Late in the morning of Sunday, August 3, 1941, the presidential train pulled out of a muggy Washington and headed north. Franklin Roosevelt and a small group of friends were off on a boating and fishing expedition. Late in the day the presidential party arrived in New London, Connecticut. There the Commander in Chief was piped aboard his yacht Potomac, which in the afterglow of sunset headed into Long Island Sound.
Next morning the yacht, with her presidential banner flapping atop the mast, anchored off South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in full view of hundreds on shore, took on Princess Martha, of Norway, and her two daughters, Prince Karl, of Sweden, and his party, and sailed out into Buzzards Bay, where the President and his royal guests bottom-fished from the stern of the yacht. They had only fair luck. In the evening the Potomac put back into South Dartmouth, the President taking the wheel of a Chris-Craft speedboat to land his guests at the yacht club. Next day the Potomac, still flying the presidential flag, proceeded north through the Cape Cod Canal, where onlookers gaped at the big figures of the President and his cronies sitting on the afterdeck.
But it was not the President they saw. Late the evening before, the Potomac had sped to the quiet waters off the western end of Martha’s Vineyard, where seven darkened warships were waiting. Early the next morning the President and his mess crew were transferred to the heavy cruiser Augusta. His top military command were already on board. Soon the Augusta was steaming east past Nantucket Shoals Lightship; then it swung north. Admiral Ernest J. King, in command, had taken all precautions; destroyers were disposed ahead off both bows; swinging out from the prow of the Augusta were batteries of sharp steel knives to cut mine cables; recently installed radar peered through the mists. Two days later the little fleet sighted the coast of Newfoundland and soon put into Argentia Harbor, in a small bay rimmed by low hills covered by scrawny pines and brush. Here the Americans awaited Winston Churchill, who was proceeding west on the Prince of Wales.
It would be a meeting the President and the Prime Minister had long hoped for, a meeting that had been forced to wait on the tumultuous events of 1940 and 1941. As experts in the dramatic, they had set the stage carefully. To sharpen the suspense—and to discourage undue fears and expectations at home—Roosevelt had insisted on the tightest secrecy; even Grace Tully had had no hint of the trip. Such precautions meant hasty staff preparation and no agenda; the military chiefs were given the latest possible notice. The President’s son Franklin was ordered to report so abruptly to the “Commander in Chief” on the Augusta that he feared he was in for some kind of dressing down from Admiral King; Elliott Roosevelt, summoned from his air-reconnaissance squadron in Newfoundland, was equally mystified. Churchill had preferred a more publicized rendezvous; he wanted to dramatize Anglo-American unity, conduct meaningful discussions, plan definite steps, win major commitments. Roosevelt wanted merely to meet Churchill, feel him out, exchange ideas and information, and achieve a moral and symbolic unity.
Early on August 9 the huge battleship Prince of Wales, still scarred from her encounter with the Bismarck, loomed out of low-hanging mists and dropped anchor. Soon Churchill was clambering aboard the Augusta, while the President stood arm in arm with Elliott and the band played the national anthems. “At last,” said Roosevelt, “we’ve gotten together.” The Prime Minister handed the President a letter from the King; staffs were presented to each other; soon the two men were meeting alone, except for Hopkins, who had come over on the Prince of Wales with Churchill. By the time Elliott joined them after lunch the men were deep in problems of Lend-Lease, diplomacy, and American public opinion. In the evening, after the two leaders and their staffs shared broiled chicken, spinach omelet, and chocolate ice cream in the Augusta’s mess, Churchill, at Roosevelt’s invitation, gave one of his enthralling appreciations of the military situation.
Rearing back in his chair, slewing his cigar around from cheek to cheek, hunching his shoulders forward, slashing the air with his hands, the Prime Minister described battles won and lost, spoke dourly of Russia’s chances, and in his great rolling phrases conveyed all at the same time a sense of Britain’s indomitability and its need for American intervention.
Roosevelt listened intently, fiddled with his pince-nez, doodled on the tablecloth with a burned match, occasionally put in questions. Next day, Sunday, he paid a return visit to the Prince of Wales. On the quarterdeck under the big guns President and Prime Minister attended religious services in the company of several hundred intermixed tars, bluejackets, and Marines spread out over the decks and turrets. It was another unforgettable ceremony, the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes draped side by side on the lectern, the President grave and attentive, Churchill, his Navy cap slightly askew, tearfully singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” American and British chaplains sharing in the reading of the prayers. It was a time to live, Churchill later reflected; nearly half of those who sang were soon to die.
