THE PRESIDENCY: Peace Postscript

In the gloomy old State Department Building many a window stayed lighted all night long last week while clerks decoded a stream of cables that poured in from abroad. Across the street in the White House, foreign words and wars were the main concern also of the man who had set the State Department to working overtime. Having previously decided that he wanted an extra session of Congress and what he wanted it to do, Franklin Roosevelt’s major job in Washington was to deal with the reverberations, political and international, that followed his announcement in Chicago of a new foreign policy (TIME, Oct. 18).

In Chicago he had used the words “quarantine” and “concerted effort,” which gave isolationists and passive-peace advocates a jolt. They were a jolt also to many a bespatted dignitary of the State Department. For although the State Department is split over the proper course to be pursued, none of its officials wants to give Britain or France the impression that the U. S. is prepared to take the lead in checking Japan. Therefore, Franklin Roosevelt added to his fireside chat announcing an extra session of Congress (see col. 3). a sort of postscript on peace.

Reaffirming his new active-peace policy, he was careful to omit the key phrases which had alarmed a part of the public and the State Department. Said he:

“In a world of mutual suspicions, peace must be affirmatively reached for. It cannot just be wished for. It cannot just be waited for. We have now made known our willingness to attend a conference of the parties to the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 [see p. 18]. . . -” Speaking with a slow and emphatic assurance, the President ended his speech with a well-timed reference to the time when he was Woodrow Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy:

“Meanwhile, remember that from 1913 to 1921 I personally was fairly close to world events, and in that period, while I learned much of what to do, I also learned much of what not to do. The common sense, the intelligence of America agree with my statement that ‘America hates war. America hopes for peace. Therefore. America actively engages in the search for peace.’ “

¶ Onetime Braintruster, Raymond Moley advanced the hypothesis that the sentiments in Franklin Roosevelt’s Chicago speech had been supplied largely by William Bullitt, U. S. Ambassador to France. Ambassador Bullitt did indeed confer with the President before the fireside chat. Then, before sailing for Europe, Ambassador Bullitt—who as a matter of fact indicated surprise when he read the “quarantine” passage in the President’s Chicago speech after it had been mimeographed at the State Department—flatly contradicted Editor Moley’s story to the press.

¶In her column, My Day, Mrs. Roosevelt told of a family party at the White House to celebrate her birthday, wrote about “a gentleman coming in to do some work” who later “played dance music for us.” Since Mrs. Roosevelt’s birthday party took place the night before the fireside chat. Columnist Westbrook Pegler acidly inquired:

“. . . Who is it that comes in at the White House to do some work and plays not only the piano but the accordion and the guitar . . .? Could it be Tommy Corcoran, White House Tommy, as they call him in Washington . . .? If this deduction be correct, it is proposed that next time after the gentleman who plays the piano has come in to do some work, the billing for the fireside chat be changed to read as follows: ‘Thomas Corcoran will address his subjects on the state of the nation tonight through the courtesy of the broadcasting companies and the President of the United States.’ “

¶In Hyde Park, where he went after his fireside chat, the President this week chose as administrator of the U. S. Housing Authority, to set in motion the $526,000,000 low-cost housing and slum clearance program, small, slender Nathan Straus, 48-year-old scion of Manhattan’s great philanthropic and merchandising family, member of the New York City Housing Authority and longtime student of slum problems.