If we accomplish this, we have paved the way for the first hope for real peace the world has ever known. All people desire peace, but they are led to war because what is offered . . . seems to be unjust, and they are constantly seeking a way to right that injustice.
After all, life’s great appeal is the ongoing “adventure” and “excitement” in pursuit of a better, more humane world. When democracy works as it should, there is “a sense of brotherhood” and inspired leadership. She hoped her spiritual quest would lead to the ever-rising “living standard of all people.”
• • •
ER wrote her “little book” at night, alone in her room—whatever room she happened to be in during that hectic campaign season—regularly interrupted by political crises and family woes. The Moral Basis of Democracy was an eloquent articulation of her goals for the future: to ensure the survival of the liberal New Deal and to meet the challenges of the unfolding world war. It elaborated her essential creed and would guide her efforts to the end of her life.
From her “little cottage,” she sought to introduce Secretary Wallace to her readers. He would surely “strengthen the ticket,” she wrote. “I have always felt in him a certain shyness and that has kept him aloof from some Democrats, but now that he will be in close touch with so many . . . I am sure they will find in him much to admire and love.”
Back in 1933, she had deplored Wallace’s programs. He had executed the Agricultural Adjustment Act so as to benefit only large plantation and farm owners, leading to human misery and accelerating the “great migration” from the rural South. His disregard for conditions faced by farmworkers and sharecroppers seemed to her cruel. Her many protests over the waste of cotton, grain, and livestock resulted in the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation, through which Harry Hopkins’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration purchased farm surpluses and donated them to relief agencies.
By 1936, his views changed. Surprised by the dire poverty he witnessed during a fact-finding southern tour, he was eager to make amends for the damage done by his AAA crop reduction programs, and he supported the demands of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. But ER’s contempt for Wallace’s early policies lingered, and she was impatient with his statistical, scholarly approach to economic and human problems. She never referred to his progressive 1938 book Paths to Plenty, which heralded an era of “general welfare” defined by “democratic faith and universal social justice.”
But in 1940 Wallace’s goals were entirely in accord with her own. He too now called for an end to greed and selfish materialism and for economic democracy so that “all humanity might partake of the earth’s abundance.” He too now believed a global change in attitude required a spiritual and personal shift in belief, a revitalized “democratic faith” that placed human dignity and welfare above individual rapacity. In Paths to Plenty, he specifically criticized Social Darwinism, the regnant American ethic that merged Protestant fundamentalism to laissez-faire economics to justify rule by corporate capitalism, the “businessman’s religion.”
After the Chicago convention, ER and Wallace became great allies in the effort to enhance democratic movements and build upon the New Deal to create a world order to “humanize capitalism” for the general good. ER thought it would “take many years,” and Wallace thought it might take “one hundred years” or more, but they both believed it necessary, even inevitable.
In her first postconvention column, ER ignored the rancor of Chicago to celebrate an imagined harmony: “To me there is something very contagious about the friendly atmosphere brought about by meeting old friends. I was so glad to see them from all parts of the country. . . . We may think differently on certain subjects but, taken by and large, there is a bond of real friendliness.” She minimized the party’s leadership battles. Farley had resigned as party chairman, and she considered his successor Ed Flynn, the “boss of the Bronx,” a dependable ally. During the campaign, she would spend most of her time working behind the scenes, in league with her great friends of the Democratic Party’s Women’s Division, as she had done since 1920.
At Val-Kill, ER returned to the outdoors. A family of robins outside her bedroom window gratified her love of nature. Providing her readers with updates, she watched “with the keenest interest the growth of three little robins. I never knew diminutive objects could eat so much and grow so fast. The nest seems much too small for them.” And then came the first hesitant effort at flight: “It reminds me of myself going off the diving board. I long to be able to communicate in some bird language that, if he just has self-confidence, it will be all right.” Finally on 19 July: “My little birds have flown this morning out into a strange world all by themselves. I hope they lead happy bird lives and are preserved from the many dangers they must meet, long enough, at least, to give them a few months of whatever constitutes happy bird life!”
On 21 July, the week after the convention, family life at Hyde Park was saddened by the death of Aunt Dora. Surrounded by her family, Dora Delano Forbes died at ninety-two, devastated by the fall of France. She had always been in remarkably good health, and always “so young in spirit,” ER observed, noting that Aunt Dora had been “a symbol of how to grow old gracefully.” She mourned her and was always grateful for their marvelous and inspiring times together in Paris. After the Great War, Dora had introduced ER to hospital work among wounded veterans, and to the Lighthouse, which Aunt Dora had founded to assist French soldiers blinded in battle.
