XPost: alt.history
On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 14:12:25 -0800 (PST), Jeffrey Rubard <
jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
Franklin Roosevelt’s Sunday morning began as most of his Sundays
began: with a cigarette and the Sunday papers in bed. He wasn’t a
regular churchgoer, con?ning his attendance mainly to special
occasions: weddings, funerals, his three inaugurations. In his youth
and young adulthood he had often spent Sundays on the golf course, but
his gol?ng days were long over, to his lasting regret. This Sunday morning–the ?rst Sunday of December 1941–he read about himself in the papers. The New York Times gave him the top head, explaining how he
had sent a personal appeal for peace to the Japanese emperor. Neither
the Times nor the Washington Post, which provided similar coverage,
included the substance of his appeal, as he had directed the State
Department to release only the fact of his having approached the
emperor. This way he got credit for his efforts on behalf of peace
without having to acknowledge how hopeless those efforts were. The
papers put the burden of warmongering on Japan; the government in
Tokyo declared that its “patience” with the Western powers was at an
end. Heavy movements of Japanese troops in occupied
Indochina–movements about which Roosevelt had quietly released
corroborating information–suggested an imminent thrust against
Thailand or Malaya.
Sharing the headlines with the prospect of war in the Pacific was the
reality of war in the Atlantic and Europe. The German offensive
against the Soviet Union, begun the previous June, seemed to have
stalled just short of Moscow. Temperatures of twenty below zero were
punishing the German attackers, searing their flesh and freezing their crankcases. The Germans were forced to find shelter from the cold; the
front apparently had locked into place for the winter. On the
Atlantic, the British had just sunk a German commerce raider, or so
they claimed. The report from the war zone was sketchy and
unconfirmed. The admiralty in London volunteered that its cruiser
Dorsetshire had declined to look for survivors, as it feared German
submarines in the area.
Roosevelt supposed he’d get the details from Winston Churchill. The
president and the prime minister shared a love of the sea, and
Churchill, since assuming his current of?ce eighteen months ago, had
made a point of apprising Roosevelt of aspects of the naval war kept
secret from others outside the British government. Churchill and
Roosevelt wrote each other several times a week; they spoke by
telephone less often but still regularly.
An inside account of the war was the least the prime minister could
provide, as Roosevelt was furnishing Churchill and the British the
arms and equipment that kept their struggle against Germany alive.
Until now Roosevelt had left the actual ?ghting to the British, but he
made certain they got what they needed to remain in the battle.
The situation might change at any moment, though, the Sunday papers
implied. The Navy Department–which was to say, Roosevelt–had just
ordered the seizure of Finnish vessels in American ports, on the
ground that Finland had become a de facto member of the Axis alliance.
Navy secretary Frank Knox, reporting to Congress on the war readiness
of the American ?eet, assured the legislators that it was “second to
none.” Yet it still wasn’t strong enough, Knox said. “The
international situation is such that we must arm as rapidly as
possible to meet our naval defense requirements simultaneously in both
oceans against any possible combination of powers concerting against
us.”
Roosevelt read these remarks with satisfaction. The president had long
prided himself on clever appointments, but no appointment had tickled
him more than his tapping of Knox, a Republican from the stronghold of
American isolationism, Chicago. By reaching out to the Republicans–not
once but twice: at the same time that he chose Knox, Roosevelt named
Republican Henry Stimson secretary of war–the president signaled a
desire for a bipartisan foreign policy. By picking a Chicagoan,
Roosevelt poked a ?nger in the eye of the arch- isolationist Chicago
Tribune, a poke that hurt the more as Knox was the publisher of the
rival Chicago Daily News.
Roosevelt might have chuckled to himself again, re?ecting on how he
had cut the ground from under the isolationists, one square foot at a
time; but the recent developments were no laughing matter. Four years
had passed since his “quarantine” speech in Chicago, which had warned against German and Japanese aggression. The strength of the
isolationists had prevented him from following up at that time, or for
many months thereafter. But by reiterating his message again and
again–and with the help of Hitler and the Japanese, who repeatedly
proved him right–he gradually brought the American people around to
his way of thinking. He persuaded Congress to amend America’s
neutrality laws and to let the democracies purchase American weapons
for use against the fascists. He sent American destroyers to Britain
to keep the sea lanes open. His greatest coup was Lend- Lease, the
program that made America the armory of the anti- fascist alliance.
