Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  The issue of rescue kept ER up many nights. Aware of her discontent and anguish, FDR sought to reassure her, and with his charming mysterious smile, told her he had secret plans. More immediately, he surprised her by adopting her positions on several issues. In a 27 October message to Congress, he promised to guarantee education and training, job security and health care for returning veterans—which echoed her August columns about the democratic security that had been legislated in Australia and New Zealand. The plan would subsequently be known as the GI Bill of Rights.

  Even more surprising, on 1 November 1943, FDR issued an important, and lengthy, message to Congress on agriculture. Feeding the troops and the hungry, maintaining food prices, and achieving a new level of farm production, he said, would require subsidies and price stabilization. The speech contained many of ER’s precepts. Trude wrote Joe that the first lady was “very happy” to hear the president support ideas she had long advocated and had thought he “never . . . accepted.”

  A week later, on 9 November, representatives of forty-four of the United Nations, their illuminated flags behind them, agreed to feed, clothe, house, and “rehabilitate the world.” This ceremony established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agreement (UNRRA): “Today in the East Room . . . we witnessed a very memorable occasion,” an uplifted ER declared. Years earlier, on 19 November 1919, the U.S. Senate had rejected the League of Nations; now ER, mindful of the anniversary, “watched each man go up to represent his country” and was glad that this time, “before the end of the war, we have the vision” actually to prepare for peaceful cooperation. Since “80 percent of the population of the world was represented in that room,” she believed UNRRA had a real chance of success. The speeches of FDR and the forty-four delegates, she wrote Joe, persuaded her that “something great may have begun today.” And she was pleased that two women were appointed to UNRRA’s delegation: her great activist allies Ellen Woodward and Elizabeth Conkey.

  On 18 October 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had traveled to Moscow for a meeting with Allied foreign ministers Eden and Molotov, and on 1 November 1943 they issued the Moscow Declaration. Written by Churchill, it promised that the Allies would take postwar retribution for all “abominable deeds” committed by Nazi war criminals. It listed more than sixty of them specifically* but omitted any mention of outrages suffered by Jewish communities. Jewish groups were horrified by the declaration, which implied that Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and their foreign ministers considered their slaughter irrelevant.

  On 9 November, Congressman Guy Gillette (D-IA), Will Rogers, and the esteemed liberal Joseph C. Baldwin (R-NY) introduced resolutions into both the Senate and the House urging the president to create a “commission of diplomatic, economic and military experts” to act immediately “to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction,” and establish camps in neutral nations of Europe and North Africa, for subsequent settlement in Palestine or one of the United Nations.

  On 12 November, FDR acted on ER’s concern about the Moscow Declaration and told Hull to make amends to the outraged Jewish community. Hull’s thirty-minute speech to Congress on 28 November included an additional sentence: “Bestial and abominable Nazi crimes” had been committed “against people of all races and religions, among whom Hitler has reserved for the Jews his most brutal wrath.” These crimes, he said, would be punished.

  • • •

  The next day FDR, along with Harry Hopkins, General George Marshall, and others, boarded the USS Iowa for his six-week trip to Cairo and Tehran, for meetings with Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek. During ER’s Pacific trip, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors had invited her to visit, and she had hoped and expected to accompany her husband to these most critical meetings. But FDR was firm: “no women” were welcome. Trude, from New York, wrote Joe that ER was both hurt and bewildered—especially after she discovered that Madame Chiang translated for her husband in Cairo, and that Churchill’s daughter Sarah was present at both meetings. “I’ve been amused that Mme. Chiang and Sarah Churchill were in the party,” ER wrote FDR. “I wish you had let me fly out! I’m sure I would have enjoyed Mme C more than you did, tho all the pictures show her in animated conversation with you [while Chiang] wears a rather puzzled look as Winston chews his cigar.” FDR’s correspondence during this long trip was full of personal endearments, but they did not mollify ER. She hated to be “sidelined” during important events, and FDR’s rejection of her presence seemed a dismissal of her work.

  With her husband away and all four of their sons in battle, along with more than thirteen million American troops in uniform, ER was home alone. The thought of FDR spending six weeks mostly with Churchill, with his heavy drinking, filled her with dread: she worried about the prime minister’s influence on him in terms of policy as well. In India, Gandhi, Nehru, and other Congress Party leaders remained helpless in prison, yet Churchill refused to free them. Moreover the famine in Bengal threatened to doom an estimated 1.5 million Indians to death and the ravages of disease, but Churchill refused to provide aid.*

  In Cairo, FDR persuaded a reluctant Churchill to open the Burma Road, liberate Burma, and deal with the crisis. But during the subsequent meetings in Tehran, Churchill reneged, whereupon FDR became “furious.” FDR “feels badly” that Churchill “did not remember” his promise to the Chinese, ER wrote Joe, “. . . and went back on it. To my surprise, F seemed really annoyed.”

  ER was also concerned that the prime minister did not want to include China as a partner. And even after two years, through protests and procrastinations, he sought to delay opening a second front in Europe that would relieve the burden on the Red Army. As news of Russian casualties and India’s suffering, including the Bengal famine, was reported, ER descended into despondency.

