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Show I: 'Lincoln His Spirit Is vith the Ages A " ' Martyr, Emancipator, Myth, Abe Is 'Builded Forever' -1 p ' I u By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. Like everything else in this political year, preparations I 1 , for Lincoln's birthday in 1948 are chiefly a matter of scram- 1 i bling through the Great Emancipator's writings to find a text i ' for a highly-partisan outburst. But February 12 is the oc- ! casion for more than a barrage of political speeches, t To me Lincoln is real because he and my childhood conception of my j grandfather are strangely blended. Both, like Merlin's Camelot, are build ed forever because, to me. they never were builded at all they were myth rather than fact a myth not of my own making, but handed down through two generations. My mother, as a little child, "saw i Lincoln" (like a man "sleeping," . I' she thought) as 3 V?f ed ' !. : , mJL. ea i nr im. he lay in state in Chicago. My grandmother stood beside her swathed in the heavy mourning veil of the day which she felt perhaps was as much for Lincoln then as it was for her soldier - husband hus-band who had given his life in the same cause. fh Baukhage To my mother to staring at that i coffin in Chicago, there always re- j c mained a confused impression of ih mourning for the man she thought was not dead, but sleeping, and the K( father she never had leen. Perhaps -0 that feeling was imparted to me. 's My mother described the scene to ' 5a me. It was clearly etched in her ' ' ,-c memory like the rest of the strange ' Jt hegira which she took westward ; with her widowed mother from a little town in New York state (as a ; l!lll( bride, my grandmother had pio neered the West with her young New York state farm-born husband). ! Of course, the memories were 1 blurred and blended, undoubtedly, with later repetition of the event, ; but the picture was clear, and I only wish I could repeat it in my mother's moth-er's own words. The train trip west, the arrival in the great city, the ; crowd about her as she advanced 1 t slowly with her mother into the a great hall. Then the coffin which she c did not know was a coffin for there was no such word in her tiny vocab- I ulary. ! Her mother let go the little girl's 'lillj hand to move back her own heavy veil. Then the little girl remembered j fl being lifted in the strong hands of : j jj the guard. About him she could re- I y call only a blue tunic, shiny brass H ' buttons and the smell of tobacco. Then the face of the "sleeping" man, and her mother's quiet tears. ! (The body of the martyred President, as you know, was I taken from the East Room of ; 1 the White House to the capitol where it lay in state. Then it i was carried across the country, pausing for homage in several , cities until it reached Spring- ' ' field, Lincoln's home.) ' I ' I repeated my mother's story j j j after her death, as best I could on i j j the air and there were sequels. ' j Letters one from a lady in New j England for whom the broadcast t ( had awakened memories . . . her ; ', father had been one of the Union soldiers chosen to stand guard at i the catafalque in Chicago. It might well have been he who lifted my , mother. The soldiers who had been chosen for that honored duty were permitted permit-ted to divide the gold-fringed drape that covered the coffin, she wrote i me, and she consigned to me a frag- Y merit which I cherish. j k There were many other let- j j I ters. One from the niece of one I of Lincoln's cabinet members, I William Pitt Fessenden; an- I other enclosing the announce- I ment shown in the cut. Those were two sequels to the i story of the little girl and her weep- Jy ing mother. I think the everlasting sequel can be read again and again I in the story of America, as the story 8 of Lincoln is projected far on into j history. I think I have seen it pro- S jected in the crowds who come to Washington, avid with guidebook ' and camera to collect "souvenirs." Only this week, the garrulous cab r il driver who carried me from Union station was full of a story of "South Americans" who spent endless I hours (according to his timing) at f " the Lincoln Memorial. The memo- , rial remains a shrine for all visitors, 0 I native and foreign, a place where L flippant chatter is stilled before that tory of America, that gives Americans Ameri-cans the assurance that his spirit, especially in these times when evil gods make their black magic to bemuse be-muse the minds of men, is not dead, but sleeps, waiting only the clarion call of the people whom he loved to wake it into action. Free Speech, Russian Style The Russians celebrated Christmas Christ-mas with a public criticism of Rus-' sian factories by the commercial director of Mostorg, the Soviets' largest department store. The director direc-tor complained that the factories were producing inferior products. He wanted more and better goods, more washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and decent furniture. Are you surprised that such criticism is permitted? If you are, you don't understand the Soviet system. Criticism is allowed al-lowed as a sound method of correcting cor-recting faults although it doesn't necessarily displace the "cure," which means banishment banish-ment temporarily or permanently perma-nently to Siberia, just as in the good old days. I am reminded of columnist Lowell Mellett's story about the scqpe of Russian criticism. On his trip to Russia, he was shown around by a very clever female guide. Mel-lett Mel-lett asked her about freedom of the press, and she said, "Oh, yes, they had a free press, the press continually contin-ually criticized things, including government enterprises." Well, would they be allowed to criticize Stalin, Mellett wanted to know. "Why!" the girl was surprised, sur-prised, "What has that got to do with it? You couldn't criticize him because there is nothing about him to criticize I" Secretary Marshal wants the European Eu-ropean recovery plan to be run by a single administrator, not an eight-man eight-man board as has been suggested. If the old saw that the best-working committee is a committee of three with two members out of town is correct, perhaps Marshal is right. January saw three presidential messages presented to congress. Each document had many a passage pas-sage born only to waste its fragrance fra-grance on the desert air of an unsympathetic un-sympathetic majority. Too bad the Republicans don't care for Mr. Truman's budget. The budget message was printed up so pcely, bound so neatly, and it IS unique unique in that it is the biggest big-gest peacetime budget ever presented present-ed to any congress. IS almost uving replica warmed to life I out of cold marble by the inspired C hand of Daniel Chester French, el It lives as the spirit of Abraham Abra-ham Lincoln lives. t , h To the little child beside the cata- io- falque, except for her mother's ! tears there was no mourning in that moment. Only something sol-emn, sol-emn, something important, some-s some-s I thing that touched old and young alike because it had in it the cosmic I rhythm of the epic, and, as well, the I S simple, soul-touching melody of the R folk song. L And 1 wonder if there was not some intangible, some eternal qual- : fi ity of what Lincoln did. or what his I character has etched into the his- 1 |