He had done everything but ask Congress to declare war. The Sunday
papers thought this ?nal step might come soon. He knew more than the
papers did, and he thought so, too.
***
But there was something he didn’t know, or even imagine. Roosevelt was
still reading the papers when an American minesweeper on a predawn
patrol two miles off the southern coast of the Hawaiian island of
Oahu, near the entrance to Pearl Harbor, spotted what looked like a
periscope. No American submarines were supposed to be in the area,
and the minesweeper reported the sighting to its backup, the destroyer
Ward. The report provoked little alarm, partly because Hawaii was so
far from Japan and partly because Pearl Harbor’s shallow bottom seemed suf?cient protection against enemy subs. Some of?cers on the Ward
questioned the sighting; eyes play tricks in the dark. Perhaps there
was an American sub in the area; this wouldn’t have been the ?rst time overzealous security or a simple screwup had prevented information
from reaching the patrols. In any event, the Ward responded slowly to
the asserted sighting and spent most of the next two hours cruising
the area and discovering nothing.
While the desultory search continued off Oahu, Roosevelt in Washington
pondered the latest diplomatic correspondence. American experts had
cracked Japan’s code more than a year earlier; since then Roosevelt
had been secretly reading over the shoulder of the Japanese
ambassador. Yesterday evening– Saturday, December 6–he had read a long message from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy. The message answered an
ultimatum from Roosevelt, coming after many weeks of negotiations with
the Japanese, in which the president insisted that Japan give up the
territory it had seized in Southeast Asia and disavow designs on more.
The Saturday message from Tokyo left no doubt that the Japanese
government rejected the president’s ultimatum.
“This means war,” Roosevelt told Harry Hopkins, his closest adviser
and constant companion these days. Hopkins agreed. Hopkins added that
since war had become unavoidable, there would be advantages to
striking the ?rst blow.
Roosevelt shook his head. “We can’t do that,” he said. “We are a democracy and a peaceful people.” He paused. “We have a good record.”
But there was something strange about the Saturday message. The
introduction explained that it contained fourteen parts, yet only
thirteen were included. The ?nal part had been withheld until this
morning, Sunday. A courier brought it to the White House just before
ten o’clock. Roosevelt read it quickly. It said what anyone could have inferred from the previous parts: that Japan was breaking off the
negotiations with the United States. The Japanese ambassador was
instructed to deliver this news to the State Department at one o’clock
that afternoon. The precision of the instruction was unusual. Why one o’clock? The most probable answer appeared to be that the delivery
would coincide with the expected Japanese attack against Thailand or
Malaya.
At six o’clock Hawaiian time–eleven o’clock in Washington–a task force of six Japanese aircraft carriers turned into a stiff wind three
hundred miles north of Oahu. The ships and their four hundred
warplanes constituted the most powerful naval strike force ever
assembled till then–a fact that made it all the more remarkable that
the carriers had managed to slip away from Japan and steam for eleven
days toward Hawaii undetected by American intelligence or
reconnaissance. Nor did any Americans see or hear the wave after wave
of torpedo planes, bombers, and ?ghters the carriers launched into the
predawn sky. The planes formed into assigned groups and headed south.
Roosevelt frequently took lunch at his desk in the Oval Of?ce, and he
did so this Sunday. Hopkins joined him. They were eating and
discussing the crisis in the Paci?c and the war in Europe when a radar
station on the north shore of Oahu detected signals on its screens
unlike anything the operators had ever observed. Radar was a new
technology, introduced in Hawaii only months before. The operators
were novices, and their screens had often been blank. But suddenly the
screens lit up, indicating scores of aircraft approaching Oahu from
the north. One of the operators telephoned headquarters. The duty
of?cer there told him not to worry. A reinforcement squadron of
American bombers was expected from California; the headquarters of?cer
assumed that these were the aircraft on the north shore radar screens.
Roosevelt and Hopkins had ?nished eating when the ?rst wave of
Japanese planes approached Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt had a mental image
of Pearl, as he had visited the naval base early in his presidency.
But it had grown tremendously in the seven years since then. It
boasted one of the largest dry-docks in the world, a rail yard with
locomotives and cars that moved freight between the berthed vessels
and various warehouses, a factory complex that could fabricate
anything needed to maintain or repair a ship, tank farms with fuel
enough for extended campaigns across the Paci?c, a midharbor naval air
station on Ford Island to defend the base and the ships, a naval
hospital to treat the sick and wounded, barracks for the enlisted men
and civilian personnel, and other support facilities along the harbor
and in the surrounding area.
