Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  FDR, grateful that the Harvard president was willing to lend his authority and prestige to oppose the isolationists, sent a brief, appreciative reply stating that he had been “thinking along these lines” for several months.

  For the most part, the Cambridge constituency was “very favorable,” Conant noted in his diary, adding dryly, “much abuse from illiterates.” At a Corporation meeting in Boston, he put up with some needling from Charles Coolidge, who wondered if he was “coming out for FDR for a third term?” Conant asked, “No, why?” “Well,” came the fulsome reply, “You do so many unexpected things!” After seven years in the hot seat at Harvard, Conant had learned not to let those kinds of comments get under his skin. He had grown accustomed to slings and arrows from his enemies, not to mention the occasional poison dart from a friend. He expected only “sneers” from the Crimson, which was shrill in its condemnation of preparedness, as well as the “barrage of dead cats” from the isolationists. Far from withdrawing in the face of enormous domestic opposition, Conant was girded for battle, taking pointers from other high-profile interventionists such as Grenville Clark and telling Archie MacLeish pugnaciously, “I am getting used to the volleys from both right and left.”

  He was also enjoying the limelight. All the press attention flattered his ego, as did the frequent tributes to his “intellectual leadership.” He was absurdly pleased to find himself voted the “fifth best-dressed man in America” by the Custom Tailors Guild of America, edging out sartorial stars such as bandleader Guy Lombardo, ex–New York mayor Jimmy Walker, and the actor Adolphe Menjou. The Crimson tweaked him for losing his “common touch in this sudden access of fame,” and the Boston Herald ran a cartoon speculating that if Harvard’s president abandoned his academic tweeds altogether, it would cause “colds in Cambridge—and economic instability on the British isles.”

  After so many years slogging away in the administrative trenches at Harvard, the opportunity to rally the American people on the vital issue of national defense gave Conant a renewed sense of purpose. He stepped eagerly into the fray, inserting himself into the preparedness debate in speech after speech. Conant deftly worked his war message into commencement addresses and university lectures, talks to the alumni and awards dinners, exploiting every occasion to educate the public about the paramount need to rearm the Allies. It had taken a mere six weeks for the German forces to defeat the French army. Europe was collapsing, Conant warned, and the time had come for America to start to develop a fighting force of the magnitude it would need in the days to come.

  On June 10 Roosevelt gave an address at the University of Virginia announcing that the United States would extend to “the opponents of force” the material resources of the nation and at the same time, “harness those resources,” in equipment and training, necessary for national defense. To reach this goal, the nation would “not slow down or detour. Signs and signals called for speed—full speed ahead.”

  On June 12 Conant took up the same theme: “We as a people have awakened to the imminence of a threat,” he asserted in a speech to the Jewish War Veterans in New York. “There may still be dispute as to the course of immediate action, but there is hardly a citizen who does not realize that liberty on this continent is now in danger.” He praised FDR’s speech, and seconded his call for immediate military training and compulsory service. A peacetime draft—an unprecedented measure—was enormously unpopular, but urgently needed. Aware that this was a thorny issue for FDR, who was loath to alienate isolationist voters, Conant did the advance work for him. There was “no time to lose,” he warned, drawing a frightening picture of a “complete totalitarian triumph” and urging Congress to stay in session to enact the controversial conscription law “this summer.”

  Two days later, Bush called to say that Roosevelt’s right-hand man, Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins, had arranged a meeting with the president, and it was “all fixed” for a new federal agency to mobilize American science for military research. Hopkins had instructed Bush to present the plan for the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) on a single sheet of paper, and after listening for less than ten minutes the president had signed it: “OK—FDR.” The NDRC would be set up by executive action, with funds of its own to be allocated from the substantial sum Congress was about to place at Roosevelt’s disposal.

