THE PRESIDENCY: Preface to War

The telephone in Franklin Roosevelt’s bedroom at the White House rang at 2:50 a. m. on the first day of September. In more ways than one it was a ghastly hour, but the operators knew they must ring. Ambassador Bill Bullitt was calling from Paris. He had just been called by Ambassador Tony Biddle in Warsaw. Mr. Bullitt told Mr. Roosevelt that World War II had begun. Adolf Hitler’s bombing planes were dropping death all over Poland.

Mr. Roosevelt telephoned to Secretary of State Hull at the Carlton Hotel, also to Under Secretary of State Welles, Secretary of War Woodring, Acting Secretary Edison of the Navy. Acting Secretary of the Treasury* John Hanes was roused. Lights went on in all Washington’s key executive offices. Before breakfast time, the President was ready with the only gesture he could think of in the face of world disaster: a plea to Germany, Poland, Britain, France, Italy to refrain from bombing “open” cities and noncombatants. Within a few hours the heads of all these nations replied, in a chorus that sounded sickeningly cynical however truly meant: they would each do as Mr. Roosevelt suggested so long as their antagonists did likewise. Mussolini took the occasion to reiterate Italy’s neutrality (see p. 21).

That day Franklin Roosevelt’s press conference was a grave business. One question was uppermost in all minds. Correspondent Phelps Adams of the New York Sun uttered it: “Mr. President . . . can we stay out of it?” Franklin Roosevelt sat in silent concentration, eyes down, for many long seconds. Then, with utmost solemnity, he replied: “I not only sincerely hope so, but I believe we can, and every effort will be made by this Administration to do so.”

No person in the room doubted Franklin Roosevelt’s sincerity, but neither was anyone in the slightest doubt as to where lay the sympathy, the potent human partisanship, of this President of the United States. He was against Germany, against the aggressor, against totalitarianism, against Adolf Hitler the dictator and Adolf Hitler the man perhaps mad. His every word henceforth would be weighed in the light of his own injunction, which he now laid upon the Press, to stick rigidly to the facts because “that’s best for our own nation—and for civilization.” His deeds and those of his subordinates would now be examined for lack of bias as the nation watched his “every effort” to keep the U. S. out of war.

>One deed came immediately: the President announced his acceptance of Hugh Wilson’s resignation as Ambassador to Germany. Mr. Wilson had been home from his post since November. The timing of his permission to resign formally could only be construed as a protest against the invasion of Poland. >Secretary of State Hull in effect suspended outstanding U. S. passports, announced that only in cases of “imperative necessity” will passports hereafter be issued to U. S. citizens for travel in perilous Europe.

Earlier in the week, acting under orders specifically approved by the President, 37 U. S. Customs and Marine Bureau inspectors prevented the German liner Bremen from clearing out of New York City hastily, to get home before war began. Explaining that they must be sure the Bremen carried no war contraband, no arms with which she might prey on other ships on the way home, the inspectors poked and peered everywhere through the ship and took their sweet time, two days. One of them, amid much merriment, even managed to fall overboard (see cut p. 14). They even made the Bremen’s crew go through lifeboat drill. Furious, an official of the line said: “Now they are searching an empty swimming pool.” The delay cost Germany some $6,000. Worse, it gave the British cruiser Berwick ample time to slip out of Bar Harbor, Me. and tag the Bremen across the Atlantic.

In Washington, Mr. Roosevelt denied that there was any discrimination against the Bremen.* The British Aquitania, French Normandie, Italian Roma and other ships at other ports were similarly searched (but none so thoroughly). The President, with a perfectly straight face, referred to the distant cases of the British-built privateers Alabama and Shenandoah in Civil War days, which fitted out at sea after leaving England and preyed on Union shipping, thus establishing U. S. claims against England. But the Washington Post, with delicious euphemism, seemed to state the President’s purpose more exactly when it editorialized: “… This inconvenience and danger [to the Bremen] was merely a by-product of the far greater inconvenience and danger produced for the world by the policies of the German Government.” >Grey Friday passed. A huge war map of Europe was hung on the wall in the White House executive office and Army & Navy intelligence officers stuck pins in it to keep the President up to the hour on the fighting. Black Sunday came, putting Great Britain and France formally into World War II. That evening Franklin Roosevelt went on the world’s airwaves to state and define historically the U. S. position, to read his preface to a giant human tragedy from which the U. S. people could not possibly be entirely immune. Said he:

“In spite of spreading wars I think that we have every right and every reason to maintain as a national policy the fundamental moralities, the teachings of religion and the continuation of efforts to restore peace—for some day, though the time may be distant, we can be of even greater help to a crippled humanity. . . . It seems to me clear, even at the outbreak of this great war, that the influence of America should be consistent in seeking for humanity a final peace which will eliminate, as far as it is possible to do so, the continued use of force between nations.

“It is, of course, impossible to predict the future. . . . You are, I believe, the most enlightened and the best-informed people in all the world at this moment. You are subjected to no censorship of news, and I want to add that your Government has no information which it has any thought of withholding from you. . . .

“It is easy for you and me to shrug our shoulders and say that conflicts taking place thousands of miles from the continental United States, and, indeed, the whole American Hemisphere, do not seriously affect the Americas, and that all the United States has to do is to ignore them and go about our own business.

“Passionately though we may desire detachment, we are forced to realize that every word that comes through the air, every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought does affect the American future.”