Then to the business at hand. As the President expected, Churchill pressed from the start for stepped-up American action in the Atlantic and a stronger line in the Pacific. Despite the hopeful reports of Hopkins from Russia and continuing intelligence that the forces before Moscow were holding out, the two leaders evaluated aid to Russia on the basis of what could be spared from Atlantic and home needs. Churchill still was seeing Soviet aid as a temporary expedient; Roosevelt, more as a long-term enterprise; but neither was yet ready to gamble heavily on Soviet survival.
Roosevelt did not want to go, in the Atlantic, beyond the recently agreed-on policy of American escorts for all fast convoys between Newfoundland and Iceland. But his willingness to stretch neutrality past this breaking point was clear from his commitment on other Atlantic islands. Churchill told him that he planned to occupy the Canary Islands, perhaps even before a still-feared Nazi attack through Spain. Such a move, Churchill conceded, would inevitably cause a German-supported counterattack by Spain, in which case Britain could not live up to its promise to Portugal to defend the Azores. Would the United States do so instead? Roosevelt agreed, on the understanding that Portugal would make the request of him. Later Churchill called off the attack on the Canaries, but the incident showed how far Roosevelt was willing—given a crisis situation in Iberia—to allow a move as important as the occupation of the Azores to turn on Churchill’s initiative.
Churchill was ready with a hard line on Japan, too. Following the Sunday services he proposed to Roosevelt a joint declaration to Tokyo that “any further encroachment by Japan in the Southwest Pacific” would produce a situation in which Britain and the United States “would be compelled to take counter measures even though these might lead to war” between Japan and the two nations. Churchill, under pressure from the Dutch and the Pacific Dominions to enlist American aid if Japan attacked, wanted to intertwine American and British efforts in the Pacific just as had been done in the Atlantic. Above all, Churchill feared a showdown that would leave Britain, with its weakened defenses in Southeast Asia, holding the fort alone against the Japanese. He was certain that only the stiffest warning from Washington would have any deterrent effect.
Roosevelt was more wary. Even less than Churchill did he seek a war with Japan, but while the Prime Minister thought a showdown could be avoided through firmness, the President preferred to drag things out, to parley, to stall the Japanese along, to let them save face, at least for a month or so. Hence, instead of sending off Churchill’s near-ultimatum, he proposed to inform Nomura that if Tokyo would promise to pull out of Indochina, Washington would try to settle remaining issues with Japan, but that if the Japanese failed to respond to this proposal and continued their military expansion, the President would then have to take steps that might result in war between the United States and Japan. Churchill went along with this procedure, which left the initiative wholly with the President.
By now both men must have seen the veiled but acute differences that separated them on Japan. Churchill could gamble on a strong line, for such a line would either compel Japan to give up China and
Indochina and further expansion and take the pressure off the British in the Far East, or it would produce an explosion. An explosion that propelled the United States into a Pacific war would project it into the Atlantic war, too—Churchill’s cardinal goal. The President preferred to delay any showdown until his Army and Navy were stronger, public opinion more receptive, and a two-front war more manageable. Meantime, he would follow his policy of Atlantic First.
While the two leaders agreeably negotiated and gently sparred, the military chiefs conducted almost wholly separate discussions on the Prince of Wales. First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound, Sir John Dill, and their cohorts tried to convince the Americans that increased aid and even intervention now would bring victory much sooner and more cheaply; the American Joint Chiefs tried to show the bareness of their cupboard, drained as it had been by the needs of Britain and other nations. Already in the discussions there were harbingers of future disagreement, as the British seemed bent on bombing, blockading, enveloping, and wearing out Germany, while the Americans—particularly Marshall—contended that it would be necessary for Allied ground forces to invade the Continent and close with the enemy. There were happier omens, too—especially the discovery that American and British officers could differ and occasionally clash, but also communicate, agree, and forge a closer working co-operation, each with considerable respect for the other side.
Strangely, the significance of the Argentia Conference would lie far less in strategic decisions and commitments, of which there were virtually none, than in a discussion of war aims toward which Roosevelt and Churchill had done little advance planning, but out of which came the Atlantic Charter, one of the most compelling statements of the war.
The President had discouraged open talk in the administration of specific postwar aims. It was all right to discuss lofty objectives, but debate over ways and means, he felt, might create dissension and divert attention from immediate diplomatic and military problems. Then, too, discussion of postwar matters assumed that there would be “war” first—which in turn could reopen old wounds from the League of Nations battle. “I have not the slightest objection toward your trying your hand at an outline of the post-war picture,” he told Adolf A. Berle in June. “But for Heaven’s sake don’t ever let the columnists hear of it….”
