FDR concluded his letter to his wife with “Loads and loads of love—and try to get lots of sleep preparatory to that—Social Season. Another year let’s cut it out and take a trip to Samoa and Hawaii instead! / Devotedly F.”
FDR’s fantasy trip together to Samoa and Hawaii was particularly welcome just then as ER prepared not only for Christmas but the “Social Season” compounded by the demands of the Twentieth Amendment, which ended the “lame duck” term and for the first time moved the president’s traditional March inauguration to 20 January.
While FDR sailed, ER and Hick enjoyed an increasingly rare week together, mostly anonymous and happy. After several days in Washington, they drove to Arthurdale, then visited Alice Davis and other friends in Virginia.
After the holiday part of his cruise, FDR had a triumphant reception in Rio de Janeiro. The enthusiasm of the crowds for the hero of the New Deal and the Good Neighbor Policy was unprecedented, and heartening. ER would have been pleased, her husband wrote:
I do wish you could see Rio. The harbor—the colors and the orchids—common as sweet peas!… YOU have been given a huge silver tea set by the Brazilian government, very old Brazilian hammered silver! and a great rarity and not at all bad looking.
There was real enthusiasm in the streets. I really begin to think the moral effect of the Good Neighbor Policy is making itself definitely felt.
FDR’s speech to the congress of Brazil made a strong impression worldwide: The fact of international “understanding and good will,” of friendship within this hemisphere as a model of true amity, was the “best answer to those pessimists who scoff at the idea” and all possibilities of peace.
Although Brazil’s President Getulio Vargas was a fascist-allied dictator, everywhere FDR went, crowds cheered, “Viva la democracia! Viva Roosevelt!” Along the beautiful streets of Rio that day everything seemed possible, negotiable. FDR felt ebullient. Vargas even whispered into his ear as they drove through the tightly packed, wildly cheering crowds: “Perhaps you’ve heard that I am a dictator?” FDR smiled as he continued to wave and replied, “Perhaps you’ve heard that I am one, too.”
When FDR addressed a huge gathering in Montevideo, James proved himself a protective and quick-witted aide. His father removed from his pocket a blue-and-white handkerchief to mop his brow. Suddenly the crowd cheered wildly, and James realized that they were responding to the Uruguayan national colors in FDR’s hand. Instantly, James leaned over and “whispered ferociously” in his father’s ear: “For God’s sake, don’t blow your nose in that handkerchief.” Immediately, FDR waved it vigorously at the crowd.
In Buenos Aires, FDR was greeted by two million Argentines, who showered him with flowers. According to one eyewitness, his reception “exceeded in warmth and spontaneity anything that has ever occurred in Argentina.”
On 1 December, FDR opened the first Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace with a stirring address to “members of a family [who represent twenty-one republics of the Americas] and meet together for their common good”:
I am profoundly convinced that the plain people everywhere in the civilized world today wish to live in peace…. And still leaders and Governments resort to war. Truly, if the genius of mankind that has invented the weapons of death cannot discover the means of preserving peace, civilization as we know it lives in an evil day….
The madness of a great war in other parts of the world would affect us and threaten our good in a hundred ways. And the economic collapse of any Nation … must of necessity harm our own prosperity.
Can we, the Republics of the New World, help the Old World to avert the catastrophe which impends? Yes; I am confident that we can….
FDR’s prescription for hemispheric peace included strengthened democratic movements, more freedom and security, greater trade and commerce through reciprocal agreements, frontier and territorial mediation, cultural and educational exchanges.
Ongoing border controversies within South America required adjustments, FDR declared, which “may appear to involve material sacrifice.” But, he concluded, there “is no profit in war. Sacrifices in the cause of peace are infinitesimal compared with the holocaust of war…. Democracy is still the hope of the world….”