  An almost frenzied level of work enabled her to overcome, or at least repress, her depression. She wrote ever more forcefully about the need to end bigotry, discrimination, and poverty. The FBI, she noted, had suddenly tightened its surveillance on communities of hope—on Communists and activists for racial justice—but not on Klanners or fascists.

  In November came the dedication of Roosevelt House. Hunter College’s Hillel Foundation had transformed the family’s twin East Sixty-fifth Street town houses (originally purchased by SDR and long the site of ER’s great discontent) into an interfaith center. In her column, ER fully credited SDR’s antiracist, equalitarian views: a lifelong world traveler, from her childhood in China to her journeys across Europe, SDR had “had a liking for many different countries and their people. Though she had been brought up a Unitarian and became an Episcopalian after her marriage, she was very tolerant of all other religions.” She wrote that FDR was “particularly glad” that his mother’s home was to become the center of so much that “she would have approved.”

  While he was away, ER visited her beloved friends Esther Lape and Elizabeth Reed in Connecticut. She was heartened by their intimate conversations, which she and Esther continued by mail. “I find it hard to know sometimes whether I am being honest with myself,” ER wrote. “So much of life is play acting, it becomes too natural! . . . . There is no fundamental love to draw on,” she continued sadly, referring to her life with FDR,

  just respect and affection. There is little or no surface friction. On my part there is often a great weariness & a sense of futility in life but a life long discipline in a sense of obligation & a healthy interest in people keeps [sic] me going. I guess that is plenty to go on for one’s aging years! I’ll be a fairly good handmaiden and with all the others to help I think FDR’s sense of a place in history will keep him on a forward going path. He’ll know it has to be that way and he is really very well I think. . . . Much much love, ER.

  Her trusted, loving relationship with Elizabeth and Esther provided a rare outlet for such sustaining confidences. Many of her other friendships were “proprietary,” with levels of jealousy and competition. Concerned a
bout the people—all people—and with her heart dedicated to profound democratic change, she refused to acknowledge the jealousies that swirled about her. Actually, she seemed to enjoy her ability to bring the most diverse people together.

  While FDR was in Tehran, however, Elizabeth Read died. Since the 1920s ER had worked closely with Read and Esther Lape for world cooperation and national health care. Throughout the dreadful “isolationist” years, when FDR had refused to consider their advice on the World Court or aid to Republican Spain because of political “realities,” ER had depended on Lape and Read for comfort and alternative strategies. A Smith College graduate and an esteemed attorney, Read was also ER’s personal financial adviser and tax accountant. Since her first stroke in March 1937, her health had been in serious decline.

  Upon her death, ER wrote to Lape, “Life without Lizzie will be almost impossible to face. She loved you so dearly & you gave each other so much. . . . She’s been part of my life so long that I’ll never forget her & life will always be richer because of her friendship. I want to do anything I can to make life more bearable for you & if you can bear to be with people I hope you will come to stay as long as you can as soon as you want. I love you very much & I wish my arms could be around you. Devotedly Eleanor.”

  FDR’s letters from Cairo and Tehran were vague but hopeful. Much to ER’s relief, Churchill finally agreed to a real schedule for the second front. Operation Overlord, the cross-Channel invasion of France, would happen during the spring of 1944, with General Eisenhower as supreme commander of the Anglo-American force.

  On 5 December, ER wrote her husband, “I am sorry things only went pretty well with Chiang. I wonder if he, Mme or Winston made trouble. The questions are so delicate that the Sphinx must be a relief.” Evidently the press was more forthcoming. “Day by day news comes in of the meetings,” she noted: the United States, China, and Britain pledged to guarantee “the ultimate freedom of Korea . . . under the Japanese yoke . . . for a great many years.” ER hoped for sufficient “economic and agricultural development” throughout the Pacific, to ensure decent standards of living—and end the ongoing starvation.

  She had long doubted FDR’s commitment to the Four Freedoms, to the goals of leading a people’s war and constructing a people’s peace. But after his return, he made a Christmas Eve broadcast from the library at Hyde Park, with a democratic emphasis that encouraged her. At their summit meetings in Cairo and Tehran, he explained, the four allies—Russia, Great Britain, China, and the United States—had agreed to band together to keep the peace: “Those four powers must be united with and cooperate with all the freedom-loving peoples of Europe, and Asia, and Africa, and the Americas . . . The rights of every Nation, large or small, must be respected and guarded as jealously as are the rights of every individual within our own Republic. The doctrine that the strong shall dominate the weak is the doctrine of our enemies—and we reject it.” FDR saluted the ten million Americans stationed around the globe to fight the war and concluded with a fervent prayer for the embattled and suffering, for faith and strength to rid the world of evil so that “all men and women everywhere” would be free, return to the comfort of their families and homes, and meet “a better day for humankind.”

