No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Read online

  For her first day on the job, Monday, September 29, the first lady chose a trim black silk dress with a touch of white at the collar and several strings of pearls. The early-morning air was crisp as she set forth on foot from the White House to the OCD offices at Dupont Circle. It took a good half-hour, even at Eleanor’s long-legged pace, but since she did not think she would get exercise any other way, she was determined to walk to and from work. En route, a young woman came up beside her and said: “You are Mrs. Roosevelt and I am from California and I have always wanted to shake hands with you.” The encounter buoyed Eleanor’s spirits as she approached her ninth-floor office.

  Eleanor’s office, which she shared with her friend Elinor Morgenthau, who served as her assistant, contained a pair of desks, a gray fireplace, and a red carpet. At a brief press conference that morning, Eleanor pledged that she would be on the job at nine every morning and remain as long as possible. As for the work she would do, she outlined three goals: to give every person wishing to volunteer an opportunity to train for work; to provide meaningful jobs that would be of benefit to the community, such as work in nursery schools, recreational facilities, housing projects, and homes for the aged; and to prepare citizens to meet emergency calls.

  Though Eleanor’s broad definition of defense would eventually bring her into conflict with the Congress, her early months on the job were productive. She was hard-pressed at times to stay on top of everything, since she was still responsible for a daily column, a weekly radio broadcast, a semiannual lecture tour, and a vast personal correspondence, but she gloried in the feeling that the OCD job was hers and hers alone. “I am ridiculously busy,” Eleanor wrote to Martha Gellhorn, but the tone of the letter suggested that she loved every minute of her frenetic activity.

  For his part, Franklin was delighted to see Eleanor so happy and absorbed. “He was glad,” Social Security Regional Director Anna Rosenberg laughingly remarked, “to channel her energies into one area so that she would leave him alone in other areas. He knew that she felt frustrated because many of the liberal programs had to be put aside.”

  “What’s this I hear?” Franklin teased Eleanor one morning. “You didn’t go to bed at all last night?” Eleanor nodded her head. “I had been working on my mail without regard to the time, and when suddenly it began to get light, I decided it was not worth while going to bed.”

  With Eleanor abundantly fulfilled by her work, the tensions with her husband eased. Lash records an enjoyable evening in the president’s study on the last day of September. Franklin and Harry Hopkins were already sitting down to supper when Eleanor, Lash in tow, dashed in with profuse apologies for being late. To Eleanor’s delight, the president had not even noticed the delay. “There is an advantage to a household where everybody is busy,” she later observed. The conversation centered for a while on Mayor LaGuardia, with a good deal of spoofing about his childlike fascination with fire engines. From LaGuardia, the conversation shifted to Benjamin Franklin, whose bust by Houdon the president urged Eleanor to take into her bedroom. “You can always say, ‘I have Franklin with me,’” he cracked. The president then asked everyone to name four outstanding leaders, including Ben Franklin. His choices, he said, were Franklin, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and the earl of Orrery, a confidential adviser of Oliver Cromwell, “concerning whose life he knew the most intimate details.” Eleanor countered with her choices: Anne Hutchinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, and Carrie Chapman Catt. All told, Lash concluded, it was “a jolly party.”

  Two weeks later, on Eleanor’s fifty-seventh birthday, the president persuaded her to join him on a cruise down the river. For the occasion, he had invited a small group of her friends, including Tommy, Joe Lash, ballroom dancer Mayris Chaney, and Helen Gahagan. “We all had a very pleasant time,” Lash recorded in his diary, “and I think she had a good time in spite of not wanting anyone to mention her birthday.” In the afternoon, Eleanor sat in a deck chair and worked on her mail while the president relaxed with his stamps and the guests sat around chatting. But at six-thirty everyone came together for a grand dinner with champagne and a special toast to Eleanor. It was the first time in more than a year, the president affectionately pointed out in his toast, that he had been able to get his wife on his boat, so the occasion merited a special round of applause.