During these sorrowful days, FDR III’s second birthday arrived, a joyous occasion highlighted by a party and his first horseback ride, “on the saddle in front of his father.” Happy, on “the little walk” atop the “big hunter,” little Frank repeated “‘Again! Again,’ and seemed disgusted that there was no further ride. . . . I was amused, for when we tried to put him on the pony by himself, he refused to have anything to do with riding!” ER’s grandchildren added joy to her days. These challenging times, she noted, required each of us to discover and create new resources for strength and learning, so that we might “find somewhere within ourselves, the qualities and the intelligence to encounter whatever the future may hold in store.”
But as Tommy wrote to Anna on 12 July, ER “is always happier when she feels she is doing something constructive.” In the movement for racial justice, she worked closely with Mary McLeod Bethune, director of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration, to end wage differentials and intolerable conditions faced by women and black workers in defense plants. Back in 1938 ER and Bethune had sought to ensure that the NYA’s Civilian Pilot Training Program include a Negro section. ER worked with the Rosenwald Fund and other agencies to establish flight schools on the campuses of historically black colleges, including Tuskegee Institute, Howard University, and Hampton Institute. Tuskegee’s program had begun in October 1939.
Now she supported NAACP protests against degrading Jim Crow policies throughout the military, and she advocated expanding rights and opportunities for women and blacks throughout the armed forces. Secretary of War Stimson denounced her “intrusive and impulsive folly,” but ER was convinced that the struggle against fascism required equal opportunity and respect to replace bigotry and violence in the United States; otherwise democracy would remain an empty promise. Early in the presidential campaign, Wendell Willkie had put issues of race on the agenda. In September, before a black crowd of eight thousand in the Negro Leagues’ Chicago American Giants baseball park, he announced his intention “to eliminate racial discrimination, abolish Jim Crow laws, [and achieve] an anti-lynching statute.” FDR’s southern strategy notwithstanding, ER shared these goals and remained steadfast in her pursuit of them.
• • •
Equally urgent for ER were efforts to rescue Europe’s endangered people. She attended Hadassah meetings with Tamar de Sola Pool and supported a children’s village in Palestine sponsored by the Young Women’s Zionist Organization. She spoke and agitated for Je
wish relief. And she continued her work with the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children. She deplored “the horrid legal details” that hampered efforts to get British children to safety. In July several thousand children were ready for passage, but U.S. ships were allegedly not available. The United States had a responsibility to do everything possible to “facilitate their coming,” the first lady wrote. She was “very impatient” with the “slowness, almost stubbornness” of career State Department officials involved and implored the president to hasten the process. “Time is so important,” she wrote. “It seems incredible that anyone would let red tape and regulations slow up the process.”
After an intense conversation, FDR, who had been unsupportive, agreed to establish an Emergency Visitors Visa Program to rescue “persons of exceptional merit, those of superior intellectual attainment.” On 15 August, Karl Frank of the ERC wrote a letter of gratitude to ER: “I know it is due to your interest. You will certainly know that many hundreds of people have been granted visitors’ visas.” Now the task would be to get exit permits from Vichy for the notables and find safe havens for them. Young (thirty-two), dapper, and fearless, Varian Fry left for France in August, with lists of names and $3,000 strapped to his thigh.
• • •
Even as he departed, the SS Quanza set sail from Lisbon with 317 passengers—mostly European refugees—aboard. When the ship arrived in New York on 19 August, 196 people were permitted to disembark, including 130 Europeans, who presumably had acceptable visas. But the visas of 121 other passengers—affluent refugees, mostly Jews—were rejected.
The Quanza proceeded to Mexico, where another thirty-five passengers were allowed to disembark, then to Virginia, to take on coal for its return trip to Lisbon. While en route to Norfolk, Captain Alberto Harberts announced that nobody would be allowed to leave the ship there. On 10 September someone—it is unclear who—contacted ER about the plight of the remaining eighty-six passengers. Unwilling to see the tragedy of the St. Louis repeated, she insisted they be given shelter and called upon all her allies, notably Patrick Malin of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR), who went to Norfolk to try to arrange for their admission. The PACPR was a group that coordinated admission of refugees with the State and Justice departments.
Meanwhile several attorneys had filed habeas corpus petitions for various passengers, including Elisabeth Cartier, a wealthy Swiss citizen who had been living in France. And the Wolf and Moritz Rand family, who were also passengers, contacted via intermediaries a highly regarded admiralty attorney. Jacob L. Morewitz brought a $100,000 lawsuit on behalf of the Rand family, arguing that because the Quanza did not allow the family to disembark, it was in breach of contract with them. According to Morewitz’s son, the goal was “to tie up the ship in court long enough for refugee leaders in Washington” to pressure FDR on behalf of the refugees.
Since the ship was to leave within twenty-four hours, the strategy worked. The U.S. District Court in Norfolk granted an injunction to hold the ship in federal custody, giving ER’s allies time to act decisively.* FDR called upon James McDonald, PACPR chair; Patrick Malin, his assistant; Marshall Field, chair of the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children; and Breckinridge Long, assistant secretary of state, to evaluate the immigration status of each passenger.
