Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  there is one name, a great many generations back, which might have been a Jewish name and, as a joke, in my uncle Theodore Roosevelt’s family it used to be said that some of the intelligence came from the ancestress. I feel, however, that if she was a Jew—and none of us know whether she was or not—the blood has been so much diluted that there is very little left in my husband’s generation.20

  Her own feeling about Jews, as about all ethnic, racial, and religious groups, had changed dramatically from her insecurity, dislike, and sense of strangeness with members of minority groups when she had been in Washington during the Wilson administration. Prejudice, she had come to understand, was worse for the person who felt it than for those against whom it was directed. “When a person holds deep prejudice, he gets to dislike the object of his prejudice. He uses it as an excuse for the fact that there is something unworthy in himself.” And when you blame someone for your own undesirable qualities, “it becomes hard to be honest with yourself.”21 The Nazi persecution of the Jews reflected envy and insecurity: “It is the secret fear that the Jewish people are stronger or more able than those who still wielded superior physical power over them, which brings about oppression.”22

  People were good and bad, sensitive and calloused, greedy and generous—but not because they were Jews or Italians or Negroes or Anglo-Saxons.23 And if a minority had certain disagreeable mannerisms or traits—the Jews, she felt, tended toward clannishness—that was because of what the dominant society had done to them. The gentile world had “pushed the Jewish race into Zionism and Palestine, and into their nationalistic attitude.”24 When a Jewish doctor inquired what Jews might do to stop “the ever-increasing tide of anti-Semitism,” her answer essentially was assimilationist:

  I think it is important in this country that the Jews as Jews remain unaggressive and stress the fact that they are Americans first and above everything else; that they give help, together with the other citizens of this country, to the people who are being oppressed because of their race and religion; and, as far as possible, wipe out in their own consciousness any feeling of difference by joining in all that is being done by Americans.25

  But basically she felt that the Jews were powerless and that their fate rested with the non-Jewish world.

  It depends almost entirely on the course of the Gentiles what the future holds. It can be cooperative, mutual assistance, gradual slow assimilation with justice and fair-mindedness towards all the racial groups living together in different countries, or it can be injustice, hatred and death. It looks to me as though the future of the Jews were tied up as it always has been with the future of all the races of the world. If they perish, we perish sooner or later.

  Zionism and nationalism needed no apology, a Jewish editor protested; assimilation had not saved the Jews of Germany and Italy. “Mrs. Roosevelt read your editorial,” Tommy wrote him, “and thinks you may well be right.”26

  An isolationist storm blew up at the end of January when, with a French observer on board, the latest model U.S. bomber crashed and it was disclosed that Roosevelt had authorized the sale of military planes to France. Eleanor defended the president’s decision.

  Do our sympathies lie with the other democracies or do they lie with the totalitarian states? Germany is geared to produce a thousand planes a month; France to produce one hundred planes a month. It seems quite evident why France would be interested in buying from us. It is also quite evident that Germany would naturally start a hue and cry that the U. S. was favoring France. . . .

  I want to see all the nations of the world reduce their armaments. Mr. Chamberlain has suggested it, but I have seen no acquiescence on the part of Mr. Hitler. Have you? Who is taking a belligerent attitude in the world today?27

  The isolationist leaders thought it prudent not to reply to the First Lady, but the Nazi press did. The Lokal Anzeiger advised her to

  leave politics alone. . . . One should ask her to keep her pen away from things of which she is ignorant. There are many other better fields of work for a militant writer; for instance, social questions concerning the 12,000,000 unemployed, lynching, child labor and public morals. It is not good for a nation if not only the husband but also the wife enters the political china shop.

