Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  The answer for Roosevelt was unstinting support for Britain’s resistance:

  The people of Europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do their fighting. They ask us for the implements of war, the planes, the tanks, the guns which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security. Emphatically we must get these weapons to them in sufficient volume and quickly enough, so that we and our children will be saved the agony and suffering of war.

  We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.23*

  At one point in the fireside chat Roosevelt spoke of German fifth columnists operating in the Western Hemisphere. Then followed the sentence “There are also American citizens, many of them in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents.”

  When the speech had been submitted to the State Department, the draft came back with the words “many of them in high places” crossed out in red pencil. FDR, who had little affection for the nation’s career diplomats, was appalled. “Leave it in,” he instructed Rosenman. “In fact, I’m very much tempted to say, ‘many of them in high places, especially in the State Department.’ ”24

  In much the way that Churchill galvanized British resistance, Roosevelt’s speeches and press conferences in December 1940 and January 1941 deepened America’s understanding of what was at stake.25 Buoyed by his unprecedented third-term mandate, FDR assumed command of public opinion as he had done during the hundred days in 1933. Letters and telegrams to the White House after his fireside chat ran 100 to 1 in the president’s favor. A Gallup Poll in early January showed 68 percent of Americans in favor of Lend-Lease and only 26 percent opposed.26 In Britain and throughout the Commonwealth the public was thrilled by Roosevelt’s stirring affirmation of American purpose. Churchill wrote that it was his duty “on behalf of the British Government and indeed the whole British Empire to tell you, Mr. President, how lively is our sense of gratitude and admiration for the memorable declaration which you made to the American people and to the lovers of Freedom in all continents on last Sunday.”27

  On January 6 Roosevelt went to Capitol Hill to deliver his ninth State of the Union message. The bulk of the president’s speech was devoted to preparedness, defense production, and the necessity for Lend-Lease. “Let us say to the democracies: ‘We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our pledge.’ ”

  But the address is remembered for Roosevelt’s peroration:

  In future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

  The first is freedom of speech and expression.…

  The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way.…

  The third is freedom from want.…

  The fourth is freedom from fear.… 28

  Like Lend-Lease, the Four Freedoms were Roosevelt’s idea. “Nobody ghost-wrote those words,” said Robert Sherwood.29 Sitting in his upstairs study two nights before the speech was to be delivered, going over the third draft with Rosenman, Sherwood, and Hopkins, FDR said he had an idea for the peroration. “We waited as he leaned far back in his swivel chair with his gaze on the ceiling,” Rosenman remembered. “It was a long pause—so long that it began to be uncomfortable.” Then he began dictating. “The words seemed to roll off his tongue as though he had rehearsed them many times to himself.* A comparison with the final speech will show that his dictation was changed by only a word here and there, so perfect had been the formulation in his own mind.”30

  Shortly after the State of the Union, Wendell Willkie paid a courtesy call at the White House preparatory to a goodwill visit to England.† When he was announced, FDR was closeted in the Cabinet Room with Rosenman and Sherwood working on his January 20 inaugural address. The president shifted himself onto his wheelchair and moved into the Oval Office to greet Willkie, only to discover that his desk was clear of papers. He turned back to the Cabinet Room and told Rosenman and Sherwood to give him some papers.

  “Which particular papers do you want, Mr. President?” asked Rosenman.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said FDR. “Just give me a handful to strew around on my desk so I will look very busy when Willkie comes in.”31

  Roosevelt and Willkie spent more than an hour together. “At regular intervals great bursts of laughter could be heard coming through the closed doors,” James Roosevelt reported.32 At one point Willkie asked Roosevelt why he retained Harry Hopkins as an intimate adviser in view of Hopkins’s general unpopularity. “Someday you may well be sitting here where I am now,” FDR replied. “And when you are, you’ll realize what a lonely job it is, and you’ll discover the need for somebody like Harry Hopkins who asks for nothing except to serve you.”33

  As Willkie prepared to leave, Roosevelt took a sheet of his personal stationery and commenced writing:

  Dear Churchill,

  Wendell Willkie will give you this. He is truly helping to keep politics out over here.

  Then from memory FDR wrote out a passage from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Building of the Ship,” which he had learned as a schoolboy at Groton:

  Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

  Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

  Humanity with all its fears,

  With all the hope of future years

  Is hanging breathless on thy fate.34

  On January 10, 1941, the Lend-Lease bill (H.R. 1776) was introduced by Majority Leader John W. McCormack of Massachusetts in the House and Alben Barkley in the Senate. Isolationist opponents had a brief field day. The Chicago Tribune called H.R. 1776 “a dictator bill” designed to destroy the Republic. New York’s Thomas E. Dewey said it meant “an end to free government in the United States.” Senator Burton K. Wheeler claimed it “will plough under every fourth American boy.” Senator Vandenberg asserted that the bill gave FDR the authority “to make war on any country he pleases any time he pleases.” The best line was delivered by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio: “Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum. You don’t want it back.”35

  The isolationists had the headlines, but Roosevelt had the votes. Polls consistently showed three quarters of Americans supported the president and Lend-Lease.36 On February 8 the bill cleared the House 260–165, largely along party lines. The following day Wendell Willkie, back from Britain, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Nearly 1,200 people crammed into the splendorous Caucus Room (more than twice its rated capacity) to hear the former GOP nominee. They were not disappointed. Breaking with his party’s congressional leadership, Willkie endorsed Lend-Lease down the line. The most dramatic segment of Willkie’s testimony came when he was questioned about his remarks during the campaign that Roosevelt would lead the nation into war. Willkie said he saw no constructive purpose in discussing old campaign speeches. “I struggled as hard as I could to beat Franklin Roosevelt and I tried to keep from pulling my punches. He was elected president. He is my president now.”

