In the interim, Stephenson had finally contrived to have Dahl formally appointed to the British intelligence service. He was finished with his embassy duties and was now assigned to the BSC’s Washington bureau as a liaison officer with the OSS. It would mean he would be doing a good deal more traveling, in addition to shuttling back and forth to the New York headquarters for meetings at least once a week. His replacement as assistant air attaché at the embassy was Squadron Leader William Roxburgh, and it fell to Dahl to show him around town and introduce him to Washington society.
Dahl was so preoccupied with his new job at the BSC and settling into his downtown office that he had given little thought to Marsh, who was away for the summer. A reproachful letter from his old friend pointed out this lapse: “Rumor from the Great Peeping Tom of American Journalism has it that you returned.” Sounding put out at Dahl’s long absence, Marsh immediately started in by needling him about his former boss, the ambassador. “Viscount Halifax has been upped in the peerage,” he gloated, referring to recent stories in the papers. “Evidently great work was done for him by his loyal assistants which enlengthened the stature of his place in history regardless of the condition of the extremities of the body.”*
As he plowed through Marsh’s rambling, multipage discourse on the dismal state of American politics, which paled only in comparison to the appalling state of affairs in his own personal life, Dahl realized his old friend was deeply depressed and feeling lonely and neglected. Marsh was writing to him from Austin, following the Democratic revolt at the Texas convention, in which the anti-Roosevelt faction had overwhelmed the proceedings and the state party had been persuaded to throw its vote for Senator Harry Byrd for president. A riot had almost broken out, and even Lyndon Johnson had found himself caught in the cross fire between the loyalists and the renegades and heckled as one of FDR’s “Yes-men” and “Pin-up Boys.” Marsh had taken the southern Democrats’ defection personally and was stunned that they broke faith with their president. While Roosevelt already had enough pledged delegates to get the renomination, Marsh worried that it could lead to a fight over the vice presidency and a crisis in the coming election:
Our electoral college has busted. Had you been here to advise me and report all that Isaiah [Berlin] knew in advance, I would not have been caught short (an American expression meaning a slight digestive inconvenience caused by a green melon) and permitted the kind of people you run with from stealing the Texas electoral vote from your friend Roosevelt….
I missed the Texas significance. The Duponts, and Pews and Gannetts ganged up on me. Republican money, carpetbagged (you don’t know what carpetbagged means but I will tell you sometime) into the deep South with stacks of gold and bought up my loyal Texans so that now it looks as if Byrd, the Apple King of Virginia, will get the votes of Texas from the poor saps who think they are voting for Roosevelt.
Now that Dahl had abandoned him in his hour of need, “I can only depend on Churchill himself to save Roosevelt from the meatball visage—Dewey the Great,” Marsh sulked. “I will give you anything, anytime, anywhere, if you will only come and save America, America for me, me for America.” Marsh maintained that it was Dahl’s fault that he had been distracted and allowed the Texas delegates to slip through his fingers. He should not have thrown him a curve. “I was trying to entertain a female that you had introduced me to, a fifth column gal posing as an artist,” he griped. “Had you been here, my dear sir, or had you not by design left others to appeal to my baser nature, I would have been on the job and not on a job.”
By the end of the letter, Marsh’s mood had improved, and he was back to his usual blend of profanity, political analyses, and rolling oratorical flourishes. While he may have been outsmarted and outspent in Texas, he was not going to take it lying down. He knew Texas like the back of his hand, and he knew the state’s love of Roosevelt ran deep. Once they woke up to the presence of the carpetbaggers and understood that they had been duped into voting for Byrd instead of Roosevelt, Marsh was convinced there would be hell to pay. The down and dirty tactics of the anti–New Dealers and Roosevelt haters had spurred him into action: “I am about to start a revolution to eliminate the appendix of the electoral college from the Constitution, and reestablish the equality of the common man in blood, sweat and tears.” When he was through, that gang of southern conservatives would not be leaving town with any Byrd-for-president racket. Eager to have his sidekick join him, Marsh promised Dahl it would be “a great show” and definitely worth his while. “If you get here and travel in a train deluxe,” he wrote, “we will see a sort of wild west shooting…which you can tell to your children and grandchildren, even to the great Halifax.”