  The holiday season for ER, surrounded by family and friends at Hyde Park, was marked by a new surge of trust in her husband’s vision. “Though two of our boys and our son-in-law were far away,” daughter Anna, two sons, and seven grandchildren were present, “so we felt greatly blessed.” There were carols and celebrations, lunch for the boys of the Wiltwyck School, and a party for servicemen and students at the military police school and their families. ER’s thoughts inevitably turned to all those who were not home for Christmas—and to those who would never return.

  Sadly, Franklin Jr. and Ethel were in marital difficulty. “I guess one of the sad things in life,” a grieving ER confided to Joe, “is that rarely do a man & woman fall equally in love with each other & even more rarely do they so live their lives that they continue to be lovers . . . & still develop & enjoy the constant companionship of married life. I imagine that the really great number of men & women who are faithful to each other not only in deed but in thought are so more often because of a lack of opportunity for romance elsewhere rather than because they’ve learned the secret of ‘the one & only great love.’ A cynic you will say!” According to Joe, ER believed that “faithfulness was . . . achievable”—which was why the current “emotional difficulties” of her sons Elliott and Franklin depressed her.

  At the White House for New Year’s Eve, ER hosted a smaller party than usual. Two grandchildren, Sara and Kate Roosevelt, were “to be with us for the next few weeks . . . a good way to begin the New Year.” Besides the grandchildren, only Tommy, Daisy Suckley, and Elinor and Henry Morgenthau were present to welcome 1944. FDR was unwell, with a “touch of the flu” and fever. He appeared “in a wrapper” to toast the nation, and the party broke up early. “I want to tell you again how much being close to you & Trude mean to me,” ER wrote to Joe. “. . . I’m grateful beyond words that you are my friend & care for me.” She wrote a similar letter to Trude, then a missive of advice to Joe. “There is one thing I’ve always wanted to say to you. When you do come home & get engulfed in work, will you stop long enough now and then even if Trude is working with you to make her feel she is first in your life and even more important than saving the world? Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life & the desire is the explanation for many strange things women do, if only men understood it!”

  FDR’s illness lingered throughout January. He was so unwell on 11 January that an aide read his State of the Union address to Congress, although the president was able to broadcast it with verve that night. Considered by many, including historian James McGregor Burns, “the most radical speech of his life,” it was also a tribute to ER’s persistence and endorsed her views.

  We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. . . . People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. [Therefore] we have accepted . . . a second Bill of Rights [to achieve] security and prosperity . . . for all—regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are: . . .

  The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; . . . The right of every family to a decent home; . . . The right to adequate medical care; . . . The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education. . . . [And an end] to domination by monopolies at home or abroad.

  FDR’s vigorous rhetoric, however, did not satisfy ER, who wanted immediate action and actually wrote a column critical of the speech. She had listened to his broadcast in the company of “WAVES at their headquarters in American University,” where she had spoken that night, and where they had been entertained by a “glee club of WAVES who sing delightfully and I wish we could have listened to them for a long time.” Evidently, they were interrupted by the president’s message—which ER reread in the morning: “The more I go over it, the more I realize that [the Second Bill of Rights] is a restatement, in more concrete terms, of the objectives for . . . which we have been striving since 1933.”

  ER insistently detailed the many chores that had to be done immediately. The Social Security Board recommended an updated “complete, unified social insurance system,” since because of the program’s limitations more than “20 million workers are not yet covered.” As passed in 1935, the Social Security Act exempted “farm workers and domestic workers, the self-employed, employees of federal, state and local government, employees of non-profit organizations, maritime workers, and many employees of small firms.”

  Nor had Social Security established—as was initially intended—national “social insurance measures to protect American families against disabilities and sickness.” ER agreed with the Soci
al Security Board’s conclusion that “health and medical care have an important place in any comprehensive and adequate program,” and that it should be implemented immediately. Across the country, especially in rural areas, “the draft showed us our failures where health is concerned. . . . Low income groups can neither afford medical care nor a proper diet.” She was impatient with those who argued that wartime was not the moment to “assume greater social burdens.” Unless they were assumed now, “the war will not seem to have brought many people much that is worth fighting for.”

  Throughout January 1944 ER seemed inclined toward radical change—if not social revolution. In Washington, D.C., discriminatory housing regulations and new zoning laws further restricted affordable housing for black residents, which she found outrageous. The new laws would push “the colored residents more and more into a segregated little city of their own. This area will be as far out as possible, where transportation and utilities will be less available. This proposal to herd our citizens according to race and religion has many serious disadvantages and should be fought.” Recalling the Warsaw Ghetto battles, ER opposed this effort to ghettoize the U.S. capital.

  Many young Americans were underprepared for citizenship, even actually illiterate. ER met with National Education Association representatives who urged a movement to “wipe out illiteracy” and ensure educational opportunity. Teachers should be honored, since they were entrusted with “the most important job of the community—the education of youth in a democracy. Since we decided long ago that democracy could not exist without education . . . teachers are essential to our development.” But real education continues “throughout our lives,” and adult education requires new consideration. Schools should be open at night and become community centers to “radiate” and motivate community ideas.