  Her press conference asked Eleanor what she thought of that. “I thought their whole attitude was that women didn’t count,” she replied. She was a “bad influence” on her husband, wrote Popolo di Roma, and “too many” of his decisions were swayed by her anti-totalitarian ideas.28

  On March 17 Hitler moved again, occupying Prague and partitioning Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain, pushed by British public opinion and outraged by Hitler’s failure to keep his word, pledged military assistance to Poland in the event of an attack by Hitler. Eleanor applauded:

  The gentleman with the umbrella, finding that “appeasement” does not work where ethics do not exist, has gone the whole way in the opposite direction. It takes courage to do that, if you are in politics, and it cannot be done, except in a democracy. A dictator must always be “right.” He can never be a human being, for his hold upon the people lies in the illusion that he is a superman.29

  In a last-minute effort to stave off catastrophe, the president proposed to Hitler and Mussolini that in return for a specific pledge of nonaggression against thirty countries in Europe and the Near East, there would be an international conference in which the United States would participate to deal with access to markets, raw materials, territorial issues, and disarmament. “I am waiting anxiously, like everybody else, for the answer from the German and Italian heads of State to the plea for peace made by the President of the United States,” Eleanor wrote.30

  But Hitler and Mussolini, emboldened by the success of their tactics of terror and violence, were not disposed to negotiate, and turned down Roosevelt’s plea with scorn and derision. Hitler called a special meeting of the Reichstag to do so, and at the same time denounced Germany’s nonaggression treaty with Poland. Roosevelt had not really expected Hitler to respond otherwise, but he hoped this new demonstration of Hitler’s hostility to collaboration would soften isolationist opposition to the more flexible neutrality for which he had been pressing Congress since January. But the isolationists drew the opposite conclusion. Every move Roosevelt made to prevent war in Europe confirmed them in their view that he was seeking a way to involve the United States in Europe’s quarrels. An amendment of the neutrality laws to give him the power to use methods short of war which might have been a warning to the dictators that an attack upon Poland would range the United States on the side of the democracies remained stalled in committee.

  The only positive indication that in a showdown precipitated by Hitler the democracies would stand together was the state visit to the United States in June of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. “I need not assure you that it would give my wife and me the greatest pleasure to see you,” Roosevelt had written the British monarch just as the Munich crisis was coming to a head, “and, frankly, I think it would be an excellent thing for Anglo-American relations if you would visit the United States.” The visit was a great triumph; the United States embraced Their Majesties. Even Father Coughlin carefully referred to them as “lovely personalities” who, however, were being used “to nullify our basic foreign policy of no entanglements.” Roosevelt was the impresario of the occasion. Every item of protocol, ceremony, and program underwent his scrutiny. Yet much of what made the visit distinctive bore his wife’s unmistakable stamp.31

  Not without some travail. “Oh dear, oh dear, so many people are worried that ‘the dignity of our country will be imperiled’ by inviting Royalty to a picnic, particularly a hot dog picnic,” she wrote in her column two weeks before the royal couple arrived. In the forefront of the worriers was Sara, who forwarded a letter she had received begging her to rein in her daughter-in-law before she disgraced the country. On the back of the letter Sara had written a little message, “Only one of many such.” “Poor darling,” commented Eleanor; she
did not know “that I have ‘many such’ right here in Washington.”32 Beneath Eleanor’s boundless tact and perfect good taste was an irrepressible and occasionally impish democrat. Her critics should relax, she went on. What people remembered of a visit abroad were the differences, not the similarities with the way things were done at home, especially the customs that were a little queer and amusing: “We certainly don’t want to make everything so perfectly English that there will be nothing for our guests to smilingly talk about afterwards.” While she deleted this sentence from her column, she refused to be deterred by those who scoffed at what they considered her Yankee parochialism from showing the king and queen aspects of American life that were characteristic of the country and the Roosevelt reforms. And her husband supported her.

  At the White House she presided over a lawn party where the king and queen met the heads of such agencies as the NYA, WPA, and Social Security that were distinctively New Deal. Dr. Will Alexander, the Farm Security administrator, was one of those whom she brought over to the king and queen to tell them what he was doing. He recorded later, “It was one of the most amazing performances and was an indication of where the hearts of President and Mrs. Roosevelt were.”

