THE PRESIDENCY: 2,109 Years Ago . . .

Franklin Roosevelt was in fine fettle. It was St. Patrick’s Day: he wore a greenish tweed suit, a green tie, a green ribbon in his lapel; on his desk stood a vase of green carnations, a pot of shamrock. He was pleased at having a big cat to let out of the bag—General MacArthur’s new command in Australia; and he had something else up his sleeve. He had found one of those sly, semi-scholarly parallels on which he loves to impale his more annoying critics, like marshmallows on a toasting fork. In 168 B.C. the Consul Lucius Aemilius Paulus, about to lead the Romans to victory over the Macedonians, had made a speech to his people. For years the speech had hung on War Department doors, gathering dust and flyspecks. Franklin Roosevelt brushed the flyspecks off Lucius Aemilius, and quoted:

In all public places where people congregate, and actually . . . in private parties [Doesn’t that sound just like Washington? asked the President] there are men [today you could add women, said the President] who know who are leading the armies into Macedonia, where their camps ought to be placed, what strategical positions ought to be occupied. . . . They not only lay down what ought to be done, but when anything is done contrary to their opinion they arraign the consul as though he were being impeached. . . .

This greatly interferes with the successful prosecution of a war. . . . [If anyone] feels confident that he can give me good advice in the war which I am to conduct, let him . . . go with me to Macedonia. . . . If anyone thinks this too much trouble, let him not try to act as a sea pilot whilst he is on land. . . . Is that a classic? asked the President triumphantly.

Thus the President impaled his armchair critics on the parallel of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, dead 2,101 years. The toasting was well-timed. But still unsolved, by Lucius Aemilius Paulus or by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was one great problem of a democracy in wartime: Where does legitimate criticism end and subversive criticism begin?

To rugged individualist George P. McNear Jr., president of the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railroad, the President dispatched a final request for arbitration of a 77-day-old strike. George McNear sent back a wire that made Washington eyebrows jump: “Greatly appreciate if you will permit me to present [my reply] in person. . . . Can be in Washington Friday morning. . . . Would thank you to let me know time to be at your office.” The President sent an ultimatum. George McNear sent back a 77-page collect telegram, refusing to arbitrate. The President thereupon seized the railroad, cracked an important transportation bottleneck around Chicago.