Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a distant
cousin of Theodore
Roosevelt, was born in Hyde Park, New York
on 30th January, 1882. The Roosevelts were a wealthy family and was
educated by home tutors until attending Groton School at 14. He was a
successful student and did well at Harvard
University and Columbia Law Schools, before being admitted to the
New York bar in 1907.
In 1905 Franklin married his cousin, Eleanor
Roosevelt. Her father, Elliott Roosevelt, was the brother of Theodore
Roosevelt, president of the United States
(1901-1909). Like her husband, Eleanor was a Democrat
and took a strong interest in politics.
In 1910 Roosevelt was elected to the New York Senate.
Frances
Perkins was one of those who was not impressed by his activities
during this period: "Tall and slender, very active and alert, moving
around the floor, going in and out of committee rooms, rarely talking
with the members, not particularly charming (that came later), rarely
smiling, with an unforunate habit - so natural he was unaware of it - of
throwing his head up. This, combined with his pince-nez and great
height, gave him the appearance of looking down his nose at most
people."
Roosevelt upset the party bosses by supporting a rebel
Democrat
as New York's senator. Roosevelt's dissent group received a lot of
publicity and he became a well known figure in New York politics.
Roosevelt's abilities were brought to the attention of President Woodrow
Wilson and in 1913 he appointed him as assistant secretary of the
navy, a post he held for the next six years.
Woodrow Wilson and other Democrat
leaders were impressed with Roosevelt's achievements during this
difficult period. By the time the United States had entered the First World War
in 1917, Roosevelt had the country's naval plants and yards working
efficiently. During the war he helped to devise the plans for the battle
of the North Sea which broke the effectiveness of German U-boat
warfare.
Roosevelt attended the Paris Peace
Conference but was highly critical of the Versailles
Treaty. He believed the "the effort to make the world safe for
democracy had resulted in making the world safe for the old empires".
In 1920 the Democrat
candidate for president, James Cox, selected
Roosevelt as his running-mate. The Republican,
Warren
Harding, won the election by a wide margin. However, Roosevelt was
considered by many to have been an effective campaigner and was picked
out as a future president.
In the summer of 1921, Roosevelt became seriously
ill. He was eventually diagnosed as suffering from poliomyelitis. He was
almost totally paralyzed and he was never again to recover full use of
his legs. Frances
Perkins believed that this illness changed Roosevelt's personality
and in doing so, made him into a better man. "Roosevelt underwent a
spiritual transformation during the years of his illness. I noticed when
he came back that the years of pain and suffering had purged the
slightly arrogant attitude he had displayed on occasion before he was
stricken. The man emerged completely warmhearted, with humility of
spirit and with a deeper philosophy. Having been to the depths of
trouble, he understood the problems of people in trouble."
Although confined to a wheelchair, Roosevelt returned to
politics in 1928 to help his friend, Alfred
Smith, in his unsuccessful attempt to beat Herbert Hoover
in the presidential election. The following year Roosevelt was
elected as governor of New York. While in ths post he met people such as
Rose
Schneiderman, Harold
Ickes, Frances
Perkins and Harry
Hopkins, who held radical views on how America could solve its
economic problems. Their influence turned Roosevelt into one of
America's most progressive politicians.
The Wall
Street Crash in October 1929, created the worst depression in
American history. President Herbert
Hoover was slow to provide federal relief to farmers and stubbornly
refused to give help to the unemployed in urban areas. Hoover vetoed a
bill that would have created a federal unemployment agency and also
opposed a plan to create a public works programme.
As governor of New York, Roosevelt made strenuous attempts
to help those without work. He set up the New York State Emergency
Relief Commission and appointed the respected Harry
Hopkins to run the agency. Another popular figure with a good record
for helping the disadvantaged, Frances
Perkins, was recruited to the team as state industrial commissioner.
With the help of Hopkins and Perkins, Roosevelt introduced help for the
unemployed and those too old to work.
Roosevelt was seen as
great success as governor of New York and he was the obvious choice as
the Democratic
presidential candidate in 1932. He selected John Nance
Garner as his running mate. Although
Roosevelt was vague about what he would do about the economic
depression, he easily beat his unpopular Republican
rival, Herbert
Hoover.
Before taking office Roosevelt attended a rally at
Belmont Park in Miami with his friend Anton
Cermak, the mayor of Chicago.
An Italian
immigrant, Guiseppe
Zangara, fired five shots at Roosevelt. They all missed the
president but one hit Cermak in the stomach. On the way to the hospital
Cermak told Roosevelt, "I'm glad it was me and not you, Mr. President."
Cermak died three weeks later and Zangara was executed on 21st March,
1933.
Roosevelt's first act as president was to deal with the
country's banking
crisis. Since the beginning of the depression, a fifth of all banks
had been forced to close. As a consequence, around 15% of people's
life-savings had been lost. By the beginning of 1933 the American people
were starting to lose faith in their banking system and a significant
proportion were withdrawing their money and keeping it at home. The day
after taking office as president, Roosevelt ordered all banks to close.