But the heart of Pearl Harbor was “Battleship Row,” on the east side
of Ford Island, where seven of America’s greatest warships were moored
this Sunday morning. An eighth was in the drydock. These vessels, the
pride of America’s Paci?c ?eet, embodied a generation of efforts to
secure America’s national interest in the western ocean. Their
construction had begun on the Navy Department watch of Franklin
Roosevelt, who as assistant navy secretary from 1913 to 1920 had
employed every means of patriotic persuasion, bureaucratic guile, and
political ?nesse to augment America’s naval power. The Arizona, the
Oklahoma, the Tennessee, and the Nevada, now gleaming in the Sunday
morning sun, were his babies, and no father was ever prouder.
All was calm aboard the battleships as the Japanese planes approached
the base. The sailors and civilians on the ships and ground initially
mistook the planes for American aircraft. When the sirens wailed a
warning, most within earshot assumed it was another drill. But as the
Japanese ?ghters screamed low over the air?eld, stra?ng the runways
and the American planes on the tarmac, the reality of the assault
became unmistakable. Some Americans on the ground thought they could
almost reach out and touch the rising sun painted on the wings of the
Japanese aircraft, so low did the ?ghters descend; others, with a
different angle, could peer into the faces of the Japanese pilots
through the cockpit windows as the planes tore by.
The Japanese ?ghters suppressed any defensive reaction by American
aircraft, guaranteeing the attackers control of the air. The Japanese
bombers and torpedo planes concentrated on the primary targets of the operation: the American battleships. The torpedo planes approached low
and ?at, dropping their munitions into the open water beside
Battleship Row. The torpedo warheads contained a quarter ton of high explosives each, and the torpedoes’ guidance systems had been
specially calibrated for Pearl’s shallow waters. The American crewmen
aboard the battleships saw the torpedo planes approaching; they
watched the torpedoes splash into the water; they followed the trails
from the propellers as the torpedoes closed in on the ships. With the
ships motionless and moored, and the surprise complete, there was
nothing the seamen could do to prevent the underwater missiles from
?nding their targets. The California took two torpedo hits, the West
Virginia six, the Arizona one, the Nevada one, the Utah two. The
Oklahoma suffered the most grievously from the torpedo barrage. Five
torpedoes blasted gaping holes in its exposed port side; it swiftly
took on water, rolled over, and sank. More than four hundred of?cers
and men were killed by the explosions, by the ?res the torpedoes
touched off, or by drowning.
The destruction from below the surface of the harbor was complemented
by the Japanese bombers’ attacks from high overhead. Dive bombers
climbed two miles into the sky to gain potential energy for their
bombing runs; the Americans on the ground and ships heard their rising
whine long before the planes burst through the scattered clouds and
released their munitions upon the ships and the facilities on shore. Conventional bombers dropped their payloads from a few thousand feet
in elevation; what those on the ground and ships ?rst heard of these
was the whistling of the armor-piercing bombs as gravity sucked them
down. The misses were more obvious at ?rst than the hits; geysers of
water spewed into the air from the physical impact of the errant
bombs. The ones that hit their targets disappeared into the holes they
punched in the decks, hatches, and gun turrets of the vessels. Only
when they had plumbed the depths of the ships did they detonate, and
even then the overburden of steel muf?ed and shrouded their
explosions.
But the explosions were more destructive for being contained. Nearly
all the battleships sustained severe bomb damage; by far the worst
befell the Arizona. Several bombs set it a?re and triggered a massive
secondary explosion that split its deck and burst its hull. More than
a thousand seamen died in the ?res and blast, and the vessel settled
on the harbor bottom, its superstructure still burning ferociously
above the waterline.
***
Roosevelt had finished lunch by now. He received a call from the State Department informing him that the Japanese ambassador had postponed
his visit until two o’clock. The president was pondering this new
wrinkle when the Oval Of?ce phone rang again. It was Frank Knox, who
said the Navy Department had received a radio report from Oahu, where
the American commander was advising all stations that an air raid was
under way. “This is no drill!” the commander emphasized.
Harry Hopkins reacted the way nearly every other knowledgeable person
did on hearing the report. “There must be some mistake,” Hopkins said. “Surely Japan would not attack in Honolulu.”
Roosevelt was as astonished as Hopkins. He had expected an attack on
Thailand or Malaya, conceivably the Philippines. But not Hawaii.