  • • •

  During the months of September and October, the president was preoccupied with U-boat sinkings in the Atlantic. On the 19th of September, the Pink Star, an American cargo vessel, was sunk off Greenland. Included in the lost cargo was enough cheddar cheese to feed more than three and a half million laborers in Britain for an entire week; a supply of evaporated milk which represented a year’s production for three hundred cows; and crates of machine tools which required the labor of three hundred workers for four months. Three weeks later, the Kearney, one of America’s newest destroyers, built in New Jersey at a cost of $5 million, was torpedoed while on patrol near Iceland; and two weeks after that, the destroyer Reuben James was sunk, with the loss of over a hundred American sailors.

  “I think the Navy are thoroughly scared about their inability to stamp out the submarine menace,” Stimson confessed in his diary. “The Germans have adopted new methods of hunting in packs and shooting under water without showing themselves and it is a new deal and it is pretty hard to handle.”

  Roosevelt understood that lend-lease would fail unless the United States could keep the sea-lanes open. The time had come, he decided, to take the next step—to ask Congress to remove Neutrality Act restrictions that prevented merchant ships from being armed. He had considered going to Congress in July, but when he was warned that a request for revision would provoke a filibuster and jeopardize extension of the draft, he backed off. Opinion was changing, however. In April, only 30 percent of the American people thought that American ships should be armed; by the end of September, the figure had risen to 46 percent; and now, in the wake of the recent sinkings, an overwhelming majority of 72 percent favored arming merchant ships.

  Still, it was not easy to get the Congress to act. The revision passed the House by a close margin and then stalled in the Senate, where critics argued that the U.S. was provoking incidents at sea in order to arouse the American public. “If we continue to look for trouble,” Senator Robert Reynolds warned, “the probabilities are that we will eventually find it.” Was anyone surprised that American ships were being fired on? America Firster John Flynn asked. “American war vessels, under orders of war-like Knox, are hunting down German subs . . . . The American people must realize that . . . they are the victims of a conspiracy to hurry them into the war.”

  It took eleven days of acrimonious debate before the Senate finally agreed, on November 8, to amend the Neutrality Act to arm merchant ships. The thirteen-vote margin was the smallest the administration had received on any major foreign-policy initiative since the beginning of the war. The closeness of the vote made it clear to Roosevelt that, short of some dramatic event, there was no chance of getting Congress to vote a declaration of war against Germany. “He had no more tricks left,” Robert Sherwood observed. “The bag from which he had pulled so many rabbits was empty.” His only recourse was to wait on events.

  • • •

  He did not have to wait for long. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December provided the answer to the president’s dilemma.

  After Japan’s invasion of Indochina in July, Roosevelt had agreed to a policy of sanctions, including an embargo of high-octane oil. Implemented by subordinates while he was away at the Atlantic Conference with Churchill, the limited embargo he had sanctioned had become full-scale. By the time Roosevelt realized that all types of oil had been closed to Japan, it was too late—without seeming weak—to turn back.

  Japan could not tolerate the embargo on oil. The crisis strengthened the hand of the military. On October 16, War Minister General Hideki Tojo replaced Fumimaro Konoye as premier, and gave Japanese diplomats until the l
ast day of November to arrange a satisfactory settlement with the United States that would end sanctions; if they failed, war would begin in early December. In the meantime, active preparations were under way for a massive air strike against Pearl Harbor.

  The stumbling block in the negotiations was China. Whereas Japan was willing to remove its troops from Indochina and promise not to advance beyond current positions in return for America’s lifting of the embargo, she refused to withdraw completely from China. For a time, it seemed that Roosevelt would accept a partial withdrawal of Japanese troops from China, but strong protests from Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek hardened the U.S. position.

  While the negotiations dragged on, the president adhered to his customary routine. The weekend that Tojo assumed power in Japan, Roosevelt was at Hyde Park with Princess Martha and Harry Hopkins. Anna and John Boettiger were also there, having flown east from Seattle for a short visit. The weather was crisp and autumnal, and, as always, Roosevelt found an agreeable sense of repose among the familiar surroundings. Driving through the countryside during the day or lying down in the clean linen of his bed at night, with his dog, Fala, at his feet, he must have felt, for a few moments at least, as though the war were far away.