Long, the State Department official ER most despised, opposed admitting refugees in general, and in this case he acknowledged that the claims of only eight of the passengers were valid. He was therefore astonished on 14 September when Patrick Malin and other PACPR officials granted permits for all eighty-six passengers to disembark. Malin had outmaneuvered Long, and the immediate press response was favorable.
But while the Quanza episode resulted in triumph, it generated a vicious backlash from the State Department (which may be why ER never mentioned it). Long vehemently protested granting the passengers asylum. Every refugee was a potential Nazi or Communist, he insisted. The United States had been “very generous in offering hospitality” to those in danger from the Nazis, but he insisted that eligibility for asylum now be closed for good. He demanded all authority to grant visas be placed in American consulates, where he could control the process. FDR complied with Long’s demand, putting him in charge of all consulates and exit visas.
• • •
As always, during periods of high stress and distress, ER turned to her tried and tested remedies. Nature, exercise, music, friends, and work revived her spirits and restored her “vigor.” Sports programs were key, for wherever they thrived, youth were empowered. On 20 September she attended a daylong Washington conference on sports education, and saw it as a sign of national maturity that the United States was expanding its recreation programs for “young and old.” They were essential to the development of a healthy citizenry that could fight to defend the country. Now, she urged, we need “to go one step further” and integrate sports and recreation facilities through public and private agencies “for the good of the people.”
Music education was equally essential. She applauded Leopold Stokowski’s American Youth Orchestra, a group of public school boys and girls on tour in South America, for enhancing the Good Neighbor policy. Before the musicians embarked, they had studied Spanish, and they were evidently to study Portuguese on the way to Brazil. Acknowledging that “music is a universal language,” ER hoped U.S. schools would adopt the study of Spanish. So thrilled was ER by the Youth Orchestra, she met their ship when they returned from their Latin American tour, which had been a resounding success. “Their performances,” ER was delighted to note, “have made a vast difference in the way that people feel about the United States in many South American countries.” Moreover the “sixteen girls in the orchestra have created so much comment that they say the position of women in orchestras will be changed for all time.”
• • •
Throughout the summer the Battle of Britain escalated, and the Blitz intensified. From 9 July, when dockyards in South Wales were bombed and almost one hundred civilians were killed, rarely a day went by without terror and carnage. On 11 August, British fighters shot down 62 German raiders but lost 25 planes. On 15 August, 100 German bombers struck docks, factories, airfields throughout the northeast, and 800 bombers attacked the south. Britain’s fighters shot down 30 planes in the northeast, and only two British pilots were injured; in the south, 46 German aircraft were shot down, and 24 British fighters were lost, with 8 pilots dead. On 16 August, Prime Minister Churchill witnessed a ferocious air battle from an operations center in Uxbridge. The air war victories resulted in his 20 August words to Parliament, broadcast internationally: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
On 14 August, the anniversary of ER’s father’s death, as fresh news of the war dead filtered in, she wrote:
I looked at the moon last night . . . [and] could not help thinking of what its beauty means to us, and in contrast what horror its bright light means for England. [As news came in about] constantly renewed flights over various parts of England, we can only hope that bad weather will envelop the British Isles and those traditional fogs will be worse than they ever have been before. They are perhaps the best protection that Great Britain can have outside of her fighting air force which seems to be acquitting itself extremely well.
I cannot help but think of ruined houses and countryside in terms of people whom I know. Having members of your family and friends in various parts of England, Scotland and Ireland makes bombing raids which victimize civilians a much more personal thing.
On 24 August German bombs hit central London. The next day Britain bombed Berlin. For almost a fortnight hundreds of German bombers struck British cities and coastal villages. Hundreds were killed each day, every night. On 7 September, three hundred Londoners died, forty in one air raid shelter alone. The Blitz continued nightly, and London’s death toll escalated to one thousand in a week.
By September’s end, 6,954 British civilians were dead. On 11 September, Churchill spoke to an international audience over radio. Hitler’s “cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London,” he said in his stunning broadcast, reflected his insane hope that the death of “large numbers of civilians and women and children [would] terrorize and cow the people of this mighty imperial city.” He said:
Little does he know the spirit of the British [people], or the tough fibre of the Londoners . . . who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives.
This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatreds, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous Island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts . . . a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World—and the New—can join hands to rebuild the temples of man’s freedom and man’s honour.
ER was deeply stirred by the speech, with its “calmness and great fortitude.” Churchill’s words “seemed a challenge to every individual” to contribute whatever was needed to fight the madness and “made one feel that it would be impossible to do anything but endure.” But she had an editorial addition: Churchill had emphasized the duty of “every man”; she would add “every woman” and all children. Indeed, the night of his speech, ER read a letter from “a little boy in a refugee camp in England” who casually “passed off the fires and the bombs,” noting “they were so frequent now that he really could not take the time to tell about them.”
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