  “Will you be a member?” asked Bush. He was a tough, imposing figure from an old seafaring family, and Conant could think of no one better suited to lead the war effort. Since he had “urged the committee” on Bush for months, he was, of course, prepared to accept. This was a job of immense significance—the kind he had always imagined for himself and had intimated to Patty during their courtship. He had just two questions to put to the engineer, who was a long, lean, plain-talking Yankee of similar ilk, and whose ruggedly independent views and dry sense of humor had made them fast friends: “Is it real?” and “Are you to head the committee?”

  On June 18, the “four horsemen” of the NDRC—Vannevar Bush, James Conant, Frank Jewett, and Karl Compton—gathered for their first informal meeting at the Carnegie Institution’s massive neoclassical headquarters at Sixteenth and P Streets, in the heart of Washington, DC. Also present was Richard Tolman of Caltech, who, like Conant, was an early advocate of preparedness and had come to Washington for the summer to offer his services. The other scientific member was Conway P. Coe, the commissioner of patents. It would include two delegates from both the War Department and the Navy Department, and two from the National Academy of Sciences. Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen of the navy and Brigadier General George V. Strong of the army were already on board. In addition, Bush had drafted Carroll L. Wilson, a recent MIT graduate, as his assistant, and Irvin Stewart, a political scientist, as executive secretary. Bush had moved so rapidly that by the time they met, he had enlisted the ten of them over the telephone, and the president had signed the letters of appointment.

  As they gathered around the table in Bush’s office that morning, Conant recalled, “The mood was anything but relaxed.” The NDRC had come into existence almost overnight, at a time when “many people looked at the future with fear.” It seemed almost nothing could be done to stop Hitler from conquering Western Europe. For all they knew, the invasion of England might be only weeks away. Conant raised the question of what, if anything, the new agency could do about helping the British withstand a frontal attack. There was not only the question of legality—a federal statute barred any such assistance—but also the issue of military security. General Strong opined that anything they did to help the British would be “the equivalent of helping the Germans,” since it was only a matter of time before Great Britain shared the fate of France.

  “Hurry as they might,” Conant realized, by the time they had the rearmament program up and running in three or four months, there might be “no free and independent British nation with whom military men and scientists could talk.” He was so rattled by the general’s dire forecast that he decided to redouble his efforts to promote “immediate aid to the allies.”

  A week later, Conant was back in Washington for a second NDRC meeting. Wasting no time, Bush announced who would lead the different divisions of operation. He asked Conant to direct all the chemical work—what would be known as Division B—including bombs, fuels, gases, and chemical problems. Tolman would serve as chairman of Division A, dealing with armor and ordinance; Jewett would head Division C, communications and transportation; Compton, Division D, radar and allied matters; Coe, Division E, patents and inventions. Each of them was responsible for establishing as many sections as necessary to handle his division’s specific military problems, and these would be the real working groups. They began drawing up a select list of forty scientists whom they hoped to recruit. Conant put forward the names of Roger Adams and other chemical warfare colleagues to lead sections under him. All the candidates would have to be cleared by the army and the navy. He was all too familiar with the frustrating delays caused by having to obtain securi
ty clearances for individuals who were to have access to classified wartime information. It was 1917 all over again.

  Conant spent that night at the suburban Washington home of the lawyer Dean Acheson, former undersecretary of the Treasury until a row with FDR returned him to private practice. They dined with Archie MacLeish. With the 1940 Republican convention only two days away, the evening was given over to politics. No one thought the president wanted to run for a third term, but what was the alternative? Both Acheson and MacLeish were for Roosevelt “faute de mieux” (for want of a better alternative), as Conant put it in his diary, and very much against Senator Robert A. Taft, a conservative from Ohio. As usual, he kept his opinions to himself. Privately, he was rather taken with the Republican candidate Wendell Willkie, an ex-Democrat and Indiana farm boy made good, but would never have said so. The next morning, he took the nine o’clock train to New York for a meeting with White’s executive committee to discuss the military training bill, offered to poll other college presidents on the incendiary issue, and caught the five o’clock Federal Express to Boston.

