NEWTON D. BAKER - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 11/06/1918 - HFSID 315179

NEWTON D. BAKER
Writing as Secretary of War, 5 days before the end of World War I, he thanks a soldier's father for a box of cigars, but doubts that any can be mailed to the generals in France.
Typed Letter signed: "Newton D. Baker" as Secretary of War, 1 page, 8x10½. War Department, Washington, 1918 November 6. On official letterhead to David E. Coe, New York City. In full: "I am very grateful for your note of November 2 and for the box of Partegas which arrived in the same mail. I confess I do not know how you can get the boxes abroad which you so generously desire to send, as the limitations upon the foreign Parcels Post are very rigid and so far as I know I have no power to waive them. Should you be unable to get the parcels over, I am sure the Generals who you have in your generous thought would be happy to have a note from you in so gracious a vein as the note you sent me. I congratulate you upon having a boy doing service with our great army abroad. Cordially yours". Newton Diehl Baker (1871-1937) was Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio (1912-1915) before serving as President Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of War from 1916 to1921. It was Baker who, on June 27, 1918, pulled numbers out of a fishbowl, drafting men ages 21 to 31 into the military for World War I. Baker electrified the 1924 Democratic National Convention with a fiery speech advocating US membership in the League of Nations and a return to Wilsonian principles in foreign policy. Baker was a skilled lawyer, who argued a case successfully before the Supreme Court (1926). Normal mailing folds. Lightly toned. Top left edge lightly creased. Otherwise fine condition.