  The following weekend, while Eleanor was in New York on OCD business, the president invited Princess Martha to join him for a leisurely cruise on the Potomac. The nature of his relationship with Martha at this point is not clear. Neither of the principals ever talked openly about their friendship. The White House usher diaries during this period, however, testify to her frequent presence: Thursday night, November 6, 7:30 to 11:45, dinner with Crown Princess Martha; Saturday, November 15, 1:17, lunch in study with Martha followed by a special showing for the two of them of Walt Disney’s new movie, Dumbo; Sunday, November 16, 6:20 to 10:50, to Pook’s Hill for dinner with Martha; Thursday, November 20, 4:30, swim with Martha, her lady-in-waiting, and her kids, followed by tea in the West Hall and dinner; Tuesday, November 25, 7:30 to 12:00, dinner with Martha. On most of these occasions, Eleanor was traveling on OCD business. Her job was taking her out of town more than she had originally assumed it would, but she felt more fulfilled than she had in years.

  At a Cabinet meeting on November 14, Secretary of State Cordell Hull told the president that negotiations with Japan had reached an impasse. The tone of Hull’s voice, Frances Perkins later recalled, was “very discouraged and cynical.” Hull said he had come to believe that the Japanese diplomats were hypocrities; “they were always being so superficially, excessively polite, showing him such respect, that it made him angry to think that they thought he didn’t see through their little ploy.” According to Perkins, Hull had “a quaint way of saying quite rough things,” which, when added to his inability of saying the “cr” sound because of his lisp, produced a most humorous effect. “If Cordell Hull says Oh Chwist again,” Roosevelt confided in Perkins, “I’m going to scream with laughter. I can’t stand profanity with a lisp.”

  In late November, as he had done for nearly two decades, the president planned a journey to Warm Springs to celebrate Thanksgiving with the patients and staff of the polio foundation. This particular trip held special meaning, since Missy LeHand would also be there, having left Doctor’s Hospital in early November to continue her convalescence at the rehabilitation center at Warm Springs. The physical condition of her legs had been steadily improving. It was hoped that a return to the little Georgia community she loved would stimulate the return of her speech.

  “Just as you move out of one hospital I move into another,” Hopkins wrote Missy on November 12, as he entered the Naval Hospital for a round of diagnostic tests to determine why he was experiencing difficulty in walking. “But Harper tells me you are a model patient compared with me. I complain about the food, the nurses and in general leave the impression that I know much more about running the hospital than Navy doctors do. At least now I am relaxed and reading some books . . . . I am delighted at the reports I hear from you and just as soon as I can push my way out of the hospital I am coming down to see you.”

  When Missy arrived at Warm Springs, she was installed with a private nurse in a little cottage that stood at the top of the hill across from the main complex of the foundation—a cluster of buildings which included a hospital, rehab center, dining hall, auditorium, and treatment pools. To the polio patients who had known Missy over the years, “so quick and full of fun . . . so often running errands for the boss that her path and theirs had many points of intersection,” it must have seemed strange to see her now, tired and bewildered from her long train ride, unable to walk, unable to talk. If Warm Springs had brought life and hope back to Roosevelt, perhaps it could do the same for her.

  The president was scheduled to leave Washington for Warm Springs on November 19, but the situation at home was so tense—with striking miners paralyzing the entire steel industry—that the trip was postponed. Earlier in the month, on the orders of John L. Lewis, fifty-three thousand United Mine Workers, representing 95 percent of all the men who worked in captive mines owned by steel companies, had gone on strike when the National Defense Mediation Board refused to grant Lewis’ request for a union shop, which would have compelled the remaining 5 percent to join the UMW. (Although, true to his word, Lewis had resigned as president of the CIO after FDR’s victory, he had remained as president of the UMW.)