  As much as he loved trains, Conant realized with an inward groan that he was going to be spending twenty to thirty hours a week riding the rails, commuting between Boston, New York, and the NDRC headquarters in Washington. He broke the news to Patty that his new job, while an exciting challenge, would undoubtedly be time consuming. It meant his life was no longer his own. “Jim will definitely have to be in Washington part of each week—for as far as we can see,” she wrote her mother in mid-July. “He says his work in Wash. is extraordinarily interesting, even if it seems like turning back the clock 23 years. And of course it has got to be done. On the whole, this last week he feels a good deal has been accomplished. If England can only hold out through the summer, he feels the world may possibly pull through. But that is a big ‘if.’ ”

  On June 27 Conant convened a meeting with Harvard scientists at University Hall to tell them about the creation of the NDRC, still a week away from being publicly announced by Roosevelt, and to ask for their cooperation. He had already written to fifty academic institutions with extensive facilities for advanced research, explaining that the NDRC would be using federal money to fund immediate wartime research in the fields of physics and chemistry, electrical and mechanical engineering, and metallurgy. Bush had come up with an ingenious scheme to get around the great bulk of bureaucratic roadblocks they had encountered in the last go-around. Instead of slapping civilians in uniform and putting them to work in large military plants, scientists were to be mobilized for the defense effort in their own laboratories. Bush’s plan ensured that this time a significant portion of the weapons research would be contracted out to investigators, working in their own facilities, with small handpicked staffs, doing what needed to be done rather than what the military thought should be done. It was, in Conant’s view, nothing short of “revolutionary.”

  On July 2 he was back in Washington for the first formal meeting of the NDRC. The day was spent passing resolutions, issuing press releases, and posing for photographers. The following day, Conant testified before the Senate Military Affairs Committee on the Selective Service Bill. He came on just before noon, when they adjourned for lunch, and a number of senators were already rising to leave. Although he was not inclined to feel sorry for himself, he had to follow Colonel William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan of the famous “Fighting Sixty-Ninth” Regiment, who gave a rousing presentation. Conant read his statement but “felt ill at ease,” complaining to his diary later that he was “not used to this type of audience.” It was an inauspicious beginning of his official life. He felt much cheerier the following morning: the New York Times ran his testimony in full, and it inspired two editorials, including one in the Boston Herald.

  Any plans he might have had for a real holiday that summer were put on hold because of his NDRC work. A much-anticipated expedition to the Canadian Rockies was scratched. With the Fourth of July weekend approaching, he flew to Boston and drove to Randolph, New Hampshire, his favorite retreat in the White Mountains, for a few days of relaxation. Unable to resist the temptation to get “above tree line,” he scaled the side of Mount Washington with a few friends. Just as they completed their descent, Conant felt something go in his back. He crept home in agony, afraid he would “never straighten up.” A doctor taped his back and prescribed plenty of rest, but his rock climbing days were over. He got “no sympathy” from Patty, who disapproved of the dangerous sport.

  While laid up, Conant was besieged by calls from politicians, journalists, and celebrities asking him to join one front committee or another and “go on the air” with their concerns. The Harvard-educated newspaper columnist Joseph Alsop, now with the New York Herald Tribune, made a long and highly emotional pitch about the plight of the British refugee children and how the president would not modify the rules easing entry into the United States until public opinion demanded it. “He said Cousin Eleanor, i.e. Mrs. FDR, very interested,” Conant jotted in his diary. “Told him to tell her to talk to her husband. I declined flatly. Have talked enough!”

  He had good reason for wanting to keep his powder dry. There were more important battles to fight. Conant needed to “save himself” for the NDRC, though he agreed to join an influential pro-Allies citizens committee that came to be known as the Century Group after the Century Association, the New York club where it held its meetings. An exclusive, invitation-only gathering of twenty-eight establishment figures, led by the lawyer Grenville Clark, its members included politician and diplomat Lewis W. Douglas; Council on Foreign Relations executive Francis Miller; Admiral William Standley; Time publisher Henry Luce; journalist and historian Henry Agar; Bishop Henry Hobson; theologians Henry P. Van Dusen and Henry Sloane Coffin; columnists Joe Alsop and Elmer Davis; bankers Will Clayton and James Warburg; and lawyers Allen Dulles and Dean Acheson. Aware of the need to mold public opinion, the group used press releases, personal influence, and pressure tactics to undermine isolationism and advance the cause of armed resistance. While Conant considered the majority of the members “extremists” for publishing a statement demanding that the United States declare war on Germany immediately—putting them “four jumps ahead” of White’s committee—the two groups worked together closely to outflank the isolationists and lead the reluctant nation on the path to war.