Mr. Roosevelt then made, yet did not make, the one statement in which his listeners were most vitally interested. Said he:

“Let no man or woman thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields.” (He did not say such armies might not eventually go to such fields.)

He next referred to the formal, legal basis of the country’s present-day Neutrality. He would, he said, issue two proclamations: one of his own which “would have been done even if there had been no neutrality statute,” and one required by the statute, to which he paid his respects by saying: “I trust that in the days to come our neutrality can be made a true neutrality.”

“I cannot prophesy the immediate economic effect of this new war on our nation. But I do say that no American has the moral right to profiteer at the expense either of his fellow-citizens or of the men, women and children who are living and dying in the midst of war in Europe.”

He switched his picture ahead and said: “We have certain ideas and ideals of national safety and we must act to preserve that safety today and to preserve the safety of our children in future years.”

He injected a political thought: “And at this time let me make the simple plea that partisanship and selfishness be adjourned; and that national unity be the thought that underlies all others.”

Finally he acknowledged what all knew to be the fact about himself and probably 99.99% of U. S. citizens: “This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well. Even a neutral has a right to take account of facts. Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or his conscience.”

To all ears this was the most striking sentence in the broadcast. It was underscored by contrast with Woodrow Wilson’s words in 1914 (“We must be impartial in thought as well as in action. . . .”). Noble was the Wilsonian formula, and also nonsense, for no thinking man can fail to have convictions about the merits of causes which plunge the world into war. Realistic was the Rooseveltian formula, and also dangerous, for it invited Americans to condemn Hitler as loudly as they liked, possibly a first step to fighting him with arms.

His conclusion: “I have said not once but many times that I have seen war and that I hate war. I say that again and again.

“I hope the United States will keep out of this war. I believe that it will. … As long as it remains within my power to prevent it, there will be no blackout of peace in the United States.”

>Control of tongues within his own private and official family, let alone throughout the nation, was obviously beyond the President’s power and desire. In her column last week, his wife wrote:

“How can you feel kindly toward a man [Hitler] who tells you that German minorities have been brutally treated . . . but that never can Germany be accused of being unfair to a minority? I have seen evidence with my own eyes of what this same man has done to people belonging to a minority group—not only Jews but Christians, who have long been German citizens. . . . For the man who has taken this responsibility upon his shoulders I can feel little pity.”

And within a few minutes of the President’s speech for U. S. peace, White House Secretary Steve Early commented sententiously on the sinking of the Donaldson Atlantic’s Athenia with 313 U. S. lives aboard (see p. 18). Said he: “I’d like to point out . . . that there was no possibility . . . that the ship was carrying any munitions or anything of that kind.”

The real war of tongues, of course, would begin when Congress met and the President made his new effort to revise the Neutrality statute. Over the long weekend he gave no indication when this would be. He issued his two neutrality proclamations (see p. 15), and sat back to let events abroad, and U. S. reactions, take their course. Earlier he had let his Assistant Secretary of War, Louis Johnson, contribute to those reactions by declaring in a speech to veterans at Boston: “Maintenance of the arms embargo [in the present Neutrality statute] which discriminated in favor of Germany, was a direct move encouraging war. This [embargo] was very nearly equivalent to presenting Germany with an Atlantic fleet.”

One of the great Senate advocates of the embargo was another Johnson, white-crested Hiram of California, who last week roared to newshawks in San Francisco:

“Beware the words ‘We cannot keep out,’ ‘Our entry in the war is inevitable,’ ‘We must fight to preserve democracy,’ and all the Devil’s messages we heard 20 years ago!”

And a third Johnson, General Hugh, last week flew to Hiram’s defense against Louis. In his newspaper column he wrote: “. . . The cool, crass nerve of Mr. Johnson in accusing men like Senator Borah and Senator Johnson of playing politics with peace in voting their convictions. He is playing peanut politics with war. . . . I fully agree [that the arms embargo should be repealed] . . . but I tremble at the bulldozing arrogance of a sub-Cabinet Minister who is already trying to browbeat independent opinion by a politically intended rabble-rousing suggestion of treason. . . .

”Maybe we have too much Johnson, but what this country needs is more of Hiram and less of Louis.”

Senator Borah, vacationing at Poland Spring, Me., defended his position himself: “We cannot enter the struggle in part and stay out in part. Our boys would follow our guns into the trenches.” >Franklin Roosevelt chose to issue a General Proclamation of Neutrality. Under the Neutrality Act he had to embargo arms, war materials, forbid U. S. citizens to travel on belligerents’ ships. While he stalled, U. S. plane makers rushed consignments over the Canadian border and onto Los Angeles docks for last-minute shipment to Great Britain and France. >The United Government Employes (colored) memorialized President Roosevelt to let Negro soldiers guard the White House now as they did during the World War.

*Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau rushed last week fromBergen, Norway, in the Coast Guard cutter George W. Campbell to St.John’s, Newfoundland, whence Coast Guard planes relayed him toWashington. Postmaster General Farley, after visiting Poland and Franceand kissing the “Blarney Stone” in Eire, was homebound aboard the S. S.Manhattan.*Attorney General Murphy announced there was “no spy angle” to the Bremensearch. He also said last week: “There will be no repetition of the situation in 1917 when a democracy was unprepared to meet the espionage problem.”