Mr Churchill went to Washington to plan for unity of action, and stayed at the White House. It was the beginning of a wartime association founded upon a well-established mutual regard and doubly proofed against external efforts to break it. Never before in history had the leaders of two great democracies worked together on the fraternal terms which came to exist between the President and the Prime Minister. Each stood high in the opinions of the other’s people, and as a result each strengthened the other’s hand. Roosevelt and Churchill together were a combination of scarcely precedented power.
Faith and Courage; All Resources Mobilized
The President’s message to Congress at the beginning of 1942 showed that the attack by Japan had not only failed to stun him but that he had reacted in much the same way as to the economic perils of 1932. In both cases his response was a programme of immediate action on a nationwide scale. All the vast resources of the United States were mobilized for war. A people which justly prided itself upon the largeness of its conceptions was given an almost unlimited scope for effort. The estimated cost was staggering, but the nation accepted it. He was close on 60 and his birthday at the end of the month brought many messages which indicated the regard of the allied peoples for him. He was already in the ninth year of the immense labours in which his own faith and courage had been his chief sustenance.
As Commander-in-Chief of the United States it was Roosevelt’s task to make a peaceful and largely self-centred people strategically minded, and to interpret the war to them as a world conflict rather than an opportunity for the counter-strike they longed to deal Japan. Isolationism was his greatest obstacle, and he said of those who still proclaimed its merits that they wanted the American Eagle to imitate the ostrich. Thus in firm but good-humoured fashion he led his people on, and the fact that the great majority were brought to take the broad, patient, and unselfish view which the character of the war demanded was due primarily to him. Despite, however, the huge measure of support he commanded, he continued to be exposed to a running fire of criticism from sections of the public and the Press.
In April he proposed a seven-point programme to combat the rise which had taken place in the cost of living and included a large increase in taxation. The fear of inflation had begun and was to continue to haunt him, but he was to find Congress somewhat reluctant to incur electoral unpopularity by supporting him in drastic measures. Another danger which he sought to avert was a light-hearted but, as he knew, unfounded optimism on the part of the people. By the summer, however, he was in a position to say that America’s reservoir of resources was reaching a flood stage, and vast amounts of material were being sent over-sea to the assistance of the allies. It was a vindication of his own far-sightedness. His lend-lease agreements were already taking shape as key instruments of national policy and he was beginning to realize his world statesman’s aim of distributing the financial burdens of the war. In June he welcomed Mr Churchill once again and found that they were still at one upon the major problems of the war. In September he made a quick tour of 11 States in order to test the spirit of the nation and reported it ‘unbeatable’. In November came the landing in North Africa – Mr Churchill attributed the authorship of it to him – and what he regarded as the turning point of the war.
Casablanca
The President’s New Year address in 1943 to a new Congress will probably rank among the greatest of many great utterances, for in it he was the inspired realist. He looked backward with a well justified satisfaction and forward with a lively hope. He said it was necessary to keep in mind not only the evil things against which America was fighting but the good things she was fighting for. Never indeed did he stand forth so clearly as the leader of his people’s thought as well as the ruler of their actions or as the possessor of a grasp wide enough to encompass the whole of the struggle for civilization. Then hard up on this call to thought and action came the bill for it – a Budget of $100,000,000,000. These preliminaries to the year performed, he was before the month had ended at Casablanca, when he conferred with Mr Churchill and the Fighting French at what, remembering General Grant, he called the ‘Unconditional Surrender Meeting’. The momentous conversations lasted for some 10 days and every aspect of the war was reviewed at them. Nothing like this had ever happened before, for he was the first President who had ever left his country in wartime. On the way home he stopped at Brazil for a discussion with the President. By thus breaking with tradition and adopting Mr Churchill’s practice of going himself to a vital centre of action Roosevelt achieved a master-stroke of leadership, for not only did he enhance his own authority as war leader but drew the beam of national interest after him. Paramount, however, though his authority was he continued to be engaged by efforts to keep prices down in spite of the hesitancy of Congress and the recalcitrance of active labour interests. In April he went to Mexico to discuss post-war cooperation. It was the first time the chief executives of the two countries had met. At the same time he visited the American forces in the Southern States.
In May Mr Churchill, at the President’s invitation, paid his fourth wartime visit to the United States, and it was widely noted that such occasions were the presage of great events. In this case the communiqué announced a full agreement on all points ‘from Great Britain to New Britain and beyond’. At the same time Roosevelt found himself in one of his recurrent troubles with labour – in this case, the miners – and handled it with characteristic firmness. He was not, however, to receive the support he desired from Congress, for late in June an Anti-Strike Bill which he vetoed was passed in spite of him. It was one of a series of setbacks in domestic policy. They were offset by occasional victories; but his supreme task of directing American strategy continued to be complicated by distractions due to the attitude of an increasingly difficult Legislature.
With the collapse of Italy the war entered on a new, and hopeful phase; but he refused to limit his aims even to a total victory over the Axis, and looked beyond it to another over all the forces of oppression, intolerance, insecurity, and injustice which had impeded the forward march of civilization. In August he went to Quebec for yet another meeting with Mr Churchill in which his old friend Mr Mackenzie King sat with them. Then, he travelled westwards to Ottawa, where he addressed the two Houses of the Canadian Parliament. It was the first time an American President had been there, and in his speech he stated that during the Quebec Conference things had been talked over and ways and means discussed ‘in the manner of members of the same family’, a phrase in true accord with both the theory and practice of the ‘good neighbour’ policy.
In November, 1943, Roosevelt left the United States for the series of historic conferences by which the leaders of the Allied Nations sought to consolidate their aims and efforts. At the first meetings in Cairo he and Mr Churchill met Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and discussed future military operations against Japan. They declared that she should be stripped of all her island gains in the Pacific as well as the territories she had stolen from China and other spoils of her aggression. To this end it was agreed to continue to persevere in the serious and prolonged efforts necessary to secure her unconditional surrender. The President with the Prime Minister moved next to Teheran, where for four intensive days they were in council with Marshal Stalin, whom Roosevelt then met for the first time. There in most amicable discussion the three leaders shaped and confirmed their international policy and announced jointly that they recognized their responsibility for a peace that would command the good will of the overwhelming masses of the peoples of the world. Thereupon the President with Mr Churchill went back to Cairo for discussions with M. Ismet Inönü, the President of the Turkish Republic. On the return journey Roosevelt visited both Malta and Sicily, arriving eventually at the White House bronzed and cheerful. One of his last actions of the year was to order the Secretary of State for War to take over the railways where trouble had been threatening.
In early January, 1944, Mr and Mrs Roosevelt presented their homestead at Hyde Park to the United States Government as a historical national site with a proviso that the immediate family might use it. It followed upon an earlier gift of the Roosevelt Library there. Then a few days later the President’s message to Congress embodied his programme for still further mobilization of the resources of the nation. In it he referred scathingly to the ‘pressure groups’ and others who, while he had been abroad, had been busy in the pursuit of interests which he regarded as only secondary to the supreme task of winning the war. This corrective he accompanied by yet another Budget for $100,000,000,000.
In