library of Congress Photo (1913)