Correspondence

When President Roosevelt closed his address to Congress on the State of the Union with a quotation from a "wise philosopher at whose feet I sat," he raised political campaigning to a metaphysical plane (TIME, Jan. 13). The quotation, an exhortation to loyalty to high ideals, came from Harvard's Professor Josiah Royce, who died in 1916. Little reason had Franklin Roosevelt to expect that a quotation from a philosopher long dead would awake echoes either philosophic or political. But even a fabulously absent-minded professor, who lived for 34 years in an oasis of metaphysical calm while he walked the streets of Cambridge, Mass, with his arctics unfastened and his eyes turned inward, so that he saw neither the friends he passed nor the trees he occasionally bumped into, may have progeny, and Josiah Royce had three sons.

Eldest was Christopher, a prodigy in mathematics and music, who matriculated at Harvard at 14, graduated with honors. Even when full-grown he preferred to play with children, to whom he used truthfully to say that he was a case of arrested development. He died young of pneumonia, in an institution. Second was Edward who became a professor of music, and now teaches in the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. Youngest son was Stephen, an asthmatic little fellow on whom the children of other professors picked most, thereby provoking Philosopher Royce to write six-page letters of protest to their parents. Little Stephen grew broad and strong, turned into a rough & tumble mining engineer.

From Stephen Royce in Crystal Falls, Mich. President Roosevelt last week received a long letter. Excerpts:

"My dear Mr. President: .... Josiah Royce was an idealist and an individualist, opposed in every word and thought to nearly everything for which your Administration has stood. I have felt that he would want a reply made, and have hoped some one far more learned and qualified might undertake the task which I reluctantly approach for want of one more fitted for it. The larger part of your quotation brings to mind his extemporaneous Faneuil Hall mass meeting speech in Boston, following the sinking of the Lusitania, when, though a feeble old man always a hater of war, he held an audience of thousands spellbound by his militant appeal for loyalty in the common cause of mankind against the common enemy, the autocracy of the imperial German Government, even though that loyalty should involve war. . . . Do you ask our loyalty to what you promised in 1932; to what you have since done; to what you say you have done; to what you now promise to do, or to what you may do if reelected?

"Let us see now what Josiah Royce had, almost prophetically, to say about the public questions today before us. ... He says : The present tendency to the centralization of power in our national government seems to me, then, a distinct danger. It is a substitution of power for loyalty. To the increase of wise provincialism in our country I myself look for the best general social means of training our people in loyalty.' " Day after this politosophical letter was published, an enterprising newshawk cornered Edward Royce in Rochester. Said Brother Edward: "I do not agree with my brother. I respect his views and know he has arrived at them intelligently. He is a man of political independence. We've discussed Roosevelt policies before, and whereas he is anti-Roosevelt, I am pro-Roosevelt. ... In 1932 I had intended to vote for Hoover, changed my mind, and finally voted for Thomas because I did not like Roosevelt's campaign speeches. He never explained himself or his objectives clearly. "I liked his inaugural address and I've liked much of his program. I think his social legislation is very good indeed. It's true, I don't agree with everything he has done." P:A letter that Franklin Roosevelt liked better arrived from Louis Stancourt, unemployed newshawk of Roosevelt Avenue, Roosevelt, L. I., now working on a guide book to the U. S. for WPA. Hearing a Republican radiorator attack guidebooking as boondoggling, Louis Stancourt wrote the President how fine it was. From the White House went this answer: "My Dear Mr. Stancourt: "Though we have not met, your letter makes me believe that I can call you a friend. . . . "It is most of all because you give me the blessing of the unknown men whose voices seem never to be heard--because you rightly believe that I do try, as best I may, to understand the human and the spiritual problems of the millions in our great land who are loyal to our common ideals and who want to hold their heads high. "I am grateful to you. You have helped me. "Faithfully yours, "Franklin D. Roosevelt."

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