But events in 1941 forced Roosevelt’s hand. The Russo-German war was already raising dire questions of the future of truncated Poland; the Polish government-in-exile in London had to be considered, as did the big Polish voting blocs at home. Roosevelt was concerned that London might be making secret territorial deals, as in days of yore. Hull and Welles were already pressing for nondiscriminatory postwar economic policies. And there was a large body of sentiment among both Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s constituents for an evocation of moral principles and a statement of war aims—especially as to a new League of Nations.
It was best, Roosevelt had decided, to stick to very general principles and to very realistic, functional institutions. Churchill, always eager to couple British and American policy more tightly, wanted to make more specific commitments. He and his aides produced a draft that started off with high-sounding promises and got down to business in a call for “fair and equitable distribution of essential produce” both between and within nations. Welles was disturbed by the vagueness of this economic plank. A Wilsonian himself, he could never forget that his chief back home would be acutely displeased if the way was left open for autarchy. After some sharp bargaining with Churchill, while Roosevelt looked on sympathetically, the Undersecretary gained as strong a statement as the Prime Minister felt would be acceptable to the Dominions, with their stake in imperial preference. There was no reference to trade liberalization, to Welles’s keen disappointment.
The crucial discussion of war aims came late in the morning of August 11 in the Admiral’s quarters on the Augusta, which served as Roosevelt’s office and mess. Bright sunlight streamed through the portholes. Roosevelt sat in a gray suit, his shirt open at the collar; Churchill was still in naval uniform; Welles and Hopkins and one or two of the British staff sat by. The meeting was somewhat strained. Churchill was still upset by Welles’s demand for free trade, and by Roosevelt’s proposal that their joint statement make clear that there had been no commitments for the future between the two governments. Commitments were precisely what Churchill wanted to bring back to his country and to hearten the occupied nations. But the President feared the isolationist reaction to “secret agreements,” and Churchill had to settle for only slightly stronger language.
It was on postwar international organization that the two leaders had their bluntest confrontation. Churchill asked the President if the charter could explicitly endorse some kind of “effective international organization.” Roosevelt demurred; he said that he himself would not favor the creation of a new Assembly of the League of Nations, at least until after a period of time during which a British-American police force maintained security. Churchill warned that a vague plank would arouse opposition from strong internationalists. Roosevelt agreed, but he felt that he had to be politically realistic. Churchill gave in, with the understanding that he could add some language that would strengthen the plank without uttering the dread words “international organization” or invoking the ghost of Woodrow Wilson.
The final text of the Charter was agreed to on August 11. It read:
The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.
FIRST—Their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;
SECOND—They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;
THIRD—They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;
FOURTH—They will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;
FIFTH—They desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all Nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security;
SIXTH—After the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all Nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;
SEVENTH—Such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;
EIGHTH—They believe that all of the Nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be employed by Nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such Nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.
[Signed] FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
[Signed] WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
The Prince of Wales steamed out of Argentia Harbor late on the twelfth, as Roosevelt stood on the Augusta quarterdeck close by and the band played “Auld Lang Syne.” The two leaders parted as friends and comrades. Roosevelt had learned something of Churchill’s persuasiveness and persistence; Churchill had found how hard it was to commit the President when he refu
sed to be cornered. Each had glimpsed the other’s political problems—Churchill, the continuing threat of American isolationism, memories of World War I and the League, fear of binding commitments; Roosevelt, the claims of the Dominions and Empire on London, the Prime Minister’s need to clear decisions with his War Cabinet within the hour, the hunger of the British for a far better postwar world than they had known. The two had amused, propagandized, flattered, annoyed, upstaged, and yielded to each other; their friendship had survived intact, deepened, and was ready for the heavier pressures to come.
The Augusta stood out to sea shortly after the British departed. It seemed as though history could not let go of the event. A journey that began in the company of old Scandinavian royalty and culminated in a convocation of the political and military leadership of the Atlantic world ended on the coast of Maine, with a visit from the President’s old headmaster, Endicott Peabody. And as Roosevelt left Portland by train, a young assistant to Secretary Knox, referred to in the Navy log as “Adelai Stevenson,” hurried in to see the President on an urgent strike matter.
It remained for Felix Frankfurter to take the full measure of the Atlantic meeting. The Justice was wont to write fulsome letters of praise to the President, but for once he did not rise above the occasion. Not even constant misuse could rob some phrases of their noble meaning, he wrote. Somewhere in the Atlantic, Roosevelt and Churchill had made history for the world.
“And like all truly great historic events, it wasn’t what was said or done that defined the scope of the achievement. It’s always the forces—the impalpable, the spiritual forces, the hopes, the purposes, the dreams and the endeavors—that are released that matter….
“It was all grandly conceived and finely executed….The deed and the spirit and the invigoration of a common human fraternity in the hearts of men will endure—and steel our will and kindle our actions toward the goal of ridding the world of this horror.”
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