FDR was impressed, even pleased, that his Buenos Aires speech was banned in both Germany and Italy. But his words concerning democracy and peace puzzled various Latin American delegates to this Buenos Aires conference. Concerned about investments, material interests, and the future of U.S. commerce, the United States supported new hemispheric dictators Trujillo, Somoza, and Batista. The bitter factor of regional control was still alive. U.S. activities in the Americas since the Monroe Doctrine had been domineering, acquisitive, violent. The Colossus of the North, El Pulpo—the octopus—was distrusted despite FDR’s personal appeal.
Any extension of U.S. power in the region was resisted. Argentina particularly warned against any further encroachment on Latin American sovereignty. Indeed, the Argentine foreign minister, Dr. Carlos Saavedra Lamas, who had just returned from Geneva, where he presided over the League of Nations Assembly, insisted that only the League should be called in for arbitration, negotiation, and general peace-keeping.
FDR, in his speech, had honored Saavedra, the recipient of the 1936 Nobel Prize for Peace. He had great influence, and his commitment to the primacy of the League was supported by the five Central American nations as well as Uruguay, Bolivia, and Chile.
There were many achievements at Buenos Aires, but there was no mutual accord: Each nation remained free to define its position, as well as its commercial and military relations, independently. There was only unanimous support for the principle of nonintervention: A treaty was signed that banned direct or indirect intervention in the internal or external affairs of any Central or South American nation. Ultimately this first of many conferences laid the foundation for a regional organization, the Organization of American States (OAS), and for improved hemispheric relations.
FDR left the conference with the cheering citizens of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay uppermost in his thoughts. Millions of people had appeared on the streets to rally and chant, “Democracy! Democracy!” FDR perceived their enthusiasm as a repudiation of both the fascist and communist challenges. He told Ickes that he believed his trip “strengthened the democratic sentiment throughout the world and has had favorable repercussions among the peoples of Europe.”
But in Latin America, as Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler ravaged the Spanish countryside and bombed civilians, there was little enthusiasm for FDR’s policy of strict neutrality. Many in the Spanish-speaking republics identified with and supported Spain’s Popular Front government.
Modern unrestricted warfare had been under way since fascist rebels declared war on the democratically elected government of Spain on 17 July 1936. In response, the great nonfascist powers led by Britain, France, and the United States declared absolute neutrality. Franco was armed and supported by Rome and Berlin. Neutrality created a fantasy of containment: FDR joined that fantasy and gambled that war and fascism might thereby be limited to Italy, Spain, and Germany, while communism and threats from the left would be crushed in Spain, as in Germany and Italy.
Fear dominated the situation. France’s Popular Front Socialist prime minister, Léon Blum, feared that French aid to Republican Spain might cause Britain’s conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, to aid Germany. Blum also feared that France’s aggressive right would topple his government if he aided Spain. The Conservative rulership of Britain considered fascism an acceptable barrier to Popular Front, radical, and dangerous democratic movements. Nobody doubted that uninvolvement, or neutrality, in Spain was an aggressive act of support for fascist forces.
FDR joined that policy with unnecessary enthusiasm. His policy of noninvolvement went so far as to call for an end to private commerce and airplane sales to Spain—despite conventional international law, which specifically allowed commerce, including arms sales, with legi
timate, recognized governments and nations in a state of civil war. For many, including peace advocates and Senator Gerald P. Nye, strict neutrality and an embargo against Loyalist Spain was an act of war. Nevertheless, that was what FDR called for.
ER disagreed completely with her husband’s policy on Spain. It was the first international issue she refused to be silent about. ER spoke and wrote about Spain continually.
The situation worsened on 26 November when Germany and Japan sealed a pact of mutual accord, which threatened to isolate Russia—Spain’s only ally. ER and her circle of peace advocates had hoped that FDR’s Latin American tour would strengthen the League of Nations response against fascist aggression in Spain. But no serious discussions about Spain were held, and FDR left Buenos Aires with a display of triumphant achievement.
Personally, FDR’s trip was plunged into gloom by the sudden death of his closest and most trusted personal aide, Gus Gennerich. A former New York City police officer, first assigned to the governor in 1928, Gennerich had been closer to FDR than any man besides Louis Howe.