  Thunderous applause shook the Caucus Room. Nevertheless, Senator Gerald Nye persisted. He quoted Willkie’s Baltimore statement that the United States would be at war by April 1941 if Roosevelt was reelected.

  “You ask me if I said that.” Willkie grinned. The Caucus Room erupted.

  When the laughter died down, Nye continued: “Do you still agree that might be the case?”

  “It might be. It was a bit of campaign oratory.” More laughter. “I’m very glad you read my speeches because the president said he did not.”37 Howls of laughter and sustained, foot-stomping applause.

/>   For practical purposes the debate was over. Willkie’s good nature and obvious sincerity carried the day. Just as with selective service, his support for Lend-Lease broke the back of the opposition.

  The following day Senator George of Georgia, the new chairman of Foreign Relations, pushed the bill through committee 15–8. On March 8 the full Senate added its approval 60–31, and three days later the House accepted the Senate version by a lopsided 317–71. Roosevelt’s preparedness coalition was in full control. Unrepentant Southern Democrats—men like Carter Glass, Pat Harrison, “Cotton Ed” Smith, and Walter George—joined big-city liberals and Republican internationalists to put the president’s program across. FDR signed the bill into law thirty minutes after its final passage. The next day Congress appropriated $7 billion to fund the first shipments to Great Britain, the largest single appropriation in American history.* “This decision is the end of any attempts at appeasement,” said FDR. “The end of urging us to get along with dictators; the end of compromise with tyranny and the forces of oppression.”38

  Passage of Lend-Lease repealed the “cash” provision of the Neutrality Act. The “carry” requirement remained in effect. Whatever aid America supplied had to be carried in British bottoms. That posed a serious problem. There was little point providing $7 billion for military aid if it ended up on the ocean floor. In the three months leading up to Lend-Lease, 142 vessels, roughly 800,000 tons of shipping, had been sunk. German U-boats were sinking British ships three times faster than shipyards could replace them. In Churchill’s words, the Battle of Britain had become the Battle of the Atlantic.39

  Roosevelt responded on April 10 by announcing that the United States had concluded an agreement with the Danish government in exile permitting U.S. forces to occupy Greenland and establish bases there.40 The following day he advised Churchill he was extending the American security zone in the Atlantic to 25 degrees west longitude, roughly midway between the westernmost bulge of Africa and the easternmost bulge of Brazil. The Navy would patrol that zone and inform the British of all enemy vessels sighted. “It is important for domestic political reasons … that this action be taken by us unilaterally,” Roosevelt told Churchill. “When this new policy is adopted here no statement [should] be issued on your end.”41*

  At his press conference on April 25 the president was asked to distinguish between a patrol and a convoy. Was the United States planning to convoy British merchant vessels? “No,” said Roosevelt. The difference between a patrol and a convoy was similar to the difference between a horse and a cow. “You can’t turn a cow into a horse by calling it something else. It is still a cow. This is a patrol.”

  Q: Could you define its functions?

  FDR: Protection of the American hemisphere.

  Q: By belligerent means?

  FDR: Protection of the American hemisphere.

  Q: Mr. President, if this patrol should discover some apparently aggressive ships headed toward the Western Hemisphere, what would it do about it?

  FDR: Let me know. (Loud laughter.)42

  Roosevelt’s elliptical response reflected his determination not to get too far in front of public opinion. Gallup Polls in April showed overwhelming support for all-out aid to Britain, and FDR’s approval rating stood at 73 percent. But the country was evenly divided on whether the Navy should be placed on convoy duty, and a whopping 81 percent opposed America’s entry into war.43 Roosevelt’s caution rankled the hawks in the administration. “The President is loath to get into this war,” noted Morgenthau. “He would rather follow public opinion than lead it.”44 Stimson, Knox, and Ickes concurred. Even the military chimed in. “How much a part of our Democratic way of life will be handled by Mr. Gallup is a pure guess,” Admiral Stark complained to the commander of the Pacific Fleet.45 A more understanding assessment was offered by King George VI, who watched Roosevelt’s helmsmanship with undisguised admiration. “I have been so struck” he wrote the president, “by the way you have led public opinion by allowing it to get ahead of you.”46 Roosevelt’s stance involved more than public relations. Like Lincoln before Fort Sumter or Wilson prior to World War I, FDR told his cabinet he was “not willing to fire the first shot.” If the United States went to war, it would be because it was attacked.47

