Arts and Letters

When on the 11th of January, 1918, Brand Whitlock was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was the youngest member of that body, being 49 years old. It may be interesting to recall here that eight members of the Academy (including myself) were particularly interested in his candidacy at the time, namely: W. D. Howells, John Burroughs, H. M. Alden, Augustus Thomas, A. Lawrence Lowell, Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister.

His chief literary work had not been produced, but the quality of his writing was well known through his numerous novels written before that time, and he was recognized as a distinguished addition to its list. In turn, he was very proud of the honor and often spoke in appreciation of it, as the following incident shows:

While abroad, the sculptor De Vreese asked Whitlock to sit for him for a medal. De Vreese also extended a similar invitation to the Marquis de Villalobar, Ministre d'Espagne. The Marquis, as usual, posed with all of his decorations. Whitlock, modest American citizen, had not at that time been decorated, and confessed this to the sculptor. But he turned the lapel of his coat, indicated a small insignia—that of the American Academy of Arts and Letters—and said with pride, "That's enough."

Whitlock was born on the 4th of March, 1869, at Urbana, Ohio. His political inclinations however took him to Toledo where he became affiliated with Tom Johnson, a liberal public figure, and later he was elected Mayor of the City for four consecutive terms. In his first campaign, he was chosen without the support of a single local newspaper. A fifth election was declined by him, and soon after President Wilson nominated him for the post of Minister to Belgium.

While he was Mayor of Toledo, he took a trip abroad to familiarize himself with municipal institutions and criminal procedure in foreign countries. Not long after this tour, his well known volume The Turn of the Balance appeared.

One of the greatest of his many services to the City of Toledo was the purification of the water supply. During the contest in Congress for the water of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley which San Francisco ultimately obtained, Whitlock said to me, as recorded in my memoirs:

Why don't they employ the filtration system? When I was Mayor of Toledo we had our water from the dirty, yellow Maumee—as forbidding a source as could be found. We installed a filtration plant and obtained as good a quality of water as that of any other city in the world—so pure that the trained nurses in the hospital complained that they had no more typhoid cases to take care of!

His administration in Toledo was of a non-partisan type and brought great attention to his public work which was in the interest primarily of the people to whom he was devoted, and by whom he was greatly beloved. His character in this work is indicated by a text which he underlined in his Bible at the age of nine:

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.

In saying goodbye to him, when he left for his post in Brussels, Mr. Bryan, then Secretary of State, said:

You'll have nothing to do but rest and show Americans the battlefield of Waterloo.

Who could have foreseen that Whitlock would for the greater part of the War be in a storm center, unique in the history of that conflict? He aided the Belgians in saving the integrity of the City of Brussels and his firm stand for justice and humanity has made him one of the foremost diplomatic representatives of his time. He had to make the most important and urgent decisions on his own responsibility, and he acted with promptness, tact, and firmness.

In the case of Edith Cavell, shamefully hurried to her death for an offense that any other commander would have treated with leniency in one who had been an angel of kindness to her nominal foes, Whitlock, ill in bed, did all he could to avert the calamity.

Whitlock was a diplomat by chance, as it were, because his friend, President Wilson, at the time himself very weary, appointed him to the post in Belgium knowing that he would have repose concerning that country with Whitlock representing America. He was not, however, unprepared for such a post, for, as I have indicated, a number of years before the World War he had made a trip abroad for the specific purpose of becoming acquainted with municipal institutions, so that when President Wilson offered him the assignment at Brussels, he accepted at once. Later, when the legation was raised to the rank of an embassy, Whitlock was appointed our first Ambassador to Belgium. His entire diplomatic career was marked by phenomenal success because he was first and foremost an artist obeying his finer sensibilities, rather than the rigorous traditions of international law. He knew the Belgians, their history, and their traditions, and he loved them.

After the conclusion of the World War, it remained for him to produce his magnum opus in literature—his life of LaFayette. A biographer must love his own subject, and Whitlock shows throughout this glowing work his admiration for the young Frenchman. Someone recently said that LaFayette was no hero because he took no risks. This absurd statement is refuted by the whole of the two volumes of the adventurous life of the Marquis, who, from the moment of his clandestine departure for America on his chivalric mission, to the very last of his imprisonment in Germany, showed his indifference to danger in his devotion to the country whose cause he had espoused and served devotedly as a youth. Whitlock's style is at its best in this work which, had we an Academy that crowned works of literature, should place above it the seal of its approval. It is, indeed, America's best tribute to LaFayette's glorious career and it does honor not only to the author, but to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Four volumes—The Thirteenth District (our greatest political novel at the time of its publication); Forty Years of It; The Turn of the Balance; and Lincoln were written in America. His other volumes were written either at Brussels, Le Havre, or Cannes.

Whitlock's personal qualities were of such an engaging nature, that to rehearse them here would be to anticipate history. I have endeavored to do this suggestively in the following sonnet, which I modestly submit as part of this all too incomplete tribute.

Why should tears fall if mine fall not for thee—
Thou gentlest of the brave I ever knew,
Thou bravest of the gentle and the true,
Knight-errant of our modem chivalry;
Champion of her whom pitying dawn could see
At her last prayer; foe to the pitiless crew
That warred upon the weak, thou with the few
Fronting the swarming hosts of cruelty!
Noble thyself, what record thou hast made
Of nobleness, that keeps the world in heart
And shames us out of silence into speech
Standing henceforth with LaFayette apart
Thou summonest the heavens to our aid
Bringing the star of glory within reach!