  The concert at the State Dinner also reflected Eleanor’s special touch. There was Kate Smith, who was typically American, although Ickes grumbled that she was “a type one would expect to hear in a cheap music hall.” Ickes did approve, however, of Marian Anderson, whose participation in this most select and glamorous social event of the Roosevelt years was the artistic high point of the evening as well as an unspoken rebuke to the snobbery and prejudice that had excluded her from the DAR auditorium. Another unorthodox performer in the concert for the royal couple was Alan Lomax, a gifted young collector and singer of folk songs, who seems, as a premature hippie, to have occasioned some shocked whispers since his locks were unshorn, his socks forgotten, and his political associations suspect.33

  The semiofficial German News Bureau reported: “On Friday afternoon Mrs. Roosevelt has arranged a tea and a reception at which she hopes to bring the Left Radical members of the Federal Government into conversations with the royal couple.” The Italian propagandists took another line. “Mrs. Roosevelt did not kneel when introduced to Queen Elizabeth, despite the fact that this is court etiquette. This is the greatest scandal of the present era,” noted Popolo di Roma.34

  If Berlin and Rome were scandalized, the British ambassador was not wholly serene. He was unhappy that Eleanor presented her press-conference regulars to the king and queen, as Eleanor wrote Kathleen McLaughlin of the New York Times:

  I might have been able to do even more than that if one of your colleagues had not been fool enough to tell the British Ambassador that I was thinking of having a press conference when the Queen was there. I understand that the girls in Washington just about killed her!35

  She arranged for Harry Hopkins’ six-year-old daughter Diana to meet the queen, whom she told beforehand that she thought Diana envisioned queens with crown and scepter. In that case, said the queen, it might be more satisfactory to the child if she saw her dressed for dinner. So that night Eleanor and Diana stood waiting in the hall for Their Majesties to come out of their rooms. When they did, Diana made her little curtsy to the queen who, Eleanor reported, lived up to a child’s dream of how a queen should look, for “her spangled tulle dress with her lovely jewels and her tiara in her hair made her seem like someone out of a story book.”36

  From Washington the royal visitors went to Hyde Park with a stopover in New York to visit the World’s Fair. At the Hyde Park picnic the menu included frankfurters and beer and the entertainment was equally distinctive, although some of the 165 guests found the Indian princess, Te Ata, boring and the voice of the young refugee singer, Charlotte Kraus, unexciting. “Not very good,” recorded Helen Robinson of the entertainment, “but perhaps it was a novelty to the King and Queen—at any rate they were very polite about it, and the King was amusing himself by taking moving pictures.” And throughout it all there was Eleanor “dashing about in a little brown gingham dress, seeing that the lunch was properly served and that everybody was comfortable, just as though it were only a family party.” Afterward the president got into his little hand-operated Ford, with the queen beside him and the king in back, and drove away, “which looked very nice and informal.”37

  A dinner for the visiting royalty at the Big House was Sara’s moment of glory. The king took her in, and the only toast of the evening was that of the president to the king’s mother, a lovely tribute to two very awesome ladies. There were minor mishaps, and Eleanor could not resist the impulse to report them. An overloaded serving table crashed, and Eleanor’s stepsister-in-law was heard saying to Sara, “I do hope that it wasn’t my china that was broken.” And later a tray of ice, water, and ginger ale hurtled to the floor when a butler slipped on his way to the library. “Why mention that?” the president asked when Eleanor checked her column with him. She thought people would like to know that accidents happen to housekeeping, even in the president’s house. The president laughed and withdrew his objection. For the remainder of her life Sara would tell her children, “If my butler had been used instead of those White House people, none of these things would have happened.”38

  As the train carrying the king and queen pulled away from the Hyde Park station, the crowd of Roosevelt’s Hyde Park neighbors which had gathered for the departure suddenly began to sing “Auld Lang Syne.” It was a moving moment. “We all knew the King and Queen were returning home to face a war.”

