Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  “That’s all I need to hear. Here is a statement of the money I spent. I prepared that on the plane coming here, the best I could from memory. I did not dare to make notes of any sort on my trip. I never have a scrap of writing that the enemy is not free to inspect. I think it would be correct to say that my baggage was gone through once a week at every hotel in Europe and North Africa where I stopped.”

  “Err in your own favor in these accounts, Lanny. As I have told you before, you ought to be paid.”

  “I bought a couple of paintings in Vichy and a lot of stuff in North Africa, and my commissions will amount to three or four thousand dollars, which will more than cover my expenses. What I have listed here are the sums I paid to members of the underground. I couldn’t tell you exactly how much, because I don’t dare to draw money at a bank and hand it over to them. I have to change the large bills by making small purchases, and when I have a lot of small bills I tie them into a bundle and slip them into pockets. So when I go to a rendezvous I look like a badly stuffed sausage. I have made several valuable contacts, but didn’t dare say much about them in my reports. I’ll tell you, or Colonel Donovan, whichever you say.”

  “Tell me!” exclaimed F.D.R. and grinned like a schoolboy. “Sometimes I read a ‘whodunit’ to put myself to sleep.”

  Lanny began with Raoul Palma and his underground group. When he came to Mlle. Richard and his two meetings with her, in the Grand Hotel and then in the unlighted den in the Old Town of Toulon, the auditor remarked: “That is really operatic. To complete the libretto you should go back and fall in love with her.” Lanny grinned in his turn and said that the libretto would be ruined by the fact that he had a wife in New York. To this F.D.R. remarked: “By the way, my wife met her, and spoke very highly of her. It is better that a secret agent should have a proper wife—he is not so apt to fall for any of the Gestapo ladies.”

  “I think my record is clear on that score,” said Lanny. “I have had several passes made at me, I suspect.”

  III

  Next the story of Monck, then of Denis de Bruyne, and then of General Béthouart; F.D.R. said for Lanny to stop in at Colonel Donovan’s office and give him a detailed report on these persons. What the President wanted especially was to ply the traveler with questions about the political situation in all these various places, how well or ill his declared policies were being carried out, and what Lanny thought the effect of them was likely to be. It was a “blue” time, for the Germans were driving hard into the Ukraine and the British were in what appeared to be a rout in Tunisia; but if this responsible man felt any doubts or fears he did not let his agent and friend get the slightest hint of them. He said: “We are getting ready, Lanny, and we are going to do this job. Don’t let anybody tell you anything different.”

  He put the P.A. through a grilling on the subject of the Vichy leaders. What faith, if any, did they have, and what was going to be their conduct in a showdown? Lanny said: “If you could drop an army into Vichy from the sky, they would all be on your side. As it is, they are prisoners of the Nazis, and they have to force themselves to believe that they are right. Laval said to me, in exactly these words: ‘I desire a German victory.’ I didn’t see any signs of his shaking in his boots, but that will be happening some day, no doubt.”

  And then the problem of Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle, author of Au Fil de l’Épee and favorite orator of the British Broadcasting Corporation. There was a clamor in circles in America known as “Liberal” that the State Department should recognize this man of both the sword and the pen for what he so loudly claimed to be, the sole head of the government of France. How shocking of us to trade with those hucksters of Vichy, who had sold the honor and the very life of their country to the Nazi tyrants! This agitation was a thorn in the flesh of F.D.R., it appeared; for he, too, had called himself a “Liberal” through his public career and had fought men of the Laval and Darlan type wherever he had met them in American public life—which was frequently. He seemed to be pleading with Lanny to tell him that he was right in the course he had chosen; Lanny, fresh from the scene, was able to do this.

  “I was unable to find that General de Gaulle has any following of consequence in North Africa. I have no doubt there are a great many who listen to his broadcasts and cherish affection for him in their hearts; but I am speaking of organized support, anything that you can count on when it comes to action.”

  “That is what I have to be concerned with, Lanny.”

  “I bore your instructions in mind and kept before me the image of an army coming ashore. I found that of the people who exercise power of any sort, the greater number hate and fear De Gaulle and call him a puppet of Britain. Most of that, no doubt, is due to the fact that they have compromised, while he has stood out and is attacking them with bitterness. But allowing for that, there seems to be another factor: those who know him say that he is egotistical to the point of fantasy, that he is building himself into a cult, and will have nothing to do with anybody who does not make obeisance at the shrine. They say: ‘He makes a fine propagandist, but he would make a wretched administrator.’”

  “That is exactly the impression we have of him, Lanny. He is a stickler for punctilio, and does not know how to distinguish between things that are fundamental and those that are petty. He persists in acting as if France were the victor; as if he were doing us favors instead of asking them. He talks about liberty and democracy, but I get the impression that what he is really thinking about is la gloire, and that his point of view is fundamentally authoritarian and reactionary.”