He then asked Congress to pass legislation which would guarantee that
savers would not lose their money if there was another financial crisis.
On 9th March 1933, Roosevelt called a special session of
Congress. He told the members that unemployment could only be solved "by
direct recruiting by the Government itself." For the next three months,
Roosevelt proposed, and Congress passed, a series of important bills
that attempted to deal with the problem of unemployment. The special
session of Congress became known as the Hundred Days and provided the
basis for Roosevelt's New
Deal.
Cliff
Berryman, Washington Evening Star
(1938)
The government employed people to carry
out a range of different tasks. These projects included the Works Projects
Administration (WPA), the Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC), the National Youth
Administration (NYA), the National
Recovery Act (NRA) and the Public Works
Administration (PWA). As well as trying to reduce unemployment,
Roosevelt also attempted to reduce the misery for those who were unable
to work. One of the bodies Roosevelt formed was the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration which provided federal money to help
those in desperate
need.
Other legislation passed by Roosevelt included the
Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933), National
Housing Act (1934), the Federal
Securities Act (1934). In August 1935 the Social
Security Act was passed. This act set up a national system of old
age pensions and co-ordinated federal and state action for the relief of
the unemployed.
The NAACP hoped
that the election of Franklin
D. Roosevelt in 1932 would bring an end to lynching. Two African
American campaigners against lynching, Mary McLeod
Bethune and Walter
Francis White, had been involved in helping Roosevelt to obtain
victory. His wife, Eleanor
Roosevelt, had also been a long-time opponent of lynching.
Robert F.
Wagner and
Edward
Costigan agreed to
draft an anti-lynching bill. The legislation proposed federal trials for
any law enforcement officers who failed to exercise their
responsibilities during a lynching incident.
In
1935 attempts were made to persuade Roosevelt to support the Costigan-Wagner
Bill. However, Roosevelt refused to speak out in favour of the bill.
He argued that the white voters in the South would never forgive him if
he supported the bill and he would therefore lose the next
election.
During the
1936 presidential election, Roosevelt was attacked for not keeping his
promise to balance the budget. The National Labour
Relations Act was unpopular with businessmen who felt that it
favoured the trade
unions. Some went as far as accusing Roosevelt of being a communist.
However, the New Deal
was extremely popular with the electorate and Roosevelt easily defeated
the Republican
Party candidate, Alfred M.
Landon, by 27,751,612 votes to 16,681,913.
Roosevelt had had
problems with the Supreme
Court. The Chief justice, Charles
Hughes, had been the Republican
Party presidential candidate in 1916. Herbert
Hoover appointed Hughes in 1930 and had led the court's opposition
to some of the proposed New Deal
legislation. This included the ruling against the National
Recovery Administration (NRA), the Agricultural
Adjustment Act (AAA) and ten other New Deal laws.
On 2nd February, 1937, Franklin D.
Roosevelt made a speech attacking the Supreme
Court for its actions over New Deal
legislation. He pointed out that seven of the nine judges (Charles
Hughes, Willis Van
Devanter, George
Sutherland, Harlan
Stone, Owen
Roberts, Benjamin
Cardozo and Pierce
Butler) had been appointed by Republican
presidents. Roosevelt had just won re-election by 10,000,000 votes and
resented the fact that the justices could veto legislation that clearly
had the support of the vast majority of the public.
Roosevelt suggested that the age was a major
problem as six of the judges were over 70 (Charles
Hughes, Willis Van
Devanter, James
McReynolds, Louis
Brandeis, George
Sutherland and Pierce
Butler). Roosevelt announced that he was going to ask Congress to
pass a bill enabling the president to expand the Supreme
Court by adding one new judge, up to a maximum off six, for every
current judge over the age of 70.
Charles
Hughes realised that Roosevelt's Court Reorganization Bill would
result in the Supreme
Court coming under the control of the Democratic
Party. His first move was to arrange for a letter written by him to
be published by Burton K.
Wheeler, chairman of
the Judiciary Committee. In the letter Hughes cogently refuted all the
claims made by Roosevelt.
However, behind the scenes Hughes was
busy doing deals to make sure that Roosevelt's bill would be defeated in
Congress. On 29th March, Owen
Roberts announced that he had changed his mind about voting against
minimum wage legislation. Hughes also reversed his opinion on the Social
Security Act and the National Labour
Relations Act (NLRA) and by a 5-4 vote they were now declared to be
constitutional.
Then Willis Van
Devanter, probably the most conservative of the justices, announced
his intention to resign. He was replaced by Hugo
Black, a member of the Democratic
Party and a strong supporter of the New
Deal. In July, 1937, Congress defeated the Court Reorganization Bill
by 70-20. However, Roosevelt had the satisfaction of knowing he had a Supreme
Court that was now less likely to block his legislation.