  “I must say,” FDR, Jr., had written Eleanor from the navy, “it’s a pretty discouraging and disgusting sight to see a great country blackmailed by a bull-headed rascal like Lewis . . . . I know Pa’s knowledge and judgment of not only public opinion but the whole cross-word puzzle show is thoroughly sound. But still, sometimes I wish he’d leave his kind nature in his bunk some morning and roll up his sleeves and really get tough—it would be a wonderful show to watch.”

  Young Franklin got his wish, for this time the president did get tough, threatening to send in the troops if the miners refused to return to work. “I tell you frankly,” Roosevelt pledged, “the government will never compel this 5 percent to join the union by a government decree. That would be too much like Hitler’s methods toward labor.” Though Roosevelt was not opposed in principle to the idea of a union shop, he believed it had to come about through negotiations between labor and management, not through a government decree. The president’s hard line paid off. On November 22, Lewis agreed to compulsory arbitration and the miners went back to work. “We felt a weight off our minds and hearts,” Eleanor wrote, “when we knew the coal strike was to be arbitrated. I know what a relief it is for men to go back to work.”

  With the settlement of the coal strike, the president rescheduled his trip to Warm Springs for November 27. But then, the day before he was set to go, he received word that, in the midst of the continuing negotiations, a Japanese expedition was heading south from Japan. He “fairly blew up,” Stimson recorded in his diary, “jumped up in the air, so to speak, and said . . . that changed the whole situation because it was evidence of bad faith on the part of the Japanese.”

  November 27 was “a very tense, long day,” Stimson reported, as news of the Japanese expedition kept coming in. “I have washed my hands of it,” Secretary Hull told Stimson. “It is now in the hands of you and Knox.” Still, there was no clear understanding of where the expeditionary force was headed. “If the current negotiations end without agreement,” Admiral Stark warned the president later that day, “Japan may attack: the Burma Road, Thailand, Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, the Philippines, the Russian Maritime Provinces . . . . The most essential thing now from United States viewpoint, is to gain time. Considerable Navy and Army reinforcements have been rushed to Philippines but desirable strength not yet been reached. Precipitance of military action on our part should be avoided so long as consistent with national policy. The longer the delay, the more positive becomes the assurance of retention of these Islands as a naval and air base.”

  The president agreed with Stark about the importance of playing
for time. Though he had little hope now that an agreement could be reached, he instructed Hull to send a proposal to the Japanese demanding that Japan leave China and Indochina in return for an American promise to negotiate new trade and raw-materials agreements. The note reiterated what the United States had been saying for months: that Japan could at any moment put an end to the exploding situation by embracing a peaceful course, and that once she did this her fears of encirclement would come to an immediate end.

  The following day, the president left for Warm Springs, where he hoped to remain for ten days so that he could celebrate Thanksgiving with the polio patients. Stimson was “very sorry that he went but nobody spoke out and warned him.” The presidential train reached the village of Newman, Georgia, about noon on Saturday, November 29. Welcomed by sunny skies and a friendly crowd, Roosevelt decided to ride the remaining forty miles to Warm Springs in an open automobile, waving to the crowds gathered along the way. The newspapermen, arriving at Warm Springs, settled themselves in two cottages, then “had a few drinks and entered into the spirit of a much-needed holiday.”

  While the others relaxed, the president drove directly to Missy’s cottage to say hello, bringing Grace Tully with him. “You had to have at least two people,” Egbert Curtis once explained, “so you could talk across Missy to the other person. Suppose I could only say yes, yes, it would be very difficult for you or anybody else to talk with me.”

  Tully hoped the visit would bolster Missy’s spirits, but the president was ill at ease and distracted, too tired and worn, writer Bernard Asbell suggests, to “endure the ordeal of trying to cheer Missy—the old, cheery, talkative, loyal Missy—who could now say without great effort only a single word.” He stayed only fifteen minutes before telling Missy he had to return to his own cottage.

  No sooner had the president reached the “little White House,” as his unpretentious cottage on the edge of a ravine was called, than Secretary Hull phoned to say “the Far East picture was darkening and that the talks in Washington were in such brittle state that they might be broken at any time.” The president told Hull to call again after dinner; if things were no better, he would return to Washington.