No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Read online

  “A nation, like a person,” he went on, “has a body which must be housed and fed and clad and a mind which must be educated and informed but it also has something deeper, something more permanent, something larger than the sum of its parts. It is that something which matters most to its future—which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its present. It is a thing for which we find it difficult—even impossible—to hit upon a single, simple word. And yet, we all understand what it is—the spirit—the faith of America.”

  • • •

  The first problem facing Roosevelt after his inauguration was getting the Congress to pass the lend-lease bill. Introduced in the House as H.R. 1776, the controversial legislation authorized the president to transfer munitions and supplies for which Congress had appropriated money to “the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the U.S.”

  Opponents attacked the bill on two grounds: first, that it granted the president dictatorial powers, “to carry on,” in Senator Robert Taft’s words, “a kind of undeclared war all over the world”; second, that it would lead America inexorably into war. Administration spokesmen took the opposite tack. By allowing Britain to continue the fight against Germany, they argued, the bill was the last best hope for keeping America out of the war.

  The situation the administration faced was tricky: debate was essential to develop a mass base of support, but every day taken up in discussion was another day lost in Britain’s desperate struggle to ready itself for the expected invasion. “The lend-lease bill will furnish a bigger test than the merits of the bill itself,” Washington correspondent David Lawrence wrote. “It is whether America can make a military decision of tremendous interest to her national safety without taking weeks and weeks to debate the issue.”

  The hearings began in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in January, before an overflowing crowd of reporters and spectators. By noontime, all the seats in the high-ceilinged committee room had been taken, and still the curious kept coming; they stood in the corners, sat on the windowsills, and waited in long lines in the corridor outside. The first witness to testify against the bill was the recently resigned ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph Kennedy. For weeks, after an indiscreet interview with Boston Globe columnist Louis Lyons which lost him his ambassadorship, Kennedy had been flirting with the isolationists, tantalizing them with the prospect that he would make an open break with the administration and join their crusade against the war. But Roosevelt, knowing his man better than his opponents, had invited Kennedy to the White House for an early-morning talk in mid-January. Relaxing in his bedroom, the president allowed Kennedy to pour out his heart about the miserable treatment he had received from “the boys in the State Department” and “the President’s hatchet men.” Kennedy told the president he didn’t think it was fair to wind up seven years of service in his administration with a bad record. He had gone in for everything the president wanted, and now the time had come to do something for the Kennedy family.

  Nodding sympathetically, the president reminisced about the good times the two of them had had together over the years, and told Kennedy that once the lend-lease bill got through he would make sure the country recognized how valuable a public servant Joe Kennedy had been. Disarmed as always by Roosevelt’s charm, Kennedy shifted the tone of the statement he had prepared for Congress so substantially that his isolationist friends felt betrayed. Though he said he opposed lend-lease in its present form because the powers of Congress in foreign affairs should be preserved, he came out for complete aid to Britain, parroting the administration’s line that aid to Britain was the best means of avoiding war. It was a confusing statement, neither for nor against, exposing Kennedy to criticism from both sides. But Roosevelt, who had feared his former ambassador to England might lead the isolationist charge, was greatly relieved.

  A few days after the ambassador’s testimony, Anna Roosevelt’s husband, John Boettiger, sent Kennedy a friendly note. “Somehow or other,” Boettiger wrote, “I feel sure we are all thinking along the same lines and that the Roosevelts, the Kennedys and the Boettigers will be struggling shoulder to shoulder first to keep America out of war, but always to keep America free!” In a somewhat self-pitying reply, Kennedy told Boettiger, “if my statements and my position means that, outside of the ever loyal Boettigers I am to be a social outcast by the administration, well so be it . . . . At any rate, I am delighted that you and Anna were sweet enough to send a note and I appreciate it more than I can tell you.”

  Kennedy’s delight would have been diminished had he seen the subsequent exchange of letters between Boettiger and the president, occasioned by Boettiger’s decision to send his father-in-law a copy of Kennedy’s note.