The accusation that Roosevelt was becoming
too powerful became more common after it was announced that he intended
to stand for a third term. Roosevelt therefore became the first person
to break the unwritten rule that presidents do not stand for more than
two-terms in succession. John Nance
Garner
retired and Henry Wallace became his new running
mate.
At Philadelphia in 1940 the Republican
Party chose Wendell
Willkie as their presidential candidate. During the campaign Willkie
attacked the New Deal
as being inefficient and wasteful. Although he did better than expected,
Franklin
D. Roosevelt beat Willkie by 27,244,160 votes to 22,305,198.
When the Second World War
started he modified America's neutrality to favour the allies before the
country was brought into the conflict by Japan's attack on Pearl
Harbour. Elected president for the fourth time in 1944, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt died three weeks before Germany surrendered on 7th May,
1945.
After his death, Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor
Roosevelt, and their two sons, James
Roosevelt and Franklin
Roosevelt Jr. were active in politics.
Arthur Szyk,
Don't Vote for Roosevelt
(1944)
(1)
Franklin
D. Roosevelt, speech in Boston (October, 1932)
We have two
problems: first, to meet the immediate distress; second, to build up on
a basis of permanent employment.
As to immediate relief, the
first principle is that this nation, this national government, if you
like, owes a positive duty that no citizen shall be permitted to starve.
In addition to providing emergency relief, the Federal
Government should and must provide temporary work wherever that is
possible. You and I know that in the national forests, on flood
prevention, and on the development of waterway projects that have
already been authorized and planned but not yet executed, tens of
thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of our unemployed citizens can
be given at least temporary employment.
(2)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio broadcast, Fireside Chat (12th March, 1933)
Some of our bankers have shown themselves either
incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. They
had used money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This
was, of course, not true of the vast majority of our banks, but it was
true in enough of them to shock the people for a time into a sense of
insecurity. It was the government's job to straighten out this situation
and do it as quickly as possible. And the job is being performed.
Confidence and courage are the essentials in our plan. We must have
faith; you must not be stampeded by rumours. We have provided the
machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support
and make it work. Together we cannot
fail.
(3) Frances
Perkins was secretary for labour in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first
cabinet. She wrote about this period in her book, The Roosevelt I
Knew (1946)
Franklin Roosevelt was
not a simple man. That quality of simplicity which we delight to think
marks the great and noble was not his. He was the most complicated human
being I ever knew; and out of this complicated nature there sprang much
of the drive which brought achievement, much of the sympathy which made
him like, and liked by, such oddly different types of people, much of
the detachment which enabled him to forget his problems in play or rest,
and much of the apparent contradiction which so exasperated those
associates of his who expected "crystal clear" and unwavering decisions.
But this very complicated of his nature made it possible for him to have
insight and imagination into the most varied human experiences, and this
he applied to the physical, social, geographical, economic and strategic
circumstances thrust upon him as responsibilities by his times.
(4) Father Charles
Coughlin, radio broadcast (17th January,
1934)
President
Roosevelt is not going to make a mistake, for God Almighty is guiding him.
President Roosevelt has leadership, he has followers and he
is the answer to many prayers that were sent up last
year.
If Congress fails to carry
through with the President's suggestions, I foresee a revolution
far greater than the French Revolution. It is either
Roosevelt or Ruin.
(5)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, speech, New York
City (14th August, 1936)
We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to
isolate ourselves completely from war. I have seen war. I have seen war
on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen
men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I
have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen
the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. I have passed unnumbered
hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours, thinking and planning how war may
be kept from this
Nation.
(6)
Franklin
D.
Roosevelt, radio broadcast, Fireside Chat (9th March,
1937)
Tonight, sitting at my desk in the
White House, I make my first radio report to the people in my second
term of office.
I am reminded of that
evening in March, four years ago, when I made my first radio report to
you. We were then in the midst of the great banking crisis.
Soon after, with the
authority of the Congress, we asked the Nation to turn over all of its
privately held gold, dollar for dollar, to the Government of the United
States.
Today's recovery proves how
right that policy was.
But when, almost two years
later, it came before the Supreme Court its constitutionality was upheld
only by a five-to-four vote. The change of one vote would have thrown
all the affairs of this great Nation back into hopeless chaos. In
effect, four Justices ruled that the right under a private contract to
exact a pound of flesh was more sacred than the main objectives of the
Constitution to establish an enduring Nation.
In 1933 you and I knew that
we must never let our economic system get completely out of joint again
- that we could not afford to take the risk of another great depression.
We also became convinced
that the only way to avoid a repetition of those dark days was to have a
government with power to prevent and to cure the abuses and the
inequalities which had thrown that system out of joint.
We then began a program of
remedying those abuses and inequalities - to give balance and stability
to our economic system - to make it bomb-proof against the causes of
1929.