  Despite the expanded American patrol zone in the Atlantic, British losses continued to mount. In the first three weeks of May, twenty merchant vessels were lost to German submarines in the area Roosevelt had staked out.48 The war was going badly elsewhere as well. In the Balkans, German troops swept through Yugoslavia and expelled the British army from Greece. In North Africa, the Wehrmacht had superseded the Italian Army in Libya and pushed eastward to the Egyptian border. Crete was about to fall, Syria and Iraq were in danger, and the neutral nations—Spain, Portugal, and Turkey—were threatening to jump on the German bandwagon. On May 3 a despondent Churchill asked Roosevelt to intervene. “Mr. President, I am sure you will not misunderstand me if I speak to you exactly what is on my mind. The one decisive counterweight I can see … would be if the United States were immediately to range herself with us as a belligerent power. If this were possible I have little doubt that we could hold the situation in the Mediterranean until the weight of your munitions gained the day.”49

  Roosevelt responded on May 10. He ignored Churchill’s plea for the United States to enter the war and reassured him that aid was on the way. “Thirty ships are now being loaded to go to the Middle East. I know your determination to win on that front and we shall do everything that we possibly can to help you do it.” The president reminded Churchill, “this struggle is going to be decided in the Atlantic. Unless Hitler can win there he cannot win anywhere in the world.”50

  On May 27 Roosevelt notched public awareness a step higher with his first fireside chat of the year. The speech, as Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle observed, was “calculated to scare the daylights out of everyone.”51 The president spoke from the East Room of the White House to a worldwide audience of some 85 million. After laying out the threat posed by Nazi Germany, he announced his intention to ensure the delivery of needed supplies to Britain by whatever means were necessary. “I say that this can be done; it must be done; and it will be done.” That was followed by a “proclamation of unlimited national emergency.”52 Roosevelt did not ask for repeal of the Neutrality Act, he did not request new statutory authority, nor did he suggest the Navy undertake convoy responsibility. Nevertheless, by declaring an unlimited national emergency he prepared public opinion for the prospect that hostilities might follow. “I hope you will like the speech,” FDR cabled Churchill. “It goes further than I thought it was possible to go even two weeks ago.”53

  Public response was overwhelmingly favorable. Ninety-five percent of the telegrams to the White House supported the president.54 A Gallup Poll in early June showed a clear majority of Americans now favored armed convoys to protect vessels carrying goods to Britain. In the South, 75 percent were in favor.55 “I hope that we will protect every dollar’s worth of stuff that we send to Great Britain,” said Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, “and that we will shoot the hell out of anybody who interferes.”56

  As May melded into June, Roosevelt confronted one of the most serious racial issues of his presidency. The nation’s black leaders were concerned that qualified Negro workers were being passed over by defense contractors and not receiving their share of jobs. Led by A. Philip Randolph, the beloved and powerful head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, they organized a protest march on Washington and scheduled it for July 1. FDR sought to head them off. A black march in segregated Washington could easily provoke violence and at the very least would antagonize the southern leadership of his preparedness coalition. He asked Eleanor and New York mayor La Guardia to meet with Randolph and his colleagues and dissuade them. When that failed, Roosevelt invited the black leaders to the White House.

  The meeting took place Wednesday afternoon, June 18. In addition to Randolph and NAACP head Walter Wh
ite, the president invited Stimson, Knox, and La Guardia. When Randolph asked FDR if he would issue an executive order making it mandatory for the defense industry to hire black workers, Roosevelt declined. “If I issue an executive order for you,” he told Randolph, “there will be no end of other groups coming in here and asking me to issue orders for them. In any event, I can’t do anything unless you call off this march of yours.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, the march cannot be called off.”

  “How many people do you plan to bring?”

  “One hundred thousand, Mr. President.”

  Thinking that Randolph was bluffing, FDR turned to White. “Walter, how many people will really march?”

  “One hundred thousand, Mr. President.”

  Roosevelt recalled the 1919 Washington race riots, when he had been assistant secretary of the Navy. “You can’t bring 100,000 Negroes to Washington. Someone might get killed.” Randolph held firm, and Roosevelt continued to resist. Finally, La Guardia broke the impasse: “Gentlemen, it is clear that Mr. Randolph is not going to call off the march. I suggest we all begin to seek a formula.”57 FDR at length agreed and asked the group to adjourn to the Cabinet Room to hammer out an appropriate executive order. Negotiations over the precise wording required another week, and on June 25 the president signed Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in the defense industry and the federal government because of “race, creed, color, or national origin.”

  Randolph canceled the march, and Roosevelt’s action was an important civil rights breakthrough. For the first time since Reconstruction the U.S. government acted to guarantee equal opportunity for blacks. Roosevelt was not the prime mover; it was Randolph who had called the shots. But FDR was wise enough to recognize a just cause and flexible enough to acquiesce when it became necessary. If Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed blacks from physical slavery, wrote the Amsterdam News, Roosevelt’s executive order liberated them from economic captivity.58