THE PRESIDENCY: Third Term Begins

The sun rose red on a city brave with flags. The day came on clear, fair and cold. The sharp wind brought sounds that made people quicken their step—distant bands playing, far-off police-sirens screaming faintly, the drone of planes high overhead, in wild-goose Vs. It was inauguration day.

People hurried downtown, wearing wool stockings and overshoes, sweaters and extra overcoats, carrying blankets and thermos bottles like a Saturday football crowd. The pavements struck a chill even through overshoes. It was a cold day in Washington, but warm enough out of the wind; and it was certainly not going to rain.

At 10:30 the President started his official day by going to church—in old, buff-colored St. Johns, across the bare trees of Lafayette Park from the White House. He sank back on the cushioned seat, his big, leathery face grave, the parentheses hooked deep and grim around his mouth.

The Rev. Howard S. Wilkinson read from the 20th psalm: . . . Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. The congregation and the President responded: . . . Hear us, O King of Heaven, when we call upon Thee.

The thin, yellow winter sunshine, pale outside, came ruby-red and turquoise blue from the stained glass windows of the little colonial church, the church where Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson and Harrison had sought counsel from the Lord. But now, in the tiny galleries, no citizen-spectators sat, only Secret Service men, hands quiet on pistols in their pockets.

The precautions of the Secret Service were the only jarring note that day. They were so unusual and so noticeable that they left no doubt of the Secret Service’s fear that inauguration might see an attempt on the life of the first Third Term President of the U. S.

Less than an hour after the church services, the President, with Senate Leader Alben Barkley and Speaker Sam Rayburn beside him, drove towards the Capitol. Not before nor behind his car, but on each side of it drove another car with eight Secret Service men riding on its running board, and each of these was flanked by two motorcycles with sidecars carrying hawk-eyed guardians. At a street corner where the crowd merely surged forward, a dozen Secret Service men jumped to the ground and rushed toward the danger spot, but nothing happened.

Along the route, sidewalk salesmen did a brisk business hawking badges “To Hell With Hitler.” Nobody could class angle the crowd that lined Pennsylvania Avenue—girls with old quilts tucked around their legs sat beside dowagers carrying fur lap robes—and the cold wind and bright sun left faces everywhere alike pinched with cold; honest, undisguisably and pleasantly homely.

Meanwhile the wide Capitol plaza was filled with people—but only filled, not jampacked. The spirit of the crowd was not what it had been in 1933 and 1937. The people came like an audience to the opera, dutifully, knowing that something fine would occur, that the main actors would acquit themselves well in familiar roles. For the first time, no crowds appeared on the House and Senate Chamber roofs; stationed near each roof were Secret Service men, their hands always in their pockets, their eyes steadily sweeping the crowds.

Reared above the plaza, level with the Capitol’s top step, stood the inaugural platform, the white paint only a few hours fresh on the new pine boards. On the unroofed south side of the platform were gathered the House members; on the unroofed north, the Senate. Under the roof on its eight, paint-wet, wooden Corinthian columns the Supreme Court was ranked, in formal robes; behind the Court the Cabinet, behind them the Diplomatic Corps, brave with braid. At the very front-&-centre stood the little podium, weedy with microphones. Close at hand stood the President’s mother in a black hat, a black coat with silver-fox collar, and his wife, in a black broadtail coat and black hat with a feather. On the other side, reflectively surveying his domain, stood pink-cheeked Boss Ed Flynn. Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, in gleaming top hat and Chesterfield coat, thoughtfully chewing gum.

Henry Wallace appeared, brushed and beaming, looking sure of himself; with him John Nance Garner, his little apple-cheeks pink in the cold, his eyebrows like small puffs of Texas cotton. The band broke into Hail to the Chief, and the President walked slowly forward from the shadows of the rotunda, leaning on the arm of Son James resplendent in the Marine Corps’s red, gold and blue uniform.

John Garner stepped close, rattled off the oath to grave Henry Wallace. In a voice that reached to Iowa, Mr. Wallace said: “I do,” and was Vice President. Now the plaza became really still. Mr. Roosevelt moved forward. The Chief Justice had jerked off his skullcap. Mr. Hughes stated the oath and the President repeated the worn, full, old words: “I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Asked Justice Hughes challengingly: “So help you God?” Answered President Roosevelt firmly: “So help me God.”

The President turned to the crowd, waited a moment, and began to speak. The wind was cold in his face.

Said Mr. Roosevelt:

“In this day the task of the people is to save the U. S. and its institutions from disruption from without.”

To the crowd, and the U. S., and the listening world, he said, as he has often said, that there must be no doubts about the future of democracy, that tyranny and slavery are not “the wave of the future.” A flashbulb popped like a shot. The wind came in stronger gusts. The President: “Democracy is not dying.” The nation’s body must be tended, the nation’s mind informed, but the spirit of America, the American faith must be preserved at all costs. To protect and preserve “the sacred fire” of that spirit everywhere in the world, he called the U. S. to muster, to go forward “by the Will of God.”

The speech was not in the President’s usual literary style. It was pseudo-poetic, full of little except generalities, as if it had been written for him by someone such as Playwright Robert E. Sherwood. Five times the President was applauded—briefly, by gloved and mittened hands. When he finished, he turned away, then turned back and waved his top hat. At this familiar gesture the crowd cheered.

After the great event all that remained was for the President to review the inaugural parade. Before the White House the wind was not so keen as on Capitol Hill. The crowd stamped less, cheered more, laughed more easily. It cheered the silk-hatted, beaver-collared President (who had borrowed Joe Davies’ fur-lined overcoat). It watched with unexcited approval as General Marshall on his bay horse, King Story, went by with six aides and a cavalry troop, West Point cadets and Annapolis midshipmen. Brand new grey-green Fords rolled by interminably, carrying Governors and dignitaries. There were CCC boys in green uniforms, NYA girls in blue and white dresses, a Negro WPA company, whose straggling ranks and struggling salutes to the President gave watchers their only laugh in the grim military parade.

Suddenly the mood shifted; the mild, casual air of the inauguration gave way to a glimpse of the future. For five minutes the street was clear as the marchers and the cavalry moved slowly on like figures from a military past, re-entering the past. Armored cars and soldiers on motorcycles began to stream by. Then three tanks, more armored cars, 42 light tanks, 18 medium tanks, another big batch of armored cars, trucks carrying pontoon bridges, kitchen trucks, trucks drawing six-inch guns, eight truckloads of anti-aircraft guns—the machines of war. They went by fast—15, 30, 40 miles an hour. The pavement shook. The afternoon air thickened and blued with gasoline fumes.

Then the parade was over. Inauguration Day had passed, with an air vaguely reminiscent of a Sunday in the park. When the tanks roared up Pennsylvania Avenue, the by-play and big talk of the inauguration, the Capital parties, the crowds in the hotels, the day’s boom business of Washington’s liquor stores, had slipped into yesterday.