Today we are only part-way
through that program - and recovery is speeding up to a point where the
dangers of 1929 are again becoming possible, not this week or month
perhaps, but within a year or two.
National laws are needed to
complete that program. Individual or local or state effort alone cannot
protect us in 1937 any better than ten years ago.
It will take time - and
plenty of time - to work out our remedies administratively even after
legislation is passed. To complete our program of protection in time,
therefore, we cannot delay one moment in making certain that our
National Government has power to carry through.
Four years ago action did
not come until the eleventh hour. It was almost too late.
If we learned anything from
the depression we will not allow ourselves to run around in new circles
of futile discussion and debate, always postponing the day of decision.
The American people have
learned from the depression. For in the last three national elections an
overwhelming majority of them voted a mandate that the Congress and the
President begin the task of providing that protection - not after long
years of debate, but now.
The Courts, however, have
cast doubts on the ability of the elected Congress to protect us against
catastrophe by meeting squarely our modern social and economic
conditions.
We are at a crisis in our
ability to proceed with that protection. It is a quiet crisis. There are
no lines of depositors outside closed banks. But to the far-sighted it
is far-reaching in its possibilities of injury to America.
I want to talk with you
very simply about the need for present action in this crisis - the need
to meet the unanswered challenge of one-third of a Nation ill-nourished,
ill-clad, ill-housed.
Last Thursday I described
the American form of Government as a three horse team provided by the
Constitution to the American people so that their field might be plowed.
The three horses are, of course, the three branches of government - the
Congress, the Executive and the Courts. Two of the horses are pulling in
unison today; the third is not. Those who have intimated that the
President of the United States is trying to drive that team, overlook
the simple fact that the President, as Chief Executive, is himself one
of the three horses.
It is the American people
themselves who are in the driver's seat.
It is the American people
themselves who want the furrow plowed.
It is the American people
themselves who expect the third horse to pull in unison with the other
two.
I hope that you have
re-read the Constitution of the United States in these past few weeks.
Like the Bible, it ought to be read again and again.
It is an easy document to
understand when you remember that it was called into being because the
Articles of Confederation under which the original thirteen States tried
to operate after the Revolution showed the need of a National Government
with power enough to handle national problems. In its Preamble, the
Constitution states that it was intended to form a more perfect Union
and promote the general welfare; and the powers given to the Congress to
carry out those purposes can be best described by saying that they were
all the powers needed to meet each and every problem which then had a
national character and which could not be met by merely local action.
But the framers went
further. Having in mind that in succeeding generations many other
problems then undreamed of would become national problems, they gave to
the Congress the ample broad powers "to levy taxes ... and provide for
the common defense and general welfare of the United States."
That, my friends, is what I
honestly believe to have been the clear and underlying purpose of the
patriots who wrote a Federal Constitution to create a National
Government with national power, intended as they said, "to form a more
perfect union ... for ourselves and our posterity."
For nearly twenty years
there was no conflict between the Congress and the Court. Then Congress
passed a statute which, in 1803, the Court said violated an express
provision of the Constitution. The Court claimed the power to declare it
unconstitutional and did so declare it. But a little later the Court
itself admitted that it was an extraordinary power to exercise and
through Mr. Justice Washington laid down this limitation upon it: "It is
but a decent respect due to the wisdom, the integrity and the patriotism
of the legislative body, by which any law is passed, to presume in favor
of its validity until its violation of the Constitution is proved beyond
all reasonable doubt."
But since the rise of the
modern movement for social and economic progress through legislation,
the Court has more and more often and more and more boldly asserted a
power to veto laws passed by the Congress and State Legislatures in
complete disregard of this original limitation.
In the last four years the
sound rule of giving statutes the benefit of all reasonable doubt has
been cast aside. The Court has been acting not as a judicial body, but
as a policy-making body.
When the Congress has
sought to stabilize national agriculture, to improve the conditions of
labor, to safeguard business against unfair competition, to protect our
national resources, and in many other ways, to serve our clearly
national needs, the majority of the Court has been assuming the power to
pass on the wisdom of these acts of the Congress - and to approve or
disapprove the public policy written into these laws.
That is not only my
accusation. It is the accusation of most distinguished justices of the
present Supreme Court. I have not the time to quote to you all the
language used by dissenting justices in many of these cases. But in the
case holding the Railroad Retirement Act unconstitutional, for instance,
Chief Justice Hughes said in a dissenting opinion that the majority
opinion was "a departure from sound principles," and placed "an
unwarranted limitation upon the commerce clause." And three other
justices agreed with him.
In the case of holding the
AAA unconstitutional, Justice Stone said of the majority opinion that it
was a "tortured construction of the Constitution." And two other
justices agreed with him.
In the case holding the New
York minimum wage law unconstitutional, Justice Stone said that the
majority were actually reading into the Constitution their own "personal
economic predilections," and that if the legislative power is not left
free to choose the methods of solving the problems of poverty,
subsistence, and health of large numbers in the community, then
"government is to be rendered impotent." And two other justices agreed
with him.