ENEMY MANEUVERS
There was this rather ingenious RAF wing commander, which was me you see.
—ROALD DAHL
DAHL’S DOUBLE LIFE was sorely tested that summer. By July, British authorities were becoming increasingly alarmed by the “whispering campaign about the President’s health,” as Isaiah Berlin reported in one of his weekly dispatches, as well as “the horrid prospect of Wallace.” The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was to open in just nine days. Dahl, who anxiously awaited the vice president’s return, had to report every comment or utterance that might in any way confirm the rumors that Democratic operatives were trying to persuade Roosevelt to commit to another running mate, while at the same time reassure Marsh that everything he heard confirmed that Wallace was still the party favorite. It was a difficult situation. To Marsh, Wallace was an irreplaceable asset to his country; to the British, he was just a liability. Dahl’s loyalties were divided, and he could see no happy resolution to the problem.
When Wallace finally arrived in Washington on July 10, the wolves were already circling. He had been out of the country for fifty-one days on his Asian tour, and his enemies had been busy in his absence. The first warning came from Wallace’s old friend and supporter Senator Joe Guffey, an influential Pennsylvania Democrat, whom he spoke to by phone when he touched down in Fairbanks, Alaska. “Things are not going well,” Guffey warned him. “Some people around the White House are saying, ‘We need a new face.’” A telephone call from Judge Sam Rosenman, the last of the original members of FDR’s brain trust, was still more worrisome: Secretary Harold Ickes wanted to see Wallace at the earliest possible moment, by which he meant lunch on Monday, July 10. The urgency was that Ickes had a date on the West Coast and was leaving town on the night train. As Wallace, who had logged 27,000 miles and had circled the globe, recalled: “Ickes does not fly and so it was proposed that I fly all night in order to make it possible for Ickes not to fly at all.” As he made his way back to the capital, Wallace thought better of Ickes’ invitation and sent a wire stating that he thought it advisable for him to see the president first. After traveling all night and arriving in the capital at 9:30 A.M., he phoned the White House at ten, only to be informed that the president was bathing. Wallace then received word that Roosevelt wanted him to meet with Ickes and Rosenman before meeting with him at 4:30 in an “on-the-record conference.”
While he had come to expect a certain amount of “intrigue” from the White House, and from Roosevelt’s palace guard in particular, Wallace braced for the worst. He took the precaution of asking Ickes and Rosenman to meet him for a private lunch at his apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel, where he could be sure to avoid reporters. After a half hour of pleasantries, they got down to business: Wallace had made too many enemies and had become “a bone of contention” in the party and ought not let his name be presented at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 18. Before Ickes lowered the hatchet, Rosenman, who was diligent without being ruthless, explained that the president preferred Wallace as a running mate but agreed with the consensus that he could not win in Chicago and would do nothing to help him win in the fall. Before they could go any further, Wallace slammed the door closed on the conversation, abruptly telling them he had to make a report on his China mission that
afternoon and had no time to talk politics. He would not be bullied into withdrawing from the race.
Wallace’s meeting with the president began on a cordial note, and they spent some two hours discussing his China trip. Then Roosevelt brought up politics, but before saying his piece he told Wallace that when he left he should say no politics were discussed. As the president put it, “I am now talking to the ceiling.” Roosevelt began by saying that Wallace was his choice for a running mate, and he said he was willing to make a statement to that effect. He then proceeded to voice doubts about the idea, however, explaining that “a great many people” had cautioned him against it, arguing that it would be a repeat of the bruising battle in 1940, when Wallace was roundly booed at the convention, and Roosevelt had to force his deeply unpopular choice of a running mate on the unhappy delegates. Wallace immediately replied that he did not want to be “pushed down anybody’s throat” and wanted to know if the president definitely wanted him in the second spot on the ticket. Roosevelt, Wallace recalled, “was very ready with his assurance.”
