Borglum's Week

How Gutzon Borglum, famed sculptor, was accused by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association of being a loafer, how his contract to carve the figures of Generals Lee, Jackson and their armies on Stone Mountain was canceled, how he pounded his models into bits with a hammer, secretly, and fled the state, how he was billed through four states, pursued, arrested in North Carolina on charges of malicious mischief, released on a writ of habeas corpus, has been told (TIME, Mar. 2, Mar. 9). Last week, Borglum little relaxed his activity.

He rushed to Cleveland, spoke before a large crowd in the Chamber of Commerce Auditorium, declared that he had smashed his models because he had heard that the Memorial Association, headed by Hollins N. Randolph, Atlanta lawyer, had asked his superintendent to complete his sculptures. Said he: "The man they wanted to finish my work is a carpenter, not a sculptor. He would be unable to do a decent line of work." Meanwhile, talk went on in Atlanta that he would be extradited from North Carolina. To effect this, the Memorial Association swore out a new warrant, charging simple larceny and larceny from the house (the latter, under the Georgia law, an extraditable offense).

Borglum rushed to Greensboro, N.C., to meet the habeas corpus proceedings brought in his behalf. There he found that the tumult and the shouting were perceptibly dying. Mrs. Elizabeth Venable Mason, one of the contributors to the Memorial, had been going about saying to influential people things calculated to mollify their feelings. To the press she said :

"The Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain must be built. . . . There is no doubt that Gutzon Borglum loves the memorial. It is the child of his brain and his soul--so dear to him that he has incriminated himself rather than have it marred by a less understanding hand. . . . The work of Gutzon Borglum has a soul. . . . And no one can lift his eyes to the majestic head of Robert Edward Lee on Stone Mountain's breast and doubt it for a moment. ... I personally am of the opinion that no other living sculptor is so ably fitted to carve this equestrian monument as is Gutzon Borglum.

Tick went the telegraph wires ; came a message from Governor Walker of Georgia to Judge Bynum, counsel for the Memorial Association. "See," the Governor requested the Association, "that requisition papers are withdrawn." Thereupon Governor McLean of North Carolina telegraphed Governor Walker congratulating him upon the "wisdom and patriotism" displayed by his request. President Randolph and his committee held counsel, withdrew the requisition papers, adding, with arrogant explicitness, that they wished "to give notice that the withdrawal of this application for extradition does not in any way mean that there is the remotest possibility of Borglum ever resuming work on this Memorial . . . and we desire further to state unequivocally that our assent to the withdrawal of the requisition does not effect the final disposition of the criminal cases against Borglum, which disposition will be left absolutely with the State authorities." To refute the impression that no man in the U. S. would now have dealings with him, Sculptor Borglum announced a new project, said he had entered a contract to carve the figures of Washington and Lincoln on a mountain in South Dakota.