THE PRESIDENCY: Squirrels on the Lawn

Two statements, uttered last week by two personages familiar with the White House, aptly summarized the performance of President Roosevelt in behalf of world peace and the national attitude which prompted that performance.

Proprietor Steve Vasilakos of the peanut stand at the White House gates, addressing a group of customers, declared: “Look, all the world is yelling and pushing at each other except here. Here is peace and no fuss. . . . Over there, there are guns. Here there ain’t no guns. Here there’s squirrels on the lawn.”

Sir Wilmott Lewis, Washington correspondent for the London Times, addressing the Bond Club of New York, declared: “It was very much like the old story of the four men who were endeavoring to lift a grand piano into a truck and were unable to do it. When the fifth man came along, the fifth man did what the four could not do.”

Leaving to future historians and memoir-writers the assignment of credit for preserving world peace, contemporary historians could set down the facts of the Roosevelt performance as follows:

After receiving from Dictator Hitler a shoulder-shrugging reply to his first appeal for negotiations to continue, the President caused the 54 head U. S. diplomats accredited to a foreign country—except the ones through whom copies of the first Roosevelt-to-Hitler appeal had been relayed—to communicate at once to all the various chiefs of state Mr. Roosevelt’s belief that an appeal by each of them to Herr Hitler might have cumulative effect.

President and Cabinet met in special session at the White House to listen to Prime Minister Chamberlain’s moving broadcast to the Empire the third day after his discouraged return from Godesberg. It came to them over a small, portable radio placed on the table between President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull.

Then the President proceeded to draft his second appeal to Adolf Hitler, urging not only continued negotiation of the German-Czech issues but also a broad discussion, among all the powers directly interested, of questions correlated with those issues. Said President to Fuhrer: “Hundreds of millions throughout the world would recognize your action as an outstanding historic service to all humanity.”

This plea the President further backed up by cabling a personal suggestion to Benito Mussolini that he say a restraining word to Herr Hitler. Mussolini already urged to this by Prime Minister Chamberlain (see p.15), had already talked to Herr Hitler by telephone when Ambassador Phillips in Rome arrived with Mr. Roosevelt’s message. Announcement of Hitler’s decision to hold the four-power meeting at Munich followed so soon after these two Roosevelt messages that the appearance of cause-&-effect was inevitable.

Knowing no better than any one else whether he had been helpful, Franklin Roosevelt gave thanks for Peace when it was assured, urged all citizens to ask for continued Peace in their prayers come Sunday. To Poland, which looked at week’s end as though it were going to start a fight of its own with Czechoslovakia, he sent one more peace plea through Ambassador “Tony”‘ Biddle. When Poland marched ahead but Peace remained unbroken, President Roosevelt signalized the passing of “a real crisis” by announcing his departure for Hyde Park to stay at least one week.

> Son James Roosevelt, gaunt from his ordeal, was discharged from Mayo Clinic after a successful stomach ulcer operation, prepared to go to California to recuperate.