Yet in the next breath the president allowed as how he had been told that Wallace could cost the Democratic ticket from one to three million votes. Changing tacks, Roosevelt then said he could not bear the thought of the vice president being put up before the convention and publicly rejected. “You have your family to think of,” he said. “Think of the cat calls and jeers and the definiteness of rejection.” Wallace told him he was not worried about his family and later noted that at the time he was thinking, “I much more worried about the Democratic party and you than I am about myself and my family.” Roosevelt asked him to come back for lunch two more times that week to talk. Wallace, who had been gone for a long time and wanted to find out where he stood, agreed to do some checking and report back.
He immediately got in touch with Charles Marsh, who in his absence had volunteered to undertake a lengthy state-by-state election report on what he called “Wallace’s Pre-Convention Situation.” Reading it over, Wallace agreed with Marsh that the results “looked very good.” The following morning, Tuesday, July 11, Roosevelt finally confirmed what the papers had been presaging for months—he would be seeking a fourth term. When they met for lunch later that day, Wallace gave Roosevelt an elegant Uzbek robe, a gift from Tashkent officials, along with the lengthy memorandum by Marsh on the vice presidency. Roosevelt methodically thumbed through Marsh’s report, as well as the state-by-state tabulation of the vote he had prepared with help from Sydney Hillman, the labor leader who was head of the Political Action Committee and solidly behind Wallace. As the president would not be at the convention—he would be on a ship bound for Hawaii and a meeting with his Pacific commanders, which Republicans labeled a political ploy to remind voters he was commander in chief—Wallace gave Roosevelt a statement, drafted by Senator Guffey, designed to seal his nomination on the first ballot. Before he left, the president mentioned that many people looked on Wallace “as a Communist—or worse.” He seemed worried about some of the more infamous Wallaceisms of the recent past, specifically mentioning his much-derided comment that he wanted “to give a quart of milk to every hottentot.” Wallace flatly denied ever making such a statement, and the president seemed genuinely surprised.
That afternoon Marsh phoned Wallace to report on the latest “enemy maneuvers.” Of the half dozen ambitious men vying for his job, three had emerged as potential threats. According to Marsh’s information, Wall Street was lining up behind the progressive southerner Alben Barkley from Kentucky, though he was even older than Roosevelt. Ickes was pushing hard for the Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas. Then there was Robert Hannegan, a gregarious former professional baseball player who was the party chairman, whose game, according to Marsh, was “to knock Wallace at every possible turn” in hopes that his man Truman ultimately got the nod.
It turned out Marsh was right on the last two counts. The president had given Wallace every assurance that they were still the “same old team” at their last lunch meeting on Thursday, July 13, explaining that he would settle the vice-presidential matter by sending a letter of endorsement to the convention chairman saying that he would vote for Wallace if he were a delegate. But Roosevelt had in fact already made a separate promise to Hannegan. During a meeting with his top advisers the previous evening, the president had agreed to run with either one of two alternate candidates—Douglas or Truman—hastily scrawling their names in that order on the back of an envelope. Hannegan, who would not rest until he had nailed down the nomination, tried to browbeat Wallace into not going to Chicago and withdrawing then and there. Failing at that, Hannegan finagled another meeting with the president, cornering him in his railroad car in Chicago’s Rock Island railroad yards while en route from Hyde Park to San Diego, and hammered on about Truman until an exhausted Roosevelt, who was sicker than anyone knew, finally acquiesced. Roosevelt had equivocated to the end, giving Hannegan the opening he needed, and he left with a personal note from FDR, written in longhand, first endorsing the modest, hardworking Truman, who had no real enemies, followed by Douglas, who was generally admired on the Hill. The president probably conceived of it as a private document, to be circulated by Hannegan in the event Wallace bombed or the convention became deadlocked.