  After thanking his son-in-law for sending Kennedy’s note, Roosevelt wrote in unusually candid terms: “It is, I think a little pathetic that he worries about being, with his family, social outcasts. As a matter of fact, he ought to realize of course that he has only himself to blame for the country’s opinion as to his testimony before the Committees. Most people and most papers got the feeling that he was blowing hot and blowing cold at the same time—trying to carry water on both shoulders.

  “The truth of the matter is that Joe is and always has been a temperamental Irish boy, terrifically spoiled at an early age by huge financial success; thoroughly patriotic, thoroughly selfish and thoroughly obsessed with the idea that he must leave each of his nine children with a million dollars apiece when he dies (he has told me that often). He has a positive horror of any change in the present methods of life in America. To him, the future of a small capitalistic class is safer under a Hitler than under a Churchill. This is sub-conscious on his part and he does not admit it . . . . Sometimes I think I am 200 years older than he is!”

  Despite the setback of Kennedy’s ambivalent statement, the opposition continued its relentless attack against the bill, culminating in a powerful warning from Charles Lindbergh that H.R. 1776 was “another step away from democracy and another step closer to war.” Fully expecting this line of attack, the president had two weapons waiting in reserve—Harry Hopkins and Wendell Willkie.

  In early January, Roosevelt had sent Hopkins to London to meet with Churchill and obtain a firsthand impression of Britain’s resolve and Britain’s needs. The journey to London, aboard a Pan American Clipper, had taken five days over a circuitous route. When Hopkins arrived, he was “sick and shrunken and too tired even to unfasten his safety belt.” Years later, Churchill’s daughter-in-law, Pamela Churchill Harriman, recalled her shock at her first sight of the ill Hopkins, a dead cigarette in his mouth, a weary man in a large overcoat which he never took off.

  But the thrill of his mission soon served to revive Hopkins’ health. At the welcoming dinner in his honor, the story is told, Churchill, knowing that Hopkins was a social worker with no military background, deliberately directed the conversation to issues of economic and social reform, emphasizing that after the war he planned to modernize Britain’s slum cottages with electricity and plumbing. “Mr. Churchill,” Hopkins interrupted, “I don’t give a damn about your cottagers. I’ve come over here to find out how we can help you beat this fellow Hitler.” When he heard this, Churchill’s face lit up; he straightened his shoulders and got up from the table. “Mr. Hopkins, come with me,” he said, leading Hopkins to his study.

  For the next four hours, Churchill confided the entire direction of his nation’s affairs to the president’s envoy. “And from this hour,” Churchill wrote in his memoirs, “began a friendship between us which sailed serenely over all earthquakes and convulsions. He was the most faithful and perfect channel of communication between the President and me . . . . There he sat, slim, frail, ill, but absolutely glowing with refined comprehension of the Cause. It was to be the defeat, ruin, and slaughter of Hitler, to the exclusion of all other purposes, loyalties, or aims . . . . He was a crumbling lighthouse from which there shone the beams that led great fleets to harbo
ur.”

  While Hopkins was in England, he spent almost every waking hour with Churchill—journeying with him to Scapa Flow, Scotland; dining together night after night; relaxing at Chequers, Churchill’s country home. Proximity to the great man had its effect; Hopkins became an ardent admirer of Churchill and an absolute partisan of Britain’s cause. At a small dinner party one evening, Hopkins rose to his feet. “I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well, I’m going to quote you one verse from that Book of Books . . . . ‘Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest, I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God!’” Then, in his own words, he added, “Even to the end.” When Hopkins sat down, Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, looked over at Churchill and saw tears streaming down his face.