Hawaii was too far from Japan, too far from the Dutch East Indies,
whose oil was the chief object of Japan’s southward expansion, and too
well defended.
Yet the president listened calmly to the news. Now that he thought
about it, the very improbability of an attack on Pearl Harbor must
have made it appealing to the Japanese, who had a history of doing the unexpected. He assumed that the American forces at Pearl would acquit themselves well.
If the report from Hawaii was true, Roosevelt thought, it made his job
easier. He had been prepared to ask Congress for a war declaration in
response to a Japanese attack against Southeast Asia. He had believed
he could get a declaration, but because that region meant little to
most Americans, he knew he would have to work at it. Now that American territory had been attacked, he would hardly have to ask.
He called the State Department, where the Japanese ambassador and an
associate had just arrived for the ambassador’s postponed meeting.
Roosevelt spoke with Cordell Hull, the secretary of state. “There’s a report that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor,” Roosevelt said.
“Has the report been con?rmed?” Hull asked.
“No.”
Hull agreed with Roosevelt that the report was probably true, but he
didn’t mention it in his meeting with the two Japanese diplomats. By
now the timing of the original appointment was obvious: it had been
intended to coincide with the onset of war between Japan and the
United States. The postponement remained a mystery. The Japanese
diplomats said nothing of the events in Hawaii, but the secretary’s
knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack colored his response to the note
the diplomats handed him, the intercepted version of which he had read previously. “In all my ?fty years of public service,” Hull said,
letting his anger rise as he spoke, “I have never seen a document that
was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions–infamous
falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined
until today that any government was capable of uttering them.” He
ordered the Japanese diplomats from his of?ce.
***
The bombing and stra?ng continued for more than an hour and a half.
Many of the Japanese bombers made multiple passes before dropping
their ordnance, as the broken clouds and then the heavy smoke blocked
their view of their targets. The ?ghters crisscrossed the area, too,
in their case to machine- gun sailors in the water, soldiers and
civilians ?eeing burning buildings, and aircraft and facilities they
had missed or not aimed at before. The Americans now returned the ?re,
with modest success. Anti-aircraft guns brought down two dozen of the
more than three hundred attacking planes. As the Japanese planes
crashed to earth and sea, their hurtling wreckage added to the
destruction.
By quarter to ten, the last of the Japanese planes ran out of bombs
and ammunition and turned away to the north. Their pilots looked back
and down upon a remarkable morning’s work. The placid scene of resting
power that had greeted their approach had become a burning, bloody
chaos; the core of America’s mighty Paci?c ?eet was a ruin of twisted
steel, ?aming oil, ?oating bodies, and battered pride.
***
Roosevelt now knew that the initial reports were accurate, as he had
expected. What he hadn’t expected, and what shocked him far more than
he let on, was how much damage the attack did. The initial notice had
suggested a raid, but this was far more than a raid. It was a major
strike with potentially strategic implications. And the American
defenders had been caught inexplicably unready. The news from Hawaii
remained incomplete, but each additional report revealed an unfolding
debacle.
At three o’clock Washington time, as the Japanese planes were clearing Oahu’s north shore en route to their rendezvous with their carriers, Roosevelt convened a meeting of his principal diplomatic and military
advisers. Cordell Hull, Frank Knox, and Henry Stimson were there,
along with Admiral Harold Stark, the chief of naval operations, and
General George Marshall, the army chief of staff. The mood was grim
but determined. For months all had expected war; now all exhibited a
certain relief that it had ?nally come. All were stunned by the manner
in which the ?ghting had commenced; all anticipated a long and
dif?cult, though ultimately successful, struggle.
Roosevelt asked Marshall about the disposition of the army in the
Paci?c and particularly of the army’s air forces in the Philippines.
Marshall said he had ordered Douglas MacArthur, the commanding general
in Manila, to take every precautionary measure. The president directed
that the Japanese embassy in Washington and Japan’s consulates in
other cities be protected against vigilante violence and that Japanese
citizens in the United States be placed under surveillance. He
rejected a military cordon around the White House but ordered Stimson
and Knox to safeguard America’s arsenals, private munitions factories,
and key bridges.
Roosevelt told the group he would go to Congress the next day. Cordell
Hull recommended a detailed description of Japan’s history of
aggression in Asia and the Paci?c. Roosevelt rejected the advice. His
statement would be succinct, he said. The only thing that mattered at
the moment was that Japan had attacked America and killed many
Americans.