  On July 25, key members of the Century Group, determined to get aid to Britain, presented FDR with a legal brief outlining the idea for the destroyers-for-bases agreement that the president announced on September 3. The deal furnished Britain with fifty overage destroyers in return for permanent rights for air and naval bases in British possessions along the Atlantic Coast and a pledge to never surrender its fleet to Germany. Conant hadn’t taken part in the negotiations to persuade Congress to stretch the arms ban—he was so busy he failed to attend any of the group’s early meetings—but he applauded the “great scheme” and happily joined in signing the public statement, giving his unqualified endorsement of the president’s action.

  While the destroyer-bases deal was a blow to isolationists, they were still a powerful political force. Conant saw the impact especially on Harvard students, who were so bombarded by propaganda that all they had left were their suspicions and intellectual doubts. In Sweden, writer H. G. Wells had spoken of “this utterly aimless war” and summed up the feelings of a generation. Their convictions had been undermined by appeasers such as Joseph Kennedy, the US ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, who called for cooperation with the misunderstood Germans; by Fascist sympathizers such as Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who hailed totalitarianism as the “wave of the future”; by the pro-Nazi rants of the Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin, whose weekly radio show stirred up anti-Semitism in Boston’s Irish population; and by the cynicism of Senator Nye, who attacked the idea of bailing out “British plutocrats” and banged on about how the Allies were just waiting to sell the United States down the river.

  Conant had every reaso
n to be dismayed by the skepticism and disillusionment of the young. At the Exeter graduation of his oldest son, Jim, that spring, he had listened as the seventeen-year-old delivered a cynical speech praising the “cold-blooded efficiency and the daring of the Germans,” and “Hitler’s ruthlessness . . . initiative, and resourcefulness.” Having come of age in an era of brutality, he and his peers were “without the rose-colored glasses of our parents.” They had been well-schooled in broken covenants, lawlessness, and betrayal by their allies. The logic of events had driven them to a new realism: “Today the machine gun rules; the only thing that counts when the chips are down is force,” he stated. “[O]ur destiny will be decided, not by treaties or by international law or by diplomatic gestures, but by bombs and hand-grenades, and bayonets.”

  The fact that he seemed to have only scorn for his father and the “older generation” with their “florid phrases of nineteenth-century moral indignation” added an undercurrent of adolescent rage to his diatribe. Although there were echoes of Conant’s own ideas in his son’s truculent oration, he did not acknowledge them in his diary, observing only that many of the pro-Ally parents in the audience considered it “quite shocking.” But then, most fathers and sons were split on the issue of the war. His cursory review found the schoolboy analysis wanting: “an overstatement of ‘hard-boiled’ younger generation’s point of view. Said they ‘saw no moral issues, admired Hitler in spite of themselves.’ Don’t think he really believes it,” he added with exasperation, “and ‘moral issues’ a battle of phrases!”

  The increasingly antagonistic debate had also marred Harvard’s usually joyous commencement, when a member of the class of 1915 made a prowar speech and was roundly “booed and hissed.” In retaliation, those who supported the war almost drowned out the class orator, who denounced aid to Britain as “fantastic nonsense.” There was no escaping it. With each passing week, the arguments between interventionists and isolationists seemed to escalate until the atmosphere on campus practically crackled with tension. “Harvard was in bitter contention,” recalled Arthur Schlesinger Jr., whose memoir vividly conveys the “searing personal impact of those angry days.”