Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  On 27 October, Churchill cabled FDR: “The world Cause is in your hands.” Britain would defend the realm, but the old destroyers were insufficient. The Royal Navy needed supplies as well as protection on the high seas against Nazi submarines, which had sunk scores of ships. And it was broke.

  Since Britain’s survival was essential, FDR reconsidered the policy of cash-and-carry. Now he would ask Congress for a new plan: lend-lease, or authorization to lease, sell, or transfer supplies to Allied nations without immediate payment. He introduced his idea at a White House press conference on 17 December: “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose [close by]. If he can take my garden hose, and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. His home would be saved, and so would mine. Do I charge for the hose, say Neighbor, pay me $15, which the hose cost. No! I don’t want fifteen dollars. I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.”

  On Sunday, 20 December, in the company of ER, SDR, cabinet members, and movie stars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, FDR addressed the nation in a radio broadcast that he considered the most important message since the great banking crisis of 1933. He proposed that the United States become “the great arsenal of democracy.”

  The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world.

  Isolationists still believed the oceans were barriers to harm to the United States, but “we cannot escape danger by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads.” Spies, fifth-columnists, functionaries of deceit and violence, were present on U.S. shores:

  The evil forces which have crushed and undermined and corrupted so many others are already within our own gates. . . . Their secret emissaries are active in our own and in neighboring countries. They seek to stir up suspicion and dissension to cause internal strife. They try to turn capital against labor, and vice versa. They try to reawaken long slumbering racist and religious enmities which should have no place in this country. They are active in every group that promotes intolerance. . . . These trouble-breeders have but one purpose. It is to divide our people, . . . to destroy our unity and shatter our will to defend ourselves.

  There are also American citizens, many of them in high places, who . . . are aiding and abetting the work of these agents.

  No appeasement was possible with Nazi Germany, he said, as the fate of eight European countries now occupied by the Nazis proved. Instead, the United States must help Britain defend democracy. Britain was not demanding American intervention, only support, rearmament, and rapidly enhanced military production. The U.S. labor force could “provide the human power that turns out the destroyers, and the planes and the tanks” to make the United States “the great arsenal of democracy.”

  ER was moved by her husband’s words, relieved by his decision to create the “arsenal of democracy,” and pleased by his criticism of the Americans “in high places” who aided the dictators’ work. Some of his staff had wanted that implicit reference to members of his State Department removed, but ER was gratified that he had insisted on leaving it in. ER also appreciated his references to labor, which implied that he would not abandon union rights and so many of the other New Deal efforts about which they increasingly disagreed.

  She particularly approved of his decision to send ILO hero John Winant to London, replacing Joseph Kennedy as ambassador. Esther Lape had initially recommended Winant, who served on her American Foundation board, as the profoundly humane man most needed in London now. ER and Frances Perkins supported the recommendation, and his appointment was a triumph for ER’s circle. But she was distressed by FDR’s decision to appoint Admiral William Leahy as ambassador to Vichy on 29 November; he would represent FDR’s “Vichy gamble” of “friendly relations.” To her dismay, Leahy refused to meet with Varian Fry.

  Rescue remained a contentious subject for the first couple. Knowing that refugees awaited the paperwork necessary to leave, and that they lived in prolonged agony, ER prodded and cajoled FDR almost daily. It was “a running argument between them,” Joe Lash noted.

  Frank Kingdon of the ERC sent her a report that dramatized the emotional cost of the “paper walls” erected by Breckinridge Long’s consulates: “As a human document and a detailed account of one family’s experience, this paper will, I am sure . . . stir you.” The case was that of a Czech writer and filmmaker, Hans (Bohumil) Lustig, who had typed a five-page lament to the ERC detailing the story of his “a war of nerves.” To support his visa application, he said, he and his wife had provided U.S. consular officials with his forty-week contract with MGM, cables from eminent leaders, and visas for Costa Rica.

  The contract with MGM was of no interest to [a certain official] at all, not even when I told him that, according to my information, this contract has been approved by Washington. “Washington has no right at all to interfere with us in these cases,” was his answer.

  With that, my wife and I were dismissed without another word.

  Subsequently he was asked for a full account of his radio and film career: “I stressed the fact that as a democratic journalist, and author of anti-Nazi sketches for Radio Mondial (which were broadcast to America every Saturday in an English translation) and finally, as the author of an anti-Nazi motion picture, I am particularly endangered.” Again the U.S. officials dismissed his plea.

  “How can you help us?” he asked Kingdon in his report. Perhaps a cable from MGM would help, or another from a group at PEN, or from Thomas Mann and his friends?

  ER, moved, forwarded Lustig’s report to FDR, with a handwritten note: “FDR Can’t they be helped? ER.” The President passed the item on to Assistant Secretary of State Long.