In the face of these
dissenting opinions, there is no basis for the claim made by some
members of the Court that something in the Constitution has compelled
them regretfully to thwart the will of the people.
In the face of such
dissenting opinions, it is perfectly clear that, as Chief Justice Hughes
has said, "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the
judges say it is."
The Court in addition to
the proper use of its judicial functions has improperly set itself up as
a third house of the Congress - a super-legislature, as one of the
justices has called it - reading into the Constitution words and
implications which are not there, and which were never intended to be
there.
We have, therefore, reached
the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution
from the Court and the Court from itself. We must find a way to take an
appeal from the Supreme Court to the Constitution itself. We want a
Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution and not over
it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of
men.
I want - as all Americans
want - an independent judiciary as proposed by the framers of the
Constitution. That means a Supreme Court that will enforce the
Constitution as written, that will refuse to amend the Constitution by
the arbitrary exercise of judicial power - in other words by judicial
say-so. It does not mean a judiciary so independent that it can deny the
existence of facts which are universally recognized.
How then could we proceed
to perform the mandate given us? It was said in last year's Democratic
platform, "If these problems cannot be effectively solved within the
Constitution, we shall seek such clarifying amendment as will assure the
power to enact those laws, adequately to regulate commerce, protect
public health and safety, and safeguard economic security." In other
words, we said we would seek an amendment only if every other possible
means by legislation were to fail.
When I commenced to review
the situation with the problem squarely before me, I came by a process
of elimination to the conclusion that, short of amendments, the only
method which was clearly constitutional, and would at the same time
carry out other much needed reforms, was to infuse new blood into all
our Courts. We must have men worthy and equipped to carry out impartial
justice. But, at the same time, we must have Judges who will bring to
the Courts a present-day sense of the Constitution - Judges who will
retain in the Courts the judicial functions of a court, and reject the
legislative powers which the courts have today assumed.
(7) Pauli
Murray, a African American student from Maryland, wrote a letter of
protest to Franklin Roosevelt about his lack of civil rights legislation
(December, 1938)
Negroes are the most oppressed and most neglected section
of your population. 12,000,000 of your citizens have to endure insults,
injustices, and such degradation of the spirit that you would believe
impossible. The un-Christian, un-American conditions in the South make
it impossible for me and other young Negroes to live there and continue
our faith in the ideals of democracy and Christianity. We are as much
political refugees from the South as any of the Jews in Germany.
Do you feel as we do, that the ultimate test of democracy in the
United States will be the way in which it solves its Negro problem? Have
you raised your voice loud enough against the burning of our people? Why
has our government refused to pass anti-lynching legislation? And why is
it that the group of congressmen so opposed to the passing of this
legislation are part and parcel of the Democratic Party of which you are
leader?
(8)
Rexford
Tugwell was an assistant secretary in the Agricultural Department in
1933. He wrote about his experiences in The Democratic Roosevelt
(1957)
When he died our society
was measurably farther forward in every respect than we became
President. It is true that he did facilitate our transit from the old
individualism to the new collectivism. This is involved, in economists'
terms, a change from unlimited to regulated competition with some
direction and some weighting in favor of those with the least power to
bargain; and from individual responsibility for all the risks of life to
security for all in sickness, unemployment, and old age. He grasped
leadership when we were economically paralyzed and socially divided.
We are a lucky people. We have had leaders when the national
life was at stake. If it had not been for Washington we might not have
become a nation; if it had not been for Lincoln we might have been split
in two; if it had not been for this later democrat we might have
succumbed to a dictatorship. For that was the alternative, much in the
air, when he took charge.
(9)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, speech at the University of Virginia (10th June,
1940)
This government directed its efforts to doing what it
could to work for the preservation of peace in the Mediterranean area,
and it likewise exercised its willingness to endeavor to cooperate with
the government of Italy when the appropriate occasion arose for the
creation of a more stable world order through the reduction of armaments
and through the construction of a more liberal international economic
system, which would assure to all powers equality of opportunity in the
world's markets and in the securing of raw materials on equal terms.
I have
likewise, of course, felt it necessary in my communications to Signor
Mussolini to express the concern of the government of the United States
because of the fact that any extension of the war in the region of the
Mediterranean would inevitably result in great prejudice to the ways of
life and government and to the trade and commerce of all of the American
republics.
The
government of Italy has now chosen to preserve what it terms its
"freedom of action" and to fulfill what it states are its promises to
Germany. In so doing it has manifested disregard for the rights and
security of other nations, disregard for the lives of the peoples of
those nations which are directly threatened by this spread of the war,
and has evidenced its unwillingness to find the means through pacific
negotiations for the satisfaction of what it believes are its legitimate
aspirations.