  “Concerning that there is not the slightest doubt,” said the P.A. “He was Pétain’s Chief of Staff, and his point of view is that of St. Cyr plus the Catholic hierarchy. You do not like me to refer to the religious aspects of the matter, but it seems to me a fact of our world, which nobody can escape, that when you have a Church insisting that it has immutable law and authority handed down from on high, you have a force which cannot be excluded from politics. Whenever it is a question of fundamental social change, you will have the priests preaching against you from every pulpit in the land.”

  F.D.R. grinned. “I am never going to have them preaching against me, Lanny! Believe you me, I keep the Encyclicals of Leo XIII right handy on my desk, and when one of the archbishops starts pounding my desk, objecting to one of my New Deal measures, I read him the marked passages and make him listen.”

  Lanny would have liked to retort: “I said ‘fundamental,’ Governor,” but he knew that would start an argument and take a lot of a busy man’s time. At present there was only one thing fundamental in the world, and that was to unhorse the Axis dictators.

  IV

  Of the greatest importance to the Commander-in-Chief of an Army soon to land on foreign soil was to know how his agents were working and what success they were having. Lanny did not wait to be questioned, but said: “I avoided Robert Murphy, because I didn’t want to attract his attention to myself, and I didn’t want to be influenced by personal feelings. I gather that he is an easy fellow to like, and he has made many friends. I came on the trail of his agents in various places, and it is evident that they are doing a job of getting data of all sorts. I suppose that material is coming to the Army, and not to you personally.”

  “It is important for me to have your confirmation. Have you any suggestions to offer?”

  “There is one thing I could not get out of my mind, and that is the question of what commitments Murphy is making with those collaborateurs who have already jumped onto his bandwagon, or are preparing to do so. I don’t know whether you care to talk to me about that—”

  “You have a right to know everything on the subject; you could not work intelligently otherwise.”

  “Well, I met a great number of Murphy’s friends—a dozen at least. He seems to have picked out the big business people, the financial and social oligarchy. I don’t know whether that is deliberate policy, or whether it is because he finds it easier to make headw
ay with that sort. Certainly he has managed to please them. But I am wondering whether he is taking them into camp, or whether they are taking him into camp.”

  “It might be a bit of both, and still be of advantage to our cause when the showdown comes.”

  “These men, you understand, are the last in the world to yield to impulses of good fellowship, or to give something for nothing. They know what they want, and it isn’t to be fed taffy.”

  “But they might want a lot of things and find that they aren’t going to get them, Lanny.”

  “That is what I am wondering about—what commitments are being made.”

  “Nobody is authorized to make any commitments, except as regards the personal safety of these individuals, of course. Those who help us will escape with their necks—if we are able to arrange it.”

  “That’s fair enough. But what is their political and financial position going to be?”

  “The answer to that will be given by the people of France, who will determine the future of their country in a democratic election. That is our public commitment, and nobody is authorized to make any other.”

  “Let me give you a case, Governor. Does the name of Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil mean anything to you?”

  “I have heard it, but I’m not sure if I can sort him out from Jacques Benoi-something.”

  “Benoist-Méchin is a journalist who has become a member of the Laval Cabinet. He is a small potato. But Lemaigre-Dubreuil is one of the most important of the big moneymakers of France. To give his American equivalent, let us say that he is Frank Gannett or Joe Patterson, or some such reactionary publisher; at the same time he is a member of the Federal Reserve Board, and his wife owns General Foods and he runs it; also he is president, or whoever it is behind the scenes who directs the propaganda, of the National Association of Manufacturers and directs its lobby in Washington.”

  “Quite a Frenchman, indeed!”

  “I had a couple of long talks with him and I met him socially on several other occasions. He is in Algiers ostensibly to run his vegetable-oil business, but in reality to protect the interests of his associates of the Comité des Forges, both French and German, who are bringing their money to safety in North African banks and are preparing to follow the cat whichever way it jumps. As I told you before, I don’t know what is in Murphy’s mind, but I know that in Lemaigre’s mind there is a clear conviction that he has got matters fixed up so that when our armies land he and his friends will have the inside track; that, in substance, they will be the government of North Africa, just as in the old days they used to be the government of France—operating, of course, behind a screen.”

  The President of the United States thought that over for a while before he spoke. “Put yourself in my place, Lanny. I lie here on a comfortable bed with an electric fan to cool me, and anything I choose to ask for is brought to me at the pressing of a button; and I have to speak the words that will send ten or twelve millions of our best young men overseas into jungle heat and arctic cold to fight and bleed and die. I want to save every life that I can, and every pang of agony that I can spare to any and every one of those boys. If I can save a million, or even a thousand, do you think I ought to worry about the fact that a few economic royalists of France will discover that they haven’t got everything they thought they were going to get?”

  “No, Governor, but that’s not my point. What I don’t want is for the economic royalists to fool us.”

  “Do you really think they can fool me, Lanny? I know them here, and I’m sure they are exactly the same in all other countries. If I have the power, I shall help to tame them there, just as I have tried to do in this country.”

  “If they are allowed to entrench themselves—”

  “Listen, Lanny. You have been to that country, whereas I know it only from the map. I measured it with my pencil today. From the east corner of Algeria to the west corner of Morocco is about as far as from New York to Kansas City.”