Although rumors of a secret White House conference dumping Wallace from the ticket rippled across Washington, Marsh refused to give credence to the idea. Then on July 17, the day before the convention opened, Roosevelt’s letter putting Wallace’s name into nomination was read into the record. It was so lukewarm as to be almost indifferent:
I have been associated with Henry Wallace during his past four years as Vice President, for eight years earlier while he was Secretary of Agriculture, and well before that. I like him and I respect him, and he is my personal friend. For these reason, I personally would vote for his renomination if I were a delegate to the Convention.
At the same time, I do not wish to appear in any way as dictating to the Convention. Obviously the Convention must do the deciding. And it should—and I am sure will—give great consideration to the pros and cons of its choice.
The veteran reporter Allen Drury, political correspondent for United Press, later summed up FDR’s letter in his journal: “If you want him, well, OK. If you don’t, well, OK. Suit yourself. And so long, Henry.”
Wallace vowed he would “fight to the finish.” Marsh, realizing they were facing long odds, rose to the challenge. The Texas publisher, an old hand at last-ditch political plays, knew that if Wallace was positioned as the underdog going in, they might be able to capture the sympathy of the press and possibly pick up steam for his nomination. Marsh gathered a large, colorful contingent to fight for Wallace at the convention and help round up delegates. He took a special trainload of supporters from New York to Chicago, filling it with labor people, mostly from the Garment Workers Union, and booked a full floor of the Sherman Hotel. He and his crusading “seamsters” swamped the hotel, the overflow squatting in the hallways and staircases, while others scurried around Chicago and made plans to stampede the convention hall.
On the afternoon of Thursday, July 20, Wallace took to the podium and delivered the speech of a lifetime, electrifying the huge crowd packing the sweltering stadium. “The strength of the Democratic Party has always been the people,” Wallace began, “plain people like so many here in this convention—ordinary folks, farmers, workers, and businessman along main street.” The delegates loved it and responded with a rousing ovation, the cheering reverberating through the hall. Wallace loyalists, led by Joe Guffey, smoked out the back-room conspiracy to bounce Wallace from the ticket and forced Hannegan to divulge Roosevelt’s secret handwritten note naming Truman and Douglas at 6:30 P.M., just as the delegates were gathering for the evening session. The press was scandalized, and although Wallace was disappointed by the news, nothing could have induced him to walk away at that point.
That night, after Roosevelt delivered his solemn acceptance speech from a West Coast n
aval base, his disembodied voice echoing from the loudspeakers, the galleries suddenly erupted with hundreds of loyal delegates waving Wallace placards and demanding their candidate’s nomination. The convention organist struck up the “Iowa Corn Song,” his homespun theme, and the hall reverberated with the deafening chant “WE WANT WALLACE! WE WANT WALLACE!” For a brief moment, Marsh’s friend Senator Claude Pepper, who was with the Florida delegation, thought the Wallace parade had pulled it off. From what he could see, standing on his chair and looking down at the forest of state standards raised in the air, it appeared that “if a vote was taken that evening, Wallace could be nominated.” The Wallace demonstrators looked like they were about to riot. Hannegan, realizing that emotions had become too hot, hastily yelled at the party chairman to adjourn the night session. Pepper tried to reach the platform, to appeal to the floor not to adjourn. With a bang of his gavel, it was over. The crowd groaned in protest, but the police were already ushering them toward the exits.
The next day, inside Chicago Stadium, the mood had altered. The party bosses had regained control of the convention, and the Democratic machine had the delegates back in hand. In due course Truman was nominated. After a sweaty, interminable nine-hour session, the reading clerk announced the final count over the loudspeaker system: “For Truman, 1,031; for Wallace, 105; for Douglas, 4.”
The Irregulars Page 27