(10) Father Charles
Coughlin, Social Justice (9th September,
1940)
On previous occasions
Congressmen have called for the impeachment of the
President.
On those occasions most
citizens disagreed with the Congressmen.
At length, however, an
event has transpired which now marks Franklin D. Roosevelt as a
dangerous citizen of the Republic - dangerous insofar as he has
transcended the bounds
of his Executive position.
In plain language, without
the knowledge or consent of Congress, he has denuded this country of
thirty-six flying fortresses, either selling or giving them to Great
Britain.
By this action Franklin D.
Roosevelt had torpedoed our national defense, loving Great Britain more
than the United States.
He has consorted with the
enemies of civilization - through the continued recognition of Soviet
Russia.
He has deceived the
citizens of the United States - telling the newspaper reporters, who are
the people's eyes and ears at Washington, that he did not know the
whereabouts of these flying fortresses.
He has transcended the
bounds of his Executive position - spurning the authority of
Congress.
He has invited the enmity
of powerful foreign nations- on whose natural resources we depend for
essential tin and rubber.
Because he has encouraged
the British government to reopen the Burma Road, and encouraged Britain
to declare war on the German government, when Britain was unable to care
for the English people - he stands revealed as the world's chief
war-monger.
All these events,
culminating with the transfer of these 36 flying fortresses without the
consent of Congress, demand that he be impeached.
(11)
Franklin D. Roosevelt first
told the American public about Lend-Lease
in a radio broadcast on 17th December, 1940.
In the present world situation of course there is
absolutely no doubt in the mind of a very overwhelming number of
Americans that the best immediate defence of the United States is the
success of Great Britain in defending itself; and that, therefore, quite
aside from our historic and current interest in the survival of
democracy in the world as a whole, it is equally important, from a
selfish point of view of American defence, that we should do everything
to help the British Empire to defend itself.
It isn't
merely a question of doing things the traditional way; there are lots of
other ways of doing them. I am just talking background, informally; I
haven't prepared any of this - I go back to the idea that the one thing
necessary for American national defence is additional productive
facilities; and the more we increase those facilities - factories,
shipbuilding ways, munition plants, et cetera, and so on - the stronger
American national defence is.
I have been exploring other
methods of continuing the building up of our productive facilities and
continuing automatically the flow of munitions to Great Britain. I will
just put it this way, not as an exclusive alternative method but as one
of several other possible methods that might be devised toward that
end.
It is possible - I will put
it that way - for the United States to take over British orders and,
because they are essentially the
same kind of munitions that we use
ourselves, turn them into American orders. We have enough money to do
it. And there-upon, as to such portion of them as the military events of
the future determine to be right and proper for us to allow to go to the
other side, either lease or sell the materials, subject to mortgage, to
the people on the other side. That would be on the general theory that
it may still prove true that the best defence of Great Britain is the
best defence of the United States, and therefore that these materials
would be more useful to the defence of the United States if they were
used in Great Britain than if they were kept in storage here.
Now, what I am trying to do
is to eliminate the dollar sign. That is something brand new in the
thoughts of practically everybody in this room, I think - get rid of the
silly, foolish old dollar sign. Well, let me give you an illustration:
Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden
hose 400 or 500 feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it
up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I
do? I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose
cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it." What is the transaction
that goes on? I don't want $15 - I want my garden hose back after the
fire is over. All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact,
without any damage to it, he gives it back to me and thanks me very much
for the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up - holes in it - during
the fire; we don't have to have too much formality about it, but I say
to him, "I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can't use it any
more, it's all smashed up." He says, "How many feet of it were there?" I
tell him, "There were 150 feet of it." He says, "All right, I will
replace it." Now, if I get a nice garden hose back, I am in pretty good
shape.
In other words, if you lend
certain munitions and get the munitions back at the end of the war, if
they are intact - haven't been hurt - you are all right; if they have
been damaged or have deteriorated or have been lost completely, it seems
to me you come out pretty well if you have them replaced by the fellow
to whom you have lent them.
I can't go into details;
and there is no use asking legal questions about how you would do it,
because that is the thing that is now under study; but the thought is
that we would take over not all, but a very large number of, future
British orders; and when they came off the line, whether they were
planes or guns or something else, we would enter into some kind of
arrangement for their use by the British on the ground that it was the
best thing for American defence, with the understanding that when the
show was over, we would get repaid sometime in kind, thereby leaving out
the dollar mark in the form of a dollar debt and substituting for it a
gentleman's obligation to repay in kind. I think you all get
it.
(12) Burton K.
Wheeler of Montana led the attacks on Lend-Lease
in the Senate when it was debated on 12th January 1941.
The lend-lease policy translated into legislative form,
stunned a Congress and a nation wholly sympathetic to the cause of Great
Britain. The Kaiser's blank check to Austria-Hungary in the First World
War was a piker compared to the Roosevelt blank check of World War II.