  “If you travel by the coast it’s almost as far as to San Francisco.”

  “A vast country, with poor communications. Somebody has to govern and police it. If we have to do this with our armies, it will take one or two hundred thousand men, and all the ships to supply them. If we can find Frenchmen who will do it for us—any sort of Frenchmen, so long as they know the job—we can save all those Americans and all those ships and supplies. What we want is to drive the Germans out, from North Africa, and from Italy, and from France. That’s our job, and yours is to trust your country and trust me, and believe that when the war is won we shall know how to find out what the French people want, in the same way that we find out what the American people want, by letting them go to the polls and vote.”

  Lanny took it as a rebuke and said humbly: “Yes, Governor, I get the point. But you have to be forewarned that you’re going to take an awful shellacking if you let men like Lemaigre-Dubreuil take charge of French North Africa.”

  “Don’t worry about that either, Lanny. I’ve been in public life a long time and I’ve grown a tough hide. I’m going to win this war and pay what it costs—but no more than I have to! And anybody that doesn’t like that program can lump it, as we used to say when we were boys.”

  V

  F.D.R. paused to put a cigarette into that long thin holder which he liked to stick up in a jaunty manner, and which had become a symbol dear to the hearts of cartoonists along with “Winnie’s” big dark cigar and “Uncle Joe’s” pipe. (Hitler did not smoke, so all they had for him was a Charlie Chaplin mustache and a swastika.) F.D.R. lighted his cigarette and took a couple of puffs, then said: “The question of where the first landing is to be is still being argued, and with a great deal of heat. I am expecting Churchill here in a couple of days, and we shall go to it. You understand, of course, that this is strictly entre nous.”

  “You may be sure that I never speak about your affairs, Governor. I haven’t told even my father or my wife that I am working for you.”

  “Winston, as I believe I told you, is hot for the Balkans. He insists that we can land there practically unopposed and have a clear road up the Vardar valley.”

  “I suspect that he has reasons in addition to military ones for that suggestion.”

  “Of course. He makes no secret of that. His ‘Empah,’ as he calls it, expects to be in that part of the world for a long time to come; whereas we cherish the hope that we can finish up the job and bring our boys back home. It may be a fond hope, but I’d hate to have to tell our mothers and wives and sweethearts that their boys will have to stay over there. What Winston wants, of course, is to get our armies into that part of the world so that we shall block off the Russians from the Balkans and the Dardanelles. That would be the best possible ending of a war from his point of view.”

  “Stalin is not so keen for the idea, I gathered.”

  “What Stalin wants is for us to come straight across the Channel and head for Berlin. From the military point of view that seems to me the only way to be considered. That is where we shall meet the bulk of the German armies, and they are what we have to beat.”

  “You can’t do it without command of the air, Governor.”

  “That I know. And I think the British should be bombing German communications from now on, to prevent their moving reinforcements and supplies to the Channel. I’ve just been going over some of the data supplied by our General Staff. There’s going to be a hot time in the old town when Winston arrives.”

  “It’s a pretty hard strain on you,” ventured the P.A. He had been watching this great man’s face and noting the lines of care increasing and deepening. It had been only five years ago that Lanny had met him, but he seemed to have aged ten or more.

  “Strictly between you and me, Winston as a guest is something of a trial. He has the habits of an owl, or perhaps a half-owl. He will come ambling into this room about midnight, full of ideas and conversation just when I am tired out and ready for sleep; he can sleep until late in the morning, while I have a
schedule to keep.” The tired man spoke as if it were a relief to have somebody’s sympathy; but then in a moment the schoolboy grin came back to the mobile face. “Wouldn’t you like to come and take him off my hands part of the time? You could listen, say, from midnight till three or four, and then go to your hotel room and hang out a ‘Do not disturb’ sign.”

  Lanny wasn’t sure whether this was all jest or part serious. He grinned in return and said: “Zu Befehl, Herr Kommandant, as the German soldiers say.”

  “Joking aside,” continued the President, “I think Winston would like to hear your report on North Africa. I could give him what you have sent me, but he’d probably put the papers aside and never find time to read them. If he talks to you, he’ll have questions to ask. Can you stay a few days?”

  “If you have nothing else in mind, I’d rather go up to New York and wait until you call me. I’ll come at any hour of the day or night that you say. I’ll motor or fly, according to how much time you allow me.”

  “Very good then. Give your address and telephone number to Baker and we’ll arrange it.”

  “If I come to the White House openly, won’t the reporters get hold of it?”

  “I’ll see that your name is not listed to the press; and for the White House staff we might change it a bit. Your middle name is Prescott? Then suppose you be Mr. Lanning Prescott? I’ll give Winston your real name and explain matters to him.”

  “O.K. by me,” said the P.A. “Let me remind you that you were going to fix it with him to have me taken off the British blacklist. It’s important, because I can’t fly through Bermuda. Also, I’d like to be able to stop off in England because I have important friends there, and a little daughter whom I haven’t seen for more than a year.”

  “I’ll make a note of it,” said Roosevelt. “Remind me if I don’t speak of it.”