  With their friendship sealed, Hopkins moved to elicit Churchill’s help in the lend-lease debate. In early February, Churchill was working on a major speech to be broadcast throughout the world. At Roosevelt’s request, Hopkins asked Churchill to skew the speech to American public opinion by promising that lend-lease was the best means to keep the Americans out of the war. Churchill readily complied, weaving Hopkins’ suggestions together with a personal note he had just received from the president in the hands of a second envoy—Wendell Willkie. Just before Willkie left for London, Roosevelt, with shrewd insight, had asked him to come to the White House. He gave Willkie a letter of introduction to the prime minister with a verse from Longfellow in his own handwriting. In his speech on February 9, Churchill put the verse to brilliant use.

  “In the last war,” Churchill began, “the U.S. sent two million men across the Atlantic. But this is not a war of vast armies firing immense masses of shells at one another. We do not need the gallant armies which are forming throughout the American Union. We do not need them this year, nor next year, nor any year; that I can foresee.”

  “The other day,” Churchill continued, Roosevelt had sent him a verse from Longfellow, which he said “applies to you people as it does to us . . . .

  “Sail On, O Ship of State!

  Sail On, O Union Strong and great!

  Humanity with all its fears,

  With all the hopes of future years,

  Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

  “What is the answer that I shall give in your name to this great man, the thrice-chosen head of a nation of 130 million. Here is the answer I will give to Mr. Roosevelt. Put your confidence in us . . . . We shall not fail or falter . . . . Give us the tools and we will finish the job.”

  When Willkie returned to the States on February 11, he went directly to the Hill to testify in behalf of the lend-lease bill. It was the most important testimony in six weeks of hearings. In a blue suit rumpled from the plane ride, with his hair drooping over one eye and his voice as hoarse as ever, Willkie declared that if we sat back and withdrew within ourselves there was no telling where “the madmen who are loose in the world” might strike next. With flashbulbs popping and twelve hundred people crowded against the marble walls, Willkie predicted that, “if the Republican party makes a blind opposition to the bill and allows itself to be presented to the American people as the isolationist party, it will never again gain control of the American government.”

  Repeatedly, Willkie found himself at odds with isolationists on the committee, who insisted on going over one by one the critical comments Willkie had made about Roosevelt during the campaign. “He was elected President,” Willkie replied. “He is my President now.” When asked about his prediction that if Roosevelt were elected America would be in the war by April 1941, Willkie smiled and said, “It was a bit of campaign oratory.” The chamber burst into goodhearted laughter.

  Eleanor, in her column that day, said she was “thankful beyond words” for Willkie’s testimony. Her gratitude was not misplaced. The bill sailed through both houses with substantial majorities, and at ten minutes of four on the afternoon of March 11, a smiling Roosevelt signed lend-lease into law. Three hours later, the president declared the defense of Britain vital to the U.S. and authorized the navy to turn over to Britain thousands of naval guns and ammunition, three thousand charges for bombs, and two dozen PT boats. Full of confidence, the president told reporters he had already begun work on a supplemental request of $7 billion to implement lendlease.

  That night, as Big Ben struck midnight, Churchill stood up in Parliament to voice the gratitude of his people toward America for passing what he called “the most unsordid act in the history of any nation.” With this act, he declared, “the most powerful democracy has, in effect, declared in a solemn statute that they will devote their overwhelming industrial and financial strength to insuring the defeat of Nazism.” Put in simpler terms, a Londoner told journalist Molly Panter-Downes, “Thank God! The tanks are coming.”

  When Hopkins returned from England, a grateful Roosevelt designated him administrator of the lend-lease program, with a staff of thirty-five. While seventeen rooms were hastily cleared for Hopkins and his staff in the Federal Reserve Building, Hopkins continued to work out of his big bedroom on the second floor of the White House. There, from a card table set in the middle of his room, with documents and papers spilling off chairs and tables, he threw himself into what Pamela Churchill Harriman later called “one of the most massive undertakings in U.S. history.”