It warranted my worst fears for the future of America, and it definitely
stamps the President as
war-minded.
The
lend-lease-give program is the New Deal's triple-A foreign policy; it
will plow under every fourth American boy. Never before have the
American people been asked or compelled to give so bounteously and so
completely of their tax dollars to any foreign nation. Never before has
the Congress of the United States been asked by any President to violate
international law. Never before has this nation resorted to duplicity in
the conduct of its foreign affairs. Never before has the United States
given to one man the power to strip this nation of its defenses. Never
before has a Congress coldly and flatly been asked to
abdicate.
If the
American people want a dictatorship - if they want a totalitarian form
of government and if they want war - this
bill should be
steam-rollered through Congress, as is the wont of President Roosevelt.
Approval of
this legislation means war, open and complete warfare. I, therefore, ask
the American people before they supinely accept it - Was the last World
War worthwhile?
If it were,
then we should lend and lease war materials. If it were, then we should
lend and lease American boys. President Roosevelt has said we would be
repaid by England. We will be. We will be repaid, just as England repaid
her war debts of the First World War - repaid those dollars wrung from
the sweat of labor and the toil of farmers with cries of "Uncle
Shylock." Our boys will be returned - returned in caskets, maybe;
returned with bodies maimed; returned with minds warped and twisted by
sights of horrors and the scream and shriek of high-powered
shells.
(13)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, message
to Congress (6th January, 1941)
I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the
willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part ofof
the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my budget
message I recommend that a greater portion of this great defense e
program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person
should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the
principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be
constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation. If the Congress
maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of
pocketbooks, will give you their
applause.
In the future
days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded
upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is
freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world.
The second is
freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the
world.
The third is
freedom from want, which translated into world terms, means economic
understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime
life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear - which, translated into
world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point
and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to
commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in
the
world.
That is no
vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of
world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is
the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the
dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new
order we oppose the greater conception - the moral order. A good society
is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions
alike without fear.
Since the
beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change - in a
perpetual peaceful revolution - a revolution which goes on steadily,
quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions - without the
concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order which
we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a
friendly, civilized society.
This nation
has placed its destiny in the hands and hearts of its millions of free
men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God.
Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes
to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is
in our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save
victory.
(14)
Studs
Terkel interviewed
Hamilton
Fish about his views on Franklin
D. Roosevelt for his book, The Good
War (1985)
Franklin Roosevelt took us
into a war without telling the people anything about it. He served an
ultimatum which we knew nothing about. We were forced into the war. It
was the biggest cover-up ever perpetrated in the United States of
America.
I'd led the fight for three
years against Roosevelt getting us into war. I was on the radio every
ten days. I stopped him until he issued this ultimatum. That is the
greatest thing I did do in my life. He would have gotten us into the war
six months or a year before Pearl Harbor. We would have been fighting
those Germans, plus probably the Russians, because they made a deal with
them. Every American family owes an obligation to me because we would
have lost a million or
two million killed. That's the biggest thing I ever did, and nobody can
take it away from me.
(15) Anthony Eden,
Memoirs: The Reckoning (1965)
The big question which
rightly dominated Roosevelt's mind (March 1943) was whether it was
possible to work with Russia now and after the war. He wanted to know
what I thought of the view that Stalin's aim was to overrun and
communize the Continent. I replied that it was impossible to give a
definite opinion. Even if these fears were to prove correct, we should
make the position no worse by trying to work with Russia and by assuming
that Stalin meant what he said in the Anglo-Soviet Treaty. I might well
have added that Soviet policy is both Russian and communist, in varying
degree.
On the future of Germany
the President appeared to favour dismemberment as the only wholly
satisfactory solution. He agreed that, when the time came, we should
work to encourage separatist tendencies within Germany and foresaw a
long 'policing' of that country. More surprisingly, he thought that the
three Powers should police Europe in general. I pointed out that the
occupied countries, as they then were, would want to put their own house
in order and I thought we should encourage them to do so. We should have
our hands quite full enough with Germany.
In the Balkans, Mr.
Roosevelt favoured separating Serbia from Croatia and Slovenia. I told
him that in principle I disliked the idea of multiplying smaller states,
I hoped the tendency would now be reversed and that we should aim at
grouping. I could not see any better solution for the future of either
the Croats or the Slovenes than forming some union with the
Serbs.
(16)
Emanuel
Celler, wrote about President
Franklin
D.
Roosevelt
and the New Deal in his autobiography, You Never
Leave Brooklyn
(1953)
The first days of
the Roosevelt Administration charged the air with the snap and the
zigzag of electricity. I felt it. We all felt it. It seemed as it you
could hold out your hand and close it over the piece of excitement you
had ripped away. It was the return of hope. The mind was elastic and
capable of crowding idea into idea. New faces came to Washington - young
faces of bright lads who could talk. It was contagious. We started to
talk in the cloak rooms; we started to talk in
committees. The
shining new faces called on us and talked.