Fifty at the time of his death, August Gennerich was six feet tall, muscular, agile, and efficient. He traveled everywhere with “the Boss,” listened to his speeches, made useful suggestions. FDR called him “my humanizer,” his dependable “ambassador to the man in the street.”
Gennerich had guaranteed FDR’s physical dignity, from his morning rituals to his nighttime needs. He helped the Boss bathe, dress, and move; he carried him with assurance and aplomb. He locked his braces, wheeled his chair, got him in and out of cars and fishing boats, up and down stairs, onto stages.
In less than six months, FDR had lost the two men who had ensured him both emotional and physical support. More than most, they had pierced FDR’s facade of endless cordiality and determined good cheer—which served also as a notable barrier to intimacy, even to knowing. Gennerich was one of very few companions with whom FDR could enjoy moments of carefree relaxation, or abandon. It was Gus Gennerich who accompanied FDR to such intimate parties as Ickes hosted; and it was Gus Gennerich who participated, with a watchful eye, in the liquid revelries at Warm Springs and elsewhere that ER disliked so much.
FDR was devastated by Gennerich’s death, and he wrote ER full details as soon as the ship left Buenos Aires on 2 December: “Dearest Babs: The tragedy of poor Gus hangs over all of us….” It was “a real shock and a real loss for as you know good old Gus was the kind of a loyal friend who simply cannot be replaced.”
ER wrote:
Dearest Franklin, I am so sorry your trip had to be saddened and I’m deeply grieved that you have lost Gus who was so loyal and devoted. I’ll miss him a great deal for I really loved him but for you the loss is very hard in so many, many ways. I’ve had his room locked [as FDR had requested] and asked… to keep everything intact until you return.
ER was particularly thankful that “Jimmy was with his father on this trip” that went so quickly from cheer to grief, which ER felt was the sorrowful pattern of life.
Hick wrote: “Gus was an amazing person, wasn’t he?” At the White House, two administrative assistants who were friends of hers, Johnny and Wade, were bereft:
It seemed they had some mutual friend, a man who had known Gus for years, and Gus used to go out to their house a lot and play the piano for them! I never knew until last night that they knew him. They used to go to his birthday parties, at the Mayflower. Marvelous parties, they said, with one of the White House servants—it sounded like Mingo—to wait on his guests. All kinds of people used to be there, they said—high and low. And they said Gus was a gorgeous host…. They are coming to his funeral if it’s permissible. I told them I thought it was…. I judge by what they said that, if his friends all come [to the White House funeral] there will be some crowd!
FDR asked ER to prepare the funeral service in the East Room, which she arranged. And everybody was aggrieved to think about Gus’s plans for retirement; he had bought a farm near Hyde Park that FDR helped him furnish. It accentuated the tragedy, FDR wrote ER: “Gus was really living for that farm—he thought about it day and night,” and bought things for it at every stop. “Ever so much love. I’ve missed you a lot and it will be good to be back Tues. Eve. / Devotedly F.”
As FDR sailed home, King Edward abdicated his throne. FDR was bemused, and wondered about diplomatic protocol at dinner with British officers in Trinidad: “Do I or do I not propose the ‘health of the King’? Awful dilemma. It is however to be solved by good manners and not by State Dept diplomatic protocol.”
Presumably the president toasted the king, although Ickes noted that FDR was “disgusted” by the abdication, and thought that Edward “could have forced this situation.” He could have been crowned and then announced that Mrs. Simpson was now “the Duchess of Cornwall.” The president and everybody aboard had “guessed wrong” and bet King Edward would keep his throne.
Hick also wrote of the abdication, which became something of an emotional litmus test in ER’s circle: “Poor little King!… I wonder what he will do. Lord, but living is such hard business, for so many people!”