  The appointment provoked mixed reaction within the Cabinet. “The blind side of the President, when his personal friends are involved, seems to be growing blinder,” Ickes lamented. “Hopkins has not the ability from any point of view intellectual or physical to carry such a job as this . . . .” Morgenthau, too, had his doubts. “I am just worried sick over it, because Hopkins isn’t well enough.” But Stimson held a more positive view. “The more I think of it,” he recorded in his diary after listening to Hopkins’ “thrilling” descriptions of Churchill’s leadership and the situation in Britain, “the more I think it is a godsend that he should be at the White House and that the President should have sent him to Great Britain where he has gotten on such intimate terms with the people there. It’s a real connection that helps and Hopkins himself is a man that I have grown to appreciate and to respect more and more the more I see him.”

  In the days that followed Hopkins’ return, the president spent many hours with him, soaking up the information Hopkins had gathered while he was in England. In the course of his sojourn, Hopkins had talked with more than three hundred men and women, including all the important leaders of Parliament; he had visited defenses, soldiers, and air forces; he had seen Churchill in action with British crowds. He knew more about Britain’s problems than any American. And with Hopkins, as with Eleanor, Roosevelt knew he was receiving a straightforward picture of the situation, an honest and unbiased account, filled with insight, intuition, and human detail.

  “Upon his return from England,” Marquis Childs wrote in The Saturday Evening Post, “Hopkins’ friends sensed a change in him. He was more serious, and at the same time more detached, as though he were relieved, happy almost at having found something in which he could abandon his own personal destiny, submerging himself in a task of immeasurable magnitude and immeasurable risk.” Reporters began comparing Hopkins to Woodrow Wilson’s intimate envoy, Colonel Edward House, and soon, Childs noted, “a spate of invitations fell upon him—to write for syndicates at astronomical rates, to lecture, to talk on the record and off the record, to attend little intimate dinners of important people.”

  “It tore Eleanor’s heart up,” Eleanor’s friend Martha Gellhorn later said, “that Harry could forget the hungry and unemployed . . . . In the New Deal he had been Eleanor’s protégé; now he was FDR’s. He was wittier and brighter in the second period but much nicer in the first.”

  For Roosevelt, the lend-lease triumph was not simply the passage of the bill but the successful education of the American public. When the hearings started, the country was divided down the middle on lend-lease, with 50 percent in favor, 50 perc
ent against. By the time the bill passed, those in favor had risen to 61 percent.

  “Yes,” Roosevelt prophetically remarked a few days after the bill passed, “the decisions of our democracy may be slowly arrived at. But when that decision is made, it is proclaimed not with the voice of one man but with the voice of 130 million.”

  With the passage of lend-lease, Goebbels recorded in his diary, “the Führer finally gave his propagandists permission to attack America. It was high time. Now we shall let rip. Mrs. Roosevelt is shooting her mouth off around the country. If she were my wife, it would be a different story.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “BUSINESS AS USUAL”

  In celebration of the passage of lend-lease, Roosevelt set off on a ten-day fishing trip to Florida with his usual group of friends—Hopkins, Watson, and Dr. McIntire. Eleanor accompanied him to the train station, kissed him goodbye, and then promptly headed for New York, where she dined at the Lafayette Hotel with friends, went to see the play The Doctor’s Dilemma, and met with the British War Relief Society. After returning to Washington the next morning, she entertained eighty people in the State Dining Room, visited with financier Bernard Baruch, attended a concert, delivered a lecture on race relations, and spent two hours with a group of Negro pilots who were training at the Tuskegee Institute.

  “This house is seething,” Mrs. Nesbitt wearily recorded in her diary. “ER back for breakfast, out for dinner, here for supper. In the house she always goes at a dog trot, so fast she bends forward. Somebody said she can give you enough work in five minutes to keep you busy for two weeks. But she drives herself hardest of all.”

  Eleanor finally joined Franklin at the tail end of his trip, meeting him at Fort Bragg, in the sandy hills of eastern North Carolina. They had only a few minutes together on the train before the motorcade arrived to take them on a three-hour inspection tour of the immense camp, which had originally been designed for twenty thousand men but now held more than sixty-seven thousand.