  Long replied by writing a memorandum to ER:

  MEMORANDUM FOR MRS. ROOSEVELT:

  These individual cases are distressing. One cannot read them without definite sentimental reaction.

  It is particularly difficult in Washington to superimpose judgment upon that of the consul. Under the law the consul is vested with an authority of which the executive officers of the Department of State are unable to divest him.

  General instructions have been sent consuls to regard generously the preference lists which have been submitted by the president’s committee, Dr. Stephen Wise, Mr. William Green and several others. However, the instructions also contain injunctions to the consuls that they must be satisfied that the character, reputation and intentions of the applicants are such that their presence in the United States will not be detrimental to the interests of the United States. This is understood to be that their intentions are not subversive and that their characters and reputations are clean.

  Long suggested that “MGM may itself have communicated to the consul some information” that might have been detrimental and been “the determinative factor in the formulation of the consul’s judgment. . . . It is impractical and would be in violation of law to order the consul peremptorily to issue a visa.” There was no hope.

  At the bottom of Long’s 11 October memo, ER wrote a note to Tommy: “Send to Frank Kingdon and say I am sorry.” On 22 October 1940, Tommy wrote to Kingdon, “Mrs. R is sorry that this reply to [the] inquiry which she made on the case you sent to her . . . is not more encouraging. However, she knows of nothing else which might be done about it.”

  There was no further correspondence regarding this case in ER’s refugee file. It was unclear whether the Lustigs got out until 1 September 1954, when one Charlotte Lustig wrote to ER from Beverly Hills, California:

  I am just reading Ben Hecht’s book A Child of a Century and I reach the chapter “FDR,” on page 567. This and the following chapters deal with the horrifying slaughter of the European Jews by the Nazis.

  Mr. Hecht is trying to explain . . . that President Roo
sevelt refused to intervene in behalf of the European Jews, refused to lend a helping hand to those unfortunates by warning the world of the atrocities happening in Europe. . . .

  Will you please allow me, dear Mrs. Roosevelt, to say some words about myself. I belong to the numerous Europeans who have worshiped President Roosevelt from the very minute he appeared on the political scene of the world. I am a German born Jew, my husband—a writer—comes from Czechoslovakia. We fled Germany in 1933, lived 7 years in Paris and fled France 2 days before the Germans took over.

  Shortly after our arrival in Portugal, my husband together with 12 other writers, obtained an Emergency Visa to this country—through the Roosevelt Advisory Committee. Upon our arrival in New York, in December 1940, the head of the [ERC], a very distinguished gentleman, sent us a message to visit him. He received us with unforgettable kindness; welcomed us to this country, regretting the fact that we had to wait 5 months in Portugal, although the State Department had sent a cable to issue the visas already in June. I hope you will believe me, dear Mrs. Roosevelt, that our gratitude, admiration and worship belongs to the late President, now and forever. . . .

  May I add, at the conclusion of this letter, that I have read your column for many years, and that I have always admired your courage and deep sense of justice and fairness.

  In December Joseph Buttinger of the ERC sent a desperate appeal to ER—the State Department had promised to cable visas to Europe but then delayed them. ER begged her husband, “Can’t something be done?” And she implored Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, “Is there anything that you could do to hasten this process?” In December she asked Welles to explain “why so many of these people who actually have visas are finding so much difficulty. One fact is that they cannot get visas to go through Spain.” Wasn’t there a way, she asked, to expedite visas through the U.S. ambassador, Carleton J. H. Hayes?

  As secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes was in charge of U.S. territories. On 12 November 1940, he ordered Lawrence W. Carter, then governor of the Virgin Islands, to admit refugees “on their appearance at the port of entry. After a short residence . . . they may proceed without visas or formalities to the United States.”

  On 9 December, Ickes spoke at a dinner to benefit the ERC at New York’s Hotel Astor, sponsored by the Nation and the New Republic. He pleaded that the United States do “everything in its power” to rescue “the thousands of men and women of intellectual achievement and democratic thought who are now in danger of the firing squad.” The Virgin Islands and Alaska were “ideal places of refuge for the stranded believers in democracy.

  It is a simple matter to bring these men and women across the ocean, to the various countries of the Western Hemisphere. It involves no more than a little money, visitors’ permits, and a helpful attitude on the part of the government.

  We are urging that, under the proper safeguards, the Virgin Islands be made available to political refugees, without visas, without diplomatic formality. We are urging the hospitable reception of all for whom there may be room and that they be allowed to stay in the Virgin Islands as visitors until they are otherwise provided for.

  This would involve no competition either with American labor or business. Instead of a burden upon the economy of these islands, an economic benefit would flow from the visitors . . .

  Here are two small corners of the Western Hemisphere in which American freedom would mean life and liberty to fellow human beings as well as economic improvement for ourselves.