Hick could not have known Edward’s politics, and her enthusiasm for the “great little guy,” who was also an ardent friend of new Germany, related to her identification with the king’s loss of throne—and career—for the woman he loved:
Poor fellow. I do hope he’ll never be sorry—disappointed or disillusioned. I’m sorry for Mrs. Simpson. She will have an awful job on her hands. What will he do with himself all these years that are left? He’s only in his early 40’s. They can’t go sailing around on yachts forever. I wonder if he won’t be very bored and restless and unhappy…—and if she can keep him happy. He probably doesn’t know it now—but I’m afraid he is in for some very bad times….
ER too considered it rather a shame. Like FDR, she was surprised that Edward had decided to abdicate: “Well, and so—all is lost for love. Too bad he couldn’t have served his people and had his love too!”
It was, for many, a dismal holiday season. Spain cast a grim, shadow, and within the White House, one loss followed another. Shortly before Christmas, Marshall Haley, the twenty-year-old son of ER’s personal White House maid Mabel Haley, died. Tommy called to notify ER in New York, and she was grateful that Hick, who was in Washington, wanted to go to Virginia for his funeral service. “The world has seemed so full of sorrows these past weeks.”
Hick was the only white mourner at Marshall Haley’s funeral, and the staff was impressed by her consideration for the family and the young man, who had been studying to become a minister and was president of his class. She wrote ER the details of the day:
They buried [Marshall] down by the railroad tracks. It just looked like an unkempt field to me…. I didn’t think it was a cemetery—there isn’t even a fence around it…. Then it occurred to me … very few colored people can afford to have tombstones….
Hick drove down with Lizzie McDuffie, the White House maid:
Mrs. MacDuffie is a fascinating person! She was a most diverting companion…. She recited a lot of poetry to me—Paul Laurence Dunbar, some deliciously funny things in dialect, one about a Welsh clergyman that she said was the President’s favorite, and a very stirring thing, called “Hagar’s Farewell to Abraham.” My God, what feeling she puts into those lines! One was Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Abandoned Plantation”… or “Deserted Plantation,” and she told me that every now and then the President’s mother sends for her and has her recite it to her. “I guess,” said Mrs. MacDuffie, “she feels it might happen to Hyde Park some day, that the young folks don’t care so much for it, and she’s seen all those other places along the Hudson, deserted after the old folks have died.”…
My dear, I think you must do a novel about your mother-in-law sometime! She also told me all about “Gone With the Wind,” which she borrowed from a Secret Service man and read last summer and liked a lot. She said she understood they were going to dramatize it, and that she would dearly lo
ve to play the Negro mammy in it! “She’s exactly like my own grandmother was,” she said. And that led to a discussion of slavery…. She told me about her grandparents—all slaves, and her mother was born in slavery—and what they did after the Civil War…. Fascinating stories.*
Between hospital visits to Boston where her son Franklin was still in serious condition, ER spent several days with Earl Miller, who uncharacteristically asked her for a favor. Earl loved to cook and bake almost as much as he loved to ride and shoot, and now requested ER to do something “I know nothing about! Earl wants me to try and watch John make a cake to find out what he does wrong! Then I’m to show him about ironing shirts! In the meantime,” ER wrote Hick, “Earl’s nerves are about like yours for different reasons so it is probably a good thing I’m here!”
Earl “is another person like you in whose soul there is no peace. He has to attain it himself but I think it is harder for him than for you because he has no intellectual resources which he has developed.”
Hick replied: “I’m sorry Earl was so upset. Poor dear, you just jump right from the frying pan into the fire, don’t you?…”
ER now worked harder than ever; saw more people in a day; took on new projects. At first her relentless schedule was her lifeline; increasingly, it was what made her happy. She dined with Bernard Baruch, and he stayed until after midnight. She wrote Anna: “Baruch dined with me alone … and he is a stimulating guest. He wants something and I rather hope Pa gives it to him for I think he’ll make something out of it.”
The next night Molly Dewson spent three hours with ER to discuss the future of the second administration, and she too “wants something.” Then she met with Monty High about the NAACP’s antilynching plans, with a delegation from Arthurdale, and with several other groups. She wrote Anna: “For one and all I must do things, so my work is cut out for me after Pa gets back.”
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