THE PRESIDENCY: Fierce Foreign War

“Fierce Foreign War”

The sun that had risen over Africa 18 hours before, just as the invading Italian troops swarmed across the Ethiopian frontier, was casting its early afternoon rays down on the high-school stadium at San Diego, Calif, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke the fourth and last speech of his Western pre-campaign tour. Taking a timely text from “the greatest writer in our history,” the President cited the perils of “malice domestic and fierce foreign war.”* The former, he felt sure, was swiftly being smoothed out by the New Deal. The latter, he viewed with alarm as “a more potent danger at this moment to the future of civilization.” “Despite what happens in continents overseas,” proclaimed he, “the United States of America shall and must remain, as long ago the Father of Our Country prayed that it might remain, unentangled and free!” (Loud cheers.) “We not only earnestly desire peace, but we are moved by a stern determination to avoid those perils that will endanger our peace with the world!” (Louder, longer cheers.) So saying, Mr. Roosevelt put off for Cortez Banks in the cruiser Houston to watch 129 warcraft, 449 planes and 50,000 seamen sham-battle in the greatest single tactical naval exercise the world had ever seen. First U. S. President ever to watch his country’s Navy in sham action, “Skipper” Roosevelt took in the whole show from the Houston’s No. 2 barbette while a flotilla of diving submarines, squadrons of screaming pursuit planes, wallowing destroyers and finally a line of dreadnaughts sped by in a mimic attack which, had it been in earnest, would have blown the President many times higher than Haman. Crackling out a Presidential congratulatory “Well done!” the Houston thereupon stood off toward Lower California for Mr. Roosevelt’s seagoing vacation. The Italian troops advanced on Aduwa, while a jittery world wondered if that village of mud and sticks was to be the Liege of 1935. Mr. Roosevelt, anchored near Cerros Island, listened to the World Series by radio. War-scared, the New York Stock Exchange had plummeted in the worst one-day break since July 1934. In Magdalena Bay. the President went fishing. Horrified, indignant, determined to keep the U. S. out of war, Messrs. William E. Borah, Newton D. Baker, Gerald P. Nye, Nicholas Murray Butler, Frank B. Kellogg sounded off for peace. It was announced from Arena Point that Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins had caught “an unsuspecting sea bass,” that Public Works Administrator Harold Ickes had gotten “the biggest mackerel.” Then, three days after the fighting began, but two days before the League of Nations officially noted it, President Roosevelt did what was mandatory for him to do under the Joint Neutrality Resolution. Over the Houston’s radio to the State Department in Washington, and from the State Department to the U. S. people, he proclaimed: “A state of war unhappily exists between Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Italy; and I do hereby admonish all citizens of the United States … to abstain from every violation . . . of the Joint Resolution . . . applicable to the export of arms, ammunitions or implements of war … to Ethiopia or to the Kingdom of Italy. . . .” Week before, he had already proclaimed a list of deadly paraphernalia to explain what he meant by “arms, ammunition or implements of war” (TIME, Oct. 7). For good measure, he repeated the definition. A supplementary proclamation warned U. S. citizens against traipsing around the war zone or getting on Ethiopian (if such things be) or Italian vessels. Having done all he was permitted to do under the Neutrality Resolution, President Roosevelt went back to his fishing.

* According to William Shakespeare, however, the perils were: “malice domestic, foreign levy” —Macbeth.