In March of 1933 we had
witnessed a revolution - a revolution in manner, in mores, in the
definition of government. What before had been black or white sprang
alive with color. The messages to Congress, the legislation; even the
reports on the legislation took on the briskness of authority. I have
asked myself often, "Did one man do this? If one did this, what manner
of man was he?" I don't know. I think nobody does. Since those days I
have read every bit of writing on Roosevelt: Perkins, Sherwood,
Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Flynn, Gunther. Out of these cascades of
words no definite or sharp outline arises. Whenever I visited Roosevelt
on official business, I found a man adroit, voluble, assured, and
smiling. I was never quite sure he was interested in the purpose of my
visit; we spent so little time on it.
Mostly he talked. He talked
with seeming frankness, and when I left, I found that he had committed
himself to no point of view. At the end of each visit I realized that I
had been hypnotized. His humor was broad, his manner friendly without
condescension. Of wit there was little; -of philosophy, none. What did
he possess? Intuition, yes. Inspiration, yes. Love of adventure, the
curiosity of the experimental. None of these give the answer. None of
these give the key. I believe his magic lay in one facet of his
personality. He could say and he did say, "Let's try it." He knew how to
take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take
the challenge of the new.
(17)
William
Leahy, chief of staff to the commander in chief of the United
States, wrote about the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his
autobiography, I Was There (1950)
Franklin
Roosevelt was a world figure of heroic proportions. He also was my
friend, whom I had known and admired for thirty-six years, since we
began to work together in World War I. A thousand memories crowded my
mind as I sat in the compartment of the train returning to
Washington.
I had seen him almost every
morning since he appointed me his Military Chief of Staff late in July,
1942. The range of his mind was infinite. The official matters I had
selected to bring to his attention usually were disposed of quickly, and
he listened attentively as I talked. He was likely thereafter, at these
daily sessions, to do most of the talking and to bring up anything he
had on his mind. A flood of memories of
Quebec, Cairo, Teheran,
Honolulu, Alaska and the still-fresh impression of Yalta came to my
mind.
I remembered partisan
criticism that he had made this or that war move with an eye on the date
of a national election. Franklin Roosevelt was the real
Commander-in-Chief of our Navy, Army, and Air Force. He had fought this
war in close co-operation with his military staff. To my knowledge, he
never made a single military decision with any thought of his own
personal political fortunes.
There were many of his
domestic policies which I, being of a conservative mind, had little
liking for, but I admired the skill he possessed in playing the complex
and to me almost inexplicable "game of politics." That skill was
frequently displayed at his famous weekly conferences with the
Washington newsmen, many of which I attended. He gave them all the
information he could, easily and cheerfully. He even scolded them at
times, but they seemed to like it.
(18)
Studs
Terkel interviewed
W. Averell
Harriman about his experiences during the
Second World
War for his book, The Good War
(1985)
Roosevelt was the one who
had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world
leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the
same since. The war changed everybody's attitude. We became
international almost overnight.
I found that Churchill felt
it was very important to help Stalin. I certainly agreed. There was that
meeting at sea between Roosevelt and Churchill. I attended it. Churchill
decided to send Beaverbrook and Roosevelt decided to send me. We both
went to Moscow in October 1941. We both agreed that
Stalin was determined to hold out against the Germans. He told us
he'd never let them get to Moscow. But if he was wrong, they'd
go back to the Urals and fight. They'd never surrender. We became
convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his
reign of terror, he was a great war leader. Without Stalin, they never
would have held.
Much of the aid we first
gave to Russia we took away from what we promised Britain. So in a sense,
Britain participated in a very real way in the recovery of Russia. After
that, the Russians got mean. Poland, of course, was the key
country. I remember Stalin telling me that the plains of Poland were the
invasion route of Europe to Russia and always had been, and therefore
he had to control Poland.
It was fear. He didn't want
to see a united Germany. Stalin made it clear to me - I spoke with him
many times - that they couldn't afford to let Germany build up
again. They'd been invaded twice, and he wasn't willing to have it happen
again.
There's a myth that
Roosevelt gave Stalin Eastern Europe. I was with Roosevelt every day at
Yalta. Roosevelt was determined to stop Stalin from taking over Eastern
Europe. He thought they finally had an agreement on Poland. Before
Roosevelt died, he realized that Stalin had broken his agreement.
I think Stalin was afraid
of Roosevelt. Whenever Roosevelt spoke, he sort of watched him with a
certain awe. He was afraid of Roosevelt's influence in the world. If FDR
had lived, the cold war wouldn't have developed the way it did, because
Stalin would have tried to get along with Roosevelt.
(19)
Archibald
MacLeish, radio broadcast on the death of
Franklin
D. Roosevelt (13th April
1945)
It has pleased God in
His infinite wisdom to take from us the immortal spirit of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 3rd president of the