  “Now for ‘the visit,’” Eleanor reported to Maude Gray: “Everything went well. . . . Both [the king and queen] interested me & I think he feels things more than she does & knows more. She is perfect as a Queen, gracious, informed, saying the right thing & kind but a little self-consciously regal.”39 The king and queen had made a good impression, Ickes noted in his diary, “although I doubt whether there will be any relaxation of the wariness with respect to possible entanglements in foreign affairs.”40

  Public opinion was shifting away from isolationism, especially as signs multiplied that Hitler intended to force Poland to yield Danzig even at the risk of war with Britain and France, but the shift was not sufficiently pronounced to bring about amendment of the neutrality laws. By narrow majorities the House upheld the mandatory arms-embargo provisions of the legislation. “The vote last night was a stimulus to war,” Roosevelt wrote Eleanor’s old colleague and friend, Representative Caroline O’Day. But her vote with the majority was an indication of the sincerity and depth of conviction that gripped both sides in this historic controversy. Roosevelt turned to the Senate, but it postponed action until January, 1940, after Senator Borah disputed Hull’s warning that there might be war before then. His sources of information were better than the State Department’s, Borah said.

  The senators were eager to get away from the Washington heat, the president told Eleanor over the phone. She could not bring herself to believe there was nothing to be done to halt the looming conflict, but privately she was pessimistic:

  It would be marvelous if one could get all the nations around a table to discuss what they really need and put the money into something other than armaments. Unfortunately, however, my husband found when he sounded out the possibility of such a meeting that there was no cooperation forthcoming from the dictators. We pray daily that there will be no war although I must say our own Senators have made it more difficult to use one’s influence to prevent a war.41

  “I don’t know what might happen now,” she wrote Martha Gellhorn, “but it looks pretty hopeless to me and our hands, as far as prevention goes, are pretty well tied.”42

  On August 12 the president left Hyde Park for a few weeks of relaxation on the U.S.S. Tuscaloosa. “I think I shall spend most of the first few days sleeping,” he told his wife. He was at Campobello on the fourteenth. “I look at the papers anxiously,” Eleanor wrote him, “but hope you get the whole of your cruise, not j
ust for your sake but for the sake of the poor people in Europe.”

  On August 21, Hitler secured himself against a two-front war by conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. “It would be a pact with the devil, if Britain signed an agreement with Russia,” Carola had written “Bennett.” The Englishwoman promptly wrote back, after revelation of the Hitler-Stalin pact, to ask whether “the devil had suddenly grown angel’s wings in the sight of all good Germans!” Carola replied that “of course they were very much surprised but that everyone thought it wonderful!” Carola had been writing to her for months, Eleanor replied, “that only Christ’s teachings could save us, and how one can reconcile Mr. Hitler with belief in Christ is more than I can tell.”43

  Within hours after the signing of the pact Hitler’s demands for the return of Danzig had turned into a full-blown war crisis. The president broke off his cruise.

  Again Roosevelt appealed for a peaceful resolution of the crisis—this time addressing himself to Hitler, the king of Italy, and the president of Poland. Carefully Eleanor commented that “blindly to ask for peace is no help in the present situation, for peace may be bought today at too high a cost in the future. It may be wise to buy it, but you must do so knowing what your objectives are for the future, and accepting the conditions which are a part of the price which is paid.” Part of the price, she was suggesting, if war was to be averted, would be U.S. involvement in a settlement that would be fair as well as secure.44

  “Negotiation, mediation or arbitration are just words,” she wrote the next day, “but any one of them if put into practice now by people who really want to keep the peace might mean life instead of death to hundreds of thousands of young men.” She asked Franklin over the telephone when he might be arriving at Hyde Park. Perhaps not for months, he told her, and his tone of voice implied that arrivals and departures were no longer of consequence, that in fact nothing relating to the plans of individuals counted any longer. Her heart sank, for it reminded her of 1914. “What a horrible situation it is,” she wrote her husband that night.