Editorial: ‘Life up to the hilt’
Theodore Roosevelt often said a man should “live life up to the hilt.”
Frank Knox, who followed TR up San Juan Hill, and followed him in politics from then on, was never short in observing that maxim.
As a youth he was poor – in language popular in recent years he could almost be said to have been underprivileged. But Frank Know was not a fellow to waste time sympathizing with himself. By working hard and making good on his opportunities he achieved wealth and influence. A small-town newspaperman, he became general manager of a chain of metropolitan dailies, and crowned his business and professional career by becoming owner and shirtsleeve publisher of the great Chicago Daily News.
He was a Bull Moose leader, a Republican nominee for Vice President, but gained his only public office – and that a high one – as an appointee under a Democratic administration. And he took time off from journalism and politics to be a combat soldier in two wars and Secretary of the Navy in a third.
A stout partisan in peacetime – there was no more vigorous critic of the New Deal in the balmy ‘30s – he forgot politics when war clouds gathered.
It must have been a source of great satisfaction to Frank Knox that, at the age of 70, he could take an active and important part in this war. One of his last acts was to urge on business and labor leaders the need of compulsory service in war industries to provide for the impending Battle of Europe. Another was to attend the funeral of a former business partner – and there he was stricken.
Frank Knox’s life was rich in rewards. It was a “life up to the hilt.”