THE PRESIDENCY: Map of the Crisis

Berlin, Nov. 1—(AP)—A German Government statement today charged the U.S. with aggression and said the U.S. destroyers Greer and Kearny had attacked German naval vessels.

Berlin, Nov. 1—(AP)—A German official statement today characterized as an utter falsification a statement by President Roosevelt that the Reich intends to outlaw religion and replace the Bible with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Berlin, Nov. 1—(AP)—The German Government, in a formal statement, denied today the existence of a map which President Roosevelt said in his Navy Day speech revealed a German plan for conquest of South America.

Thus, inside one-half hour last week, bulletins from Berlin thrice gave the lie to President Roosevelt. And last week, for the first time, the U.S. got a glimpse of President Roosevelt’s private map of the coming crisis.

First revelation was at his press conference the morning the Reuben James went down (see p. 24). When 150 reporters filed into the President’s oval study, the words of his fighting speech four days before were still ringing in their memories: (We wished to avoid shooting. But the shooting has started. And history has recorded who fired the first shot.} The shooting had gone on; U.S. blood had been spilt, U.S. lives had been lost.

The man they saw was waging the first great undeclared war in U.S. history. There was no sign of strain on his features. Quietly he said that reporters already had the Navy Department announcement; there was no further comment. Would the U.S. break off relations with Germany? Would this first actual sinking of a U.S. warship affect the international relations of the U.S.? No, said the President, with smoke-ring calmness.

As plainly as silence could say it, he told the U.S. what kind of a war it was in. It was a war of nerves. President Roosevelt made plain his chart of this war:

It is war fought in secrecy. He and Secretary Knox were both asked: Has the U.S. struck back? Both refused to answer. Around the U.S., in rumors, in stories someone had heard, in letters from sailors someone had seen, there were reports that U.S. warships had sunk two submarines, three submarines, 16 submarines, 20. …

In this undeclared war there could be no public admission of emotion at the death of men who were fighting it. If the U.S. was winning its victories, there could be no announcements, either.

There were practical reasons why the President did not turn the undeclared war into a declared war. One was political: no declaration of war could pass Congress. Another was that a declaration of war might bring in Japan. If Germany hoped, by such acts as the sinking of the Reuben James, to show Japan that she could keep the U.S. busy in the Atlantic, obvious U.S. strategy was to be unshaken by Atlantic defeats or victories. Pondering the tasks that Admiral Husband Kimmel’s Pacific Fleet would face (see cut), strategists thought it likely that a declared war in the Pacific would have the same undisclosed clashes, the same brief engagements of small Fleet units, the same wearing uncertainty at home.

After one of the most tense weeks of his public life, President Roosevelt hurried to Hyde Park, to rest, to vote, to confer with Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. At 5 o’clock on a rainy morning the Prime Minister’s private car was left on a Poughkeepsie siding. Attached to it was the private car of Crown Princess Juliana of The Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. Said the Prime Minister, asked what he would discuss with the President: Everything.

Reports were that the two men were discussing: 1) price control (see p. 21); 2) joint Canadian-U.S. economic problems; 3) a coordinated U.S.-Canadian program for producing and shipping arms and supplies to Russia. After a two-day conference the two men separated.

By his words and his actions—and even more by his silences and inactions—President Roosevelt had given the U.S. a glimpse of what he sees ahead. As plainly as he could, he had reported that the U.S. was far into the unknown waters of war. As clearly as he could dramatize it, he had shown his belief that for a long time the course would be as it is now, with the same uncertainties, the same strains, the same doubts.

The U.S. had had a glimpse of the President’s map of the crisis. History would show how accurate that map was. It might be that what he thought was that the mainland of peace was only a small island. It might be that what he hoped was that the Northwest Passage to the future was only an arm of the Hudson. But last week it was plain that the U. S. was sailing according to his chart, plainer still that his confidence in it was unshaken.