  Ickes concluded by celebrating America’s immigrant reality, the Statue of Liberty legacy of “our golden door” heritage. People from Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, and Scandinavia no longer bear names considered “foreign.” “In this generation,” perhaps a man named “Tschaikowsky” might not be a presidential candidate, but he would be considered “a candidate for all-American football tackle . . . [and] his son might be elected President.” During the 1940 campaign, European dictators had stirred anti-alien hysteria, seeking to increase “racial antagonisms.” But “Americans of German descent proved themselves to be followers of Carl Schurz and not of Hitler, and Americans of Italian descent proved themselves to be followers of Garibaldi and not of Mussolini.” With this legacy, Ickes insisted, our doors must remain open for rescue and the survival of democracy.

  ER agreed completely, but Breckinridge Long was in full, even hysterical opposition. “There are 12,000 refugees in Portugal,” he had said a few weeks earlier, and among them “are many German agents.” Communists, subversives, undesirables—Long could not believe that this “pipe line to siphon refugees . . . into the United States” was being created “without the precautionary steps of investigation and checking.” He complained to FDR, who told him to speak with Ickes.

  On 27 November Long accused Ickes and his allies in the Justice Department of “working at cross purposes with the Administration. . . . They are radical and have peculiar ideas—at least their ideas to me are radical and some of them are inadmissible and unacceptable.” FDR sent Ickes a memo that “rather slapped my ears back by telling me that refugee matters were for him and the State Department to decide.”

  But when they discussed the Virgin Islands as a haven, “he seemed open to suggestions” and was both “friendly” to and “impressed with” the details of Ickes’s scheme. “He thought that if certain conditions were met, it might be all right to go ahead with the plan,” and urged Ickes to take “the whole question” to the Justice Department. But FDR himself made no decision.

  In December Varian Fry and members of his staff, including philanthropist Mary Jane Gold, were arrested and detained on a prison ship in the Marseilles harbor. ER wrote Sumner Welles that “Varian Fry’s arrest . . . troubles me greatly.” Surely “there must be something we can do about an American citizen, & I am sure that though he was helping refugees, he did nothing actually reprehensible.”

  Welles assured her that nobody was hurt and “no physical harm” had been done. He sent a telegram to Marseilles immediately “requesting consul be permitted to visit.” The consular official, Hiram Bingham, arrived on the prison ship and “shook hands with us,” Fry recalled—whereupon the captain immediately became “more cordial” and served the Americans cognac. Fry and Gold were released the day after Bingham’s visit, on 9 December.

  Once Fry was freed, State Department and Vichy officials increasingly harassed him and urged him to leave. But he was determined to stay, to try to save every life possible.

  The tension between Long and Ickes simmered for months as both men pursued their respective programs while fearing that FDR intended to downsize their authority. Meanwhile ER and FDR argued about Long’s disastrous policies. During one of their sharpest arguments, New York City judge Justine Wise Polier happened to be at the White House and heard their conversation. At one point Breckinridge Long’s name came up, and ER said, “Franklin, you know he’s a fascist.” FDR replied, “I’ve told you, Eleanor, you must not say that.” To which she replied, “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say it, but he is.” She said it, and he listened, even if he chastised her for it: this pattern was at the core of their relationship.

  • • •

  ER fully understood the limits of their marital partnership, which was defined by love and respect, consideration and concern. Still, these were the months of their most profound disagreements, although moments of agreement and shared vision gave her hope. She appreciated the pressures her husband faced regarding refugees. But as Justine Wise Polier noted in her oral history, ER’s reticence gave people the wrong impression about the real arrangement. ER believed she was the only person in FDR’s circle willing to disagree with him, or push him when he needed to be pushed. They were keen to know each other’s opinion, and when they disagreed, they did so with respect; they always listened to each other. When they were apart, FDR called every day, and he relied on ER’s observations. She was his conscience; he was her ba
rometer. She trusted his political instincts and the direction of his heart. And she was conscious of the enormity of the opposition even on issues that she considered essential, moderate, and bipartisan.

  Occasionally when they disagreed, her view ultimately prevailed. Sometimes an idea rooted in her own statements and writings would appear in FDR’s policies. But charges of “petticoat government” really annoyed her husband—which she attributed to his mother’s lifelong interference and badgering. Therefore she never took credit, never referred to her influence on him, and never mentioned her occasionally successful efforts at persuasion. Nor did FDR credit his wife for many positions he gratefully accepted from her.

  We have no record to tell us, for example, what ER thought when FDR introduced the “Four Freedoms” at the opening of the 77th Congress on 6 January 1941. But the ideas they embody would have been familiar to readers of her column and The Moral Basis of Democracy. The four essential freedoms were freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. FDR did not mean them as some far-off fantasy but rather as the basis for “a kind of world attainable in our own time,” throughout the world. He presented this “moral order” to counter the dictators’ tyranny now astride the world. It was a promise to address human needs “without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.”