As the group dispersed to carry out his orders, Roosevelt dealt with
messages and queries that arrived by phone, cable, and courier.
Winston Churchill called from England. “Mr. President, what’s this
about Japan?” the prime minister asked.
“It’s quite true,” Roosevelt answered. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now.”
“This certainly simpli?es things,” Churchill said.
During the course of the afternoon, new information detailed the
disaster in Hawaii. Five battleships had been sunk or were on ?re and
sinking. Several other vessels had been destroyed or seriously
damaged. More than a hundred aircraft had been blasted beyond repair.
More than two thousand sailors and soldiers had been killed, and more
than a thousand others wounded. Late in the afternoon, word arrived
that Japanese planes had attacked American bases in the Philippines
and, despite Marshall’s warning to MacArthur, in?icted heavy damage.
Calls came from the Justice and Treasury departments, where of?cials
needed guidance on how to respond to the apparent state of war with
Japan. Press secretary Stephen Early ran in and out of the Oval Of?ce,
relaying information from the president to reporters. Harry Hopkins
recommended a meeting of the full cabinet and a presidential brie?ng
of the congressional leadership. Roosevelt summoned Grace Tully, his
personal secretary, and dictated a draft of the message he would
deliver to Congress the next day.
The cabinet gathered at half past eight in the Oval Of?ce. The
department secretaries crowded around the president’s desk, feeling
the weight of history on their shoulders. Roosevelt reinforced the
feeling by describing the session as the most important cabinet
meeting since Lincoln had convened his secretaries at the beginning of
the Civil War.
Roosevelt read the group the draft of his message to Congress. Hull
complained that it was too short and unspeci?c. The president ignored
him.
At nine-thirty the congressional leaders arrived. Roosevelt explained
the situation in the Paci?c. He formally requested the opportunity to
speak to Congress the next day. A time was set: half past noon. The
lawmakers asked whether the president would seek a war declaration. He
said he hadn’t decided.
They didn’t believe him, and he didn’t expect them to. He realized
that if he acknowledged a decision for war, the news would be all over Washington within minutes of the legislators’ leaving, and all over
the world within hours. He didn’t want to preempt himself or slight
Congress.
The lawmakers were ready to declare war even without a presidential
request. Tom Connally of Texas emerged from the White House demanding vengeance against the Japanese.“Japan started this war in treachery,” Connally said. “We will end it in victory.” Warren Austin of Vermont considered war a foregone conclusion. “Of course it’s war,” Austin
said. “I can’t see any other sequel.” Harry Byrd of Virginia vowed to “wipe Japan off the map.”
Even the isolationists supported war. Robert Taft of Ohio
characterized a war declaration as necessary and inevitable. Arthur
Vandenberg of Michigan had previously charged Roosevelt with trying to
take America to war and had criticized him harshly. “But when war
comes to us,” Vandenberg now said, “I stand for the swiftest and most invincible answer.” New York’s Hamilton Fish promised to address
America from the ?oor of the House of Representatives and urge the
people to unite behind the president. “And if there is a call for
troops,” Fish said, “I expect to offer my services to a combat
division.”
***
The American people reacted more slowly. Most had followed the
growing crisis in Asia with varying degrees of concern but also with
the knowledge that previous crises had come and gone without
entangling America directly. Most had expected that this crisis too
would pass. The small number paying the closest attention had, with
Roosevelt, supposed that the Japanese would attack somewhere; with
Roosevelt nearly all of these imagined the blow would fall on Thailand
or Malaya. Almost no one considered Hawaii a likely target.
The news from Pearl Harbor shocked the nation. The ?rst reports
reached Seattle and San Francisco as churches were emptying from
morning services; congregants shared the ill tidings in shocked
whispers. The news caught Kansas farm families sitting down to midday
dinner; fathers and mothers looked at their teenage sons and suddenly
saw soldiers about to be sent overseas. The news arrived in Chicago at
halftime of a football game between the hometown Bears and the
archrival Green Bay Packers and made the game seem suddenly
unimportant. The news halted tourists in Manhattan’s Times Square,
where they huddled against the December chill to read the sobering
bulletins crawling along the headline tickers. In Boston the local CBS
radio af?liate interrupted its review of the year’s top stories to
break the story that outdid them all.
For the rest of that day and through the night, Americans listened and
waited. They listened to their radios to learn the extent of the
damage. How many ships had been lost? How many servicemen killed? They
waited to hear what the disaster meant. Would it be war? Surely yes,
but what kind of war? War against whom? Japan, of course, but Germany
as well? War for how long? To what end?
Their questions extended to the person who would provide them the
beginning of answers. All knew the aspect Roosevelt presented to the
public. How could they not know the face and voice of the man who had
served longer than any other president in American history? Yet few
professed, and none convincingly, to fathom the mind and heart, the
motives and inspirations, that lay beneath and behind this familiar
presence.
Not that people didn’t form opinions–strong opinions. His enemies excoriated him as a communist and damned him for disregarding property
rights and violating the canons of the capitalist marketplace. The
wealthy denounced him for having betrayed the class of his birth.
Time magazine devoted a lead article to the “burning bitterness” the better-off felt for Roosevelt. “Regardless of party and regardless of region,” the Henry Luce weekly asserted, “today, with few exceptions, members of the so- called Upper Class frankly hate Franklin
Roosevelt.” Their hatred was heightened by their confusion as they
re?ected on Roosevelt’s apostasy. Why did he do it? What could have
converted this scion of privilege into a radical critic of the
established order?
Roosevelt’s friends were no less mysti?ed. They applauded his
boundless energy, his unsinkable optimism, his bold willingness to
employ the engines of government to tackle the social and human
consequences of the worst industrial depression the nation had ever experienced. But they too wondered at the sources of his governing
philosophy. What traumas or epiphanies had transformed a Hudson Valley patrician into a champion of the common people of America? Those on
the inside scratched their heads, and sometimes tore their hair, at
his leadership style, which set aides against aides, cabinet
secretaries against cabinet secretaries, and the Democratic party
against itself. After more than eight years they remained astonished
at his ability to make visitors to the White House come away thinking
he had agreed with whatever they had told him, without in fact his
agreeing to anything.
Mostly they marveled at the calm he exuded at the eye of one storm
after another. The signature line of his ?rst inaugural address–that
the only thing America had to fear was fear itself–had seemed a
rhetorical ?ourish when inserted into the text, a brave but
essentially empty effort to calm the country at the most dangerous
moment of its worst ?nancial crisis. But once those words were spoken,
in his steady, con?dent tenor, and after they ?ashed across the radio
waves to every neighborhood, village, and hamlet in the country, they
magically acquired a substance that soothed the worst of the fears and
allowed the president and Congress to pull the ?nancial system back
from the brink.
The insiders knew something of the source of his con?dence. They knew
how his golden youth of wealth, travel, and athletic vitality had
segued into a charmed young adulthood of political preference and
rapid advance–and how the brilliant career had been cut short,
apparently, by a devastating attack of polio. Crushed by despair, he
had clawed his way back to hope; struck down physically, he gradually
regained his feet. He reentered the political arena, a fuller man for
what he had lost, a deeper soul for what he suffered. His touch with
the people seemed surer than ever, his voice more convincing. The
people responded effusively, electing him governor of New York twice,
then president overwhelmingly. They applauded his performance on their
behalf and reelected him by a still larger margin. And after another
four years they de?ed historical precedent and conventional wisdom to
reelect him again. It was a record to imbue anyone with con?dence.
Yet much of the mystery remained. He was gregarious, genuinely
enjoying spirited conversation and the company of others. But the
substance of the conversations ?owed in one direction; though he
talked a lot, he gave nothing away. Not even his wife–his companion
and ally of thirty- six years– professed to know his mind. He rarely
read books other than dime mysteries, so his tastes in reading
furnished few clues. He kept no diary. His letters were singularly
opaque. He spoke with journalists more often than any president in
American history, yet though his remarks treated policy in detail,
they revealed little of the policy maker. His speeches evinced his
devotion to democracy, to fair treatment of ordinary people, and to
American national security, and did so with passion and eloquence. But
the wellsprings of that devotion, the source of that passion, remained
hidden. He seemed to like it that way.
***
Roosevelt left the White House at noon on Monday, December 8, for the
mile- and- a- quarter drive to the Capitol. His Secret Service
contingent, mustered to maximum strength and tuned to a quivering
degree of suspicion, scowled at the masses that lined both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. After yesterday, who knew what form the enemy
might take? The scores of thousands, however, registered only support
for the president. They cheered, not lustily, not even
enthusiastically, but with a strangely moving somberness.
His car pulled close to the rear entrance of the House chamber. In his
early days in politics he would leap from his car at every opportunity
to shake hands and kiss babies. Now he had to be lifted into a
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