that he would go to any length short of war to stop the aggressor, and added that there were effective means of doing so. His speeches during the months which followed contained strong declarations for peace, but still more powerful vindications of democracy. His policy, he declared, was the defence of civilization against militarism. Thus he opposed to the morbid race theory and overweening demands of Hitler the broad and humane sanity of his democratic faith. At the same time he proceeded to strengthen the material defences of the United States and, as a precaution, ordered a comprehensive survey of American industry.
When in March Hitler seized what remained of Bohemia he sent messages to him and Mussolini as a ‘friendly intermediary’ asking them to give a guarantee not to attack for 10 years a specified list of nations. If they agreed he said he would be prepared to ask for reciprocal guarantees and call an international conference to which the United States would give every support in order to try to reach a settlement of all international difficulties. It was, in fact his last great bid; but Hitler would have none of it.
During the summer of 1939 the King and Queen toured Canada and took the opportunity of visiting the United States. The President and Mrs Roosevelt received them at Washington and were their hosts at the White House and then for a weekend at Hyde Park. It was a happy interlude in grave and anxious days. Then, as towards the end of August war drew nearer, Roosevelt appealed twice to Hitler to preserve peace and to the President of Poland to continue negotiations. He also sent a personal message to the King of Italy asking him to use his influence in promoting negotiations. Next, on September 1 when war seemed inevitable, he begged the Powers concerned to declare publicly that they would not bomb civilian populations or unfortified cities. The German answer was the devastation of open Polish towns and villages. After this there was nothing for him to do except to fulfil his obligation to proclaim neutrality, and, under the laws which had been adopted in recent years with the purpose of keeping America out of war, he had to forbid American ships to enter the zone of combat, to warn Americans not to travel there, and to preclude the supply of ammunition or armaments to the belligerents and the raising of loans by those who still owed war debts in America. In the autumn, however, on his urgent insistence, the ban on armaments was relaxed so as to permit the sale of aeroplanes, munitions, and weapons to France and Great Britain under the ‘cash and carry’ plan. In this country it was a very welcome amendment, and was the beginning of the pro-allied legislation which he was determined to enact. He had indeed many weapons in his armoury and was prepared to use them all. He could warn and thunder and impose embargoes and trade sanctions but he lacked the only one to which Hitler might have paid attention, for he could not offer the threat of war. A biographer has written of him that at this time he was ‘a crusader wielding a sheathed sword’.
National Defence
With the overrunning of Europe and the fall of France the attitude of the people of the United States began to change. Demands for a vast programme of national defence arose, and Roosevelt, responsive as ever to national feeling, announced that there could only be peace ‘if we are prepared to meet force with force if the challenge is ever made’. The last despairing appeal of France moved him deeply; but he was compelled to point out that assistance by armed forces was not for him but for Congress to give. By June, 1940, American opinion had moved so far that he was able to say of Italy that ‘the hand that held the dagger had struck it into the back of its neighbour’ and to add that America sent forward her prayers and hopes ‘to those beyond the seas who are maintaining with magnificent valour the battle for freedom’. In July, 1940, at a Press conference he defined the ‘five freedoms’, the aims to be realized if peace were to return to the earth.
In the election of 1940 Mr Wendell Willkie was the Republican candidate. There was an honoured and unbroken tradition which forbade a third term to any President, and for a long time Roosevelt refused to say whether he would be prepared to stand. At last, however, having made it clear that he had no desire to do so, he yielded to a unanimous request from the convention at Chicago. Willkie was a strong opponent of the New Deal and of most of Roosevelt’s internal legislation. He was, however, in general agreement with him on a more vigorous defence policy and fuller aid for Britain. It was therefore to those matters that the President confined his attention, inaugurating meanwhile a huge programme for the production of munitions with the aid of leading businessmen whom he called in to assist and advise. He also took two leading Republicans, Colonels Knox and Stimson, into the Cabinet, transferred 50 destroyers to Great Britain in return for naval bases, and worked out a defence policy with Canada. He thus fulfilled his slogan ‘Full speed ahead’ in war production. In the campaign itself, however, he took little part and made only a few speeches towards its close, when he said he had been misrepresented.
Third Time President
Once again, although Mr Willkie did better against him than either Mr Hoover or Mr Landon, he won handsomely – he was elected by a majority of some 5,000,000 on the popular vote – and thus opened up new fields of leadership. Almost immediately he brought forward his lend-lease proposals, which were embodied in a measure entitled ‘An Act to promote the defense of the United States’. These proposals were to enable him to provide war supplies for Great Britain and in fact for ‘the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States’. Thereafter he kept on enlarging his production plans and stated that America would be ‘the arsenal of democracy’. He also pushed her naval patrols farther into the ocean than they had gone in defence of neutrality, and, after the Italians had been driven from Eritrea, sent American supply ships to the Red Sea. Calling for ‘unqualified immediate all-out aid for Britain, increased and again increased until total victory has been won’, he urged that there should be no idle machine and that they should operate 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Speaking in May at the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, he said: ‘He taught us that democracy could not survive in isolation. We applaud his judgment. We applaud his faith.’ Thus, by arming his country for its own defence and in the meantime sustaining the resistance of Great Britain, he served what was in fact the single purpose of saving democracy.
On May 27, 1941, Roosevelt delivered one of the most momentous broadcasts of his career. He reasserted the American doctrine of the freedom of the seas and announced that he had issued a Proclamation to the effect that an unlimited national emergency existed which required strengthening of the defences of the United States to the extreme limit of national power and authority. He pointed to the sinkings of merchant shipping, and said that all measures necessary to the delivery to Great Britain of the supplies she needed would be taken. ‘This can be done. It must be done. It will be done.’ In June, Lord Halifax, as Chancellor of Oxford University, conferred the degree of dcl upon him, the first time that a Chancellor had officiated at a Convocation outside the walls of Oxford.
Pearl Harbour; Entry into the War
As the year progressed the President became even more assertive in word and action. American troops were sent to Iceland, and in August he met Mr Churchill at sea. The Atlantic Charter recorded their agreement. There were attacks upon the American Navy, and he replied to them with a warning that Axis warships would enter American defensive waters at their peril. A little later he went to Congress to seek a revision of the Neutrality Act. Meanwhile German hatred of him found expression in a crescendo of abuse. Ever since the attack upon Russia he had shown his determination to uphold her resistance, and in November a credit of $100,000,000 was extended to her. Thus as the situation in both the Western and Eastern Hemispheres grew tenser he appeared to be gathering his strength against an inevitable collision. It came on December 7. He had just sent a message to the Emperor of Japan couched in persuasive terms, but protesting against the flooding of Japanese forces into Indo-China. One hour before the reply was delivered by the Japanese Ambassador Pearl Harbour was in smoke and ruin. The next day he gave in person a message to Congress and called for a declaration of war. Except for one member of the House of Representatives the answer was unanimous. ‘With confidence, ’ he said, ‘in our armed forces, with the unbounded determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.’ And so when a few days later Congress no less readily accepted the challenge of Germany and Italy, Roosevelt entered upon the war leadership supported by the national confidence to which his wise and patient handling of a long-drawn crisis had so richly entitled him.
Hotfoot