Roosevelt (105 page)

The most significant sentence in these remarks was, perhaps, the last one. Roosevelt would not make a public issue of colonialism. It would only make the British mad, he said. “Better to keep quiet just now.” He could not forget an incident at Yalta. Stettinius had begun to discuss trusteeships under the new world charter when Churchill broke in, exclaiming that he did not agree with a single word. His phrases spilling out in spurts of anger, he shouted that as long as he was prime minister the British Empire would not be put into the dock. He would never yield a scrap of his country’s heritage. Roosevelt had intervened only to ask that Stettinius be allowed to finish his statement; the Secretary was not talking about the British Empire. Churchill had subsided ungraciously, muttering, “Never, never, never.”

Roosevelt would tease Churchill to his face about his colonies; he would joke or complain about Churchill’s imperialism with Stalin and others; but he would not directly confront the Prime Minister. He was serious about the trusteeship idea, telling Hurley at their March meetings that United Nations trusteeships would be set up at the forthcoming San Francisco Conference. But such a policy required the concurrence of Britain and France and perhaps other colonial nations, and Roosevelt gave little indication that he was ready to challenge the other Atlantic powers. Indeed, since his talks with de Gaulle in July 1944 he seemed also to be veering toward more recognition of the French interest in Indochina, especially if de Gaulle lived up to his promises about giving Indochina representation within a postwar French federal system.
Even more important in the whole situation was Roosevelt’s Atlantic First strategy, which in early 1945, as China weakened and the Soviets seemed to grow more chauvinistic, seemed likely to be as important after the war as it had been during it. Caught between these forces, Roosevelt left Indochina in a political void. He merely provoked Churchill and de Gaulle without accomplishing anything specific.

The President had anticolonial ideals; what he lacked was a carefully conceived strategy to carry them out, given the global strategic considerations and the checkered and volatile politics of Southeast Asia. Great possibilities were open in the early months of 1945. Roosevelt’s anticolonialism, his sponsorship of the Atlantic Charter, his support of Philippine independence were well known to nationalistic and revolutionary leaders in Burma and India, in Indonesia and Indochina. So was America’s own revolutionary past. When Ho Chi Minh was drawing up a manifesto of independence he asked an American friend for the language of the great declaration of 1776. Roosevelt was not willing to launch a crusade against colonialism or to risk the kind of public confrontation with the Atlantic powers that would have captured for him the allegiance—or at least the rapt attention—of the colonial peoples of Asia.

Rather, he felt that his stated goals combined with his personal influence with Wilhelmina and King George and even Churchill and de Gaulle would be enough to resolve the issue when the fighting was over. So it was not necessary to frame comprehensive programs and detailed policies, especially since it was hard to calculate all the factors in advance, and the war had to be won first anyway. He would attend to it at the right time. It was not the lack of personal convictions but the easy assumption that he would be around to translate them into decision and action, along with the shadowy dominance of Atlantic First, that flawed Roosevelt’s anticolonial credo at the beginning of spring 1945.

If events abroad were reaching one of the great climacterics of history, domestic affairs by the spring of 1945 were following their own tepid cycle. In the wake of the President’s challenging pronouncements of January the committees of Congress assumed command of the legislative process with their ancient weapons of discussion, dilution, and delay. The manpower bill, after passing the House, slowly bled to death in the Senate as victories abroad blunted the spur of emergency. Wallace was finally confirmed as Secretary of Commerce, but only after a bitter struggle in the Senate—and only after the big federal lending agencies were separated
from. Commerce so that the former Vice President could not “control” billions in loans. Congressional investigators of subversive activities conducted feckless little witch hunts. The Senate rejected Roosevelt’s nomination of Aubrey Williams, former National Youth Administrator, as head of Rural Electrification. John L. Lewis threatened another coal strike.

Not for years had the President’s legislative fortunes seemed at such a low ebb. The Republican and Democratic congressional parties were collaborating smoothly. Roosevelt, however, seemed hardly aware of the congressional situation; in any event he was not going to invite a quarrel with the legislators over domestic matters at a time when he needed Republican and conservative support for his foreign policies, especially for American leadership in the new international organization.

His administration ran on with the momentum of twelve years of liberal activism. He urged renewal and strengthening of the Trade Agreements Act. He asked for an inquiry into guaranteed annual-wage plans. He received ambassadors, awarded medals, discussed jobs with Democratic politicos.

He seemed to be dwelling in the past and the future, as well as the present. “I still say, thank God for those good old days and for old and tried friends like you,” he wrote to a Dutchess County friend who had remarked that it was a long step from the size of apple barrels—an issue in Roosevelt’s 1912 campaign—to meeting Churchill and Stalin and perhaps deciding the fate of the world. He was looking forward to his trip to San Francisco in April and to England later in the spring with his wife. And by late March he could relax about military prospects in Europe. When he told Frances Perkins of his projected trip to England and she protested that it was still too dangerous, he put his hand to the side of his mouth and whispered: “The war in Europe will be over by the end of May.”

Both Anna Boettiger and Grace Tully were quietly trying to conserve the President’s strength until he could get some rest at Warm Springs. Both were perplexed by his sudden changes in appearance. So were the reporters, who were watching him closely. At the White House correspondents’ dinner, Allen Drury noted how old and thin and scrawny-necked he looked when he was wheeled in, how he stared out at the crowded tables as though he did not see the people, how he failed to respond to the blare of trumpets and to the applause.

Then he suddenly came to life, Drury noted, and began to enjoy himself. The notables of Washington were there, including Leahy and Marshall, Byrnes and Ickes and Biddle and Morgenthau, Justices Douglas and Jackson, Senators Ball and Morse and Austin;
and Vice President Truman, with a handkerchief carefully folded so that the four corners showed. Danny Kaye performed, and Jimmy Durante and Fanny Brice. Everyone watched the greatest performer of all—how he steadily drank wine and smoked his uplifted cigarette, how he leaned forward with his hand cupped behind his ear to hear a joke repeated as laughter welled up in the room, how his booming laughter rang out—but then a few moments later simply sat at the table with an intent, vague expression on his face, while his jaw dropped and his mouth fell open.

But he lasted out the evening and gave a talk at the end. It was about Humanity, he said—“We all love Humanity, you love Humanity, I love Humanity….” And in the name of Humanity he would give them a headline story—“I am calling off the press conference for tomorrow morning.”

The applause rang out as he was shifted back to his wheel chair, Drury noted in his diary, “and just before he went out the door he acknowledged it with the old, familiar gesture, so that the last we saw of Franklin Roosevelt was the head going up with a toss, the smile breaking out, the hand uplifted and waving in the old, familiar way.”

The usual crowd clustered around the little Warm Springs station as Roosevelt’s train pulled in on Good Friday, March go, 1945. Something seemed different this time as Roosevelt’s big frame, slumped in the wheel chair, seemed to joggle uncontrollably as he was rolled along the platform. A murmur drifted through the crowd. But the President drove his own car to the Little White House atop the hill.

That evening Hassett suddenly blurted out to Bruenn that the President was slipping away. Hassett admitted that he had been maintaining a bluff to the family and even Roosevelt himself, but he felt there was no hope for him. His feeble signature—the bold stroke and heavy line of old were gone, or simply faded out. Bruenn cautiously granted that Roosevelt was in a precarious condition, but said it was not hopeless if he could be protected from emotional and mental strain. That was impossible, Hassett said. He and Bruenn were on the verge of emotional upset.

But after a few days in the warm Georgia sun Roosevelt’s gray pallor changed and some of his old vitality returned, though the level of his blood pressure had become extremely wide, ranging between 170/88 and 240/130. The news from Europe was exciting: American, British, and Canadian troops were encircling the Ruhr, spearing northwest toward Hannover and Bremen, driving ever deeper into the heart of Germany. Reports were also coming to Washington of the many thousands of civilian deaths in the fire
bombings of Japanese and German cities; it is doubtful that Roosevelt understood the enormity of the civilian losses, which would compare with the effects of the later atomic bombings.

Stalin’s harsh messages were forwarded to Warm Springs. Roosevelt was disturbed but not depressed by his deteriorating relations with the Kremlin. Unlike Churchill, who at the time foresaw the darkness ahead, as he said later, and moved amid cheering crowds with an aching heart, Roosevelt was sure that things would be put aright. He tried to calm the troubled waters. The Swiss incident was fading into the past, he cabled to Stalin; in any event there must not be mutual distrust. He urged on Churchill that the Soviet problem be minimized as much as possible; things would straighten out. He added:

“We must be firm however, and our course thus far is correct.”

The President seemed more concerned with Asia than with Europe during these early April days. He was pleased with the news of the sudden fall of the Japanese Cabinet in the wake of the invasion of Okinawa. President Sergio Osmeña was back from the Philippines to report on the terrible destruction in Manila. The President talked with reporters in remarkable detail about conditions in the Philippines, economic problems, needed American assistance. It was the President’s 998th press conference.

He was especially determined that there be no change in plans for immediate independence for the Philippines. It depended only on how quickly the Japanese were cleared from the islands. He would set an example for the British and the other colonial powers. He wrote to his old chief, Josephus Daniels, that he would like independence to go into effect in August and to be present himself, but he feared he might have to be in Europe for a conference about that time.

On the afternoon of April 11 the President dictated the draft of a speech for Jefferson Day.

“Americans are gathered together in communities all over the country to pay tribute to the living memory of Thomas Jefferson—one of the greatest of all democrats; and I want to make it clear that I am spelling that word ‘democrats’ with a small
d…”

The President paid a traditional tribute to Jefferson as Secretary of State, President, and scientist. Then he continued:

“The once powerful, malignant Nazi state is crumbling. The Japanese war lords are receiving, in their own homeland, the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor.

“But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough.

“We must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible….

“Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace.

“Let me assure you that my hand is the steadier for the work that is to be done, that I move more firmly into the task, knowing that you—millions and millions of you—are joined with me in the resolve to make this work endure.

“The work, my friends, is peace. More than an end of this war—an end to the beginnings of all wars. Yes, an end, forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass killing of peoples.

“Today, as we move against the terrible scourge of war—as we go forward toward the greatest contribution that any generation of human beings can make in this world—the contribution of lasting peace, I ask you to keep up your faith. I measure the sound, solid achievement that can be made at this time by the straight edge of your own confidence and your resolve. And to you, and to all Americans who dedicate themselves with us to the making of an abiding peace, I say:

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”

W
ARM SPRINGS ON THURSDAY
morning, April 12, 1945, was sunny and pleasant. Dogwood and wild violets bloomed along the road to Pine Mountain. There, at his favorite picnic spot, friends of Franklin Roosevelt were preparing a barbecue for the late afternoon; the smells of honeysuckle and stewing beef and chicken mingled in the soft Georgia air. A wooden armchair was set out for the guest of honor under a wisteria-laden oak tree, whence he could gaze at the greening valley below.

Down in the valley, in his corner bedroom in the Little White House, the President was sitting in bed reading the Atlanta
Constitution;
the big-city newspapers from the north had been delayed by bad weather in Washington. The headlines reported American troops fifty-seven miles from Berlin and 115 miles from the Russians; a big fleet of super-Forts had bombed Tokyo in daylight. Roosevelt looked up from his paper at the sound of chatter in the kitchen. He called out to Lizzie McDuffie, who was dusting the living room. What were they talking about? Lizzie came to the door. Mr. Roosevelt had always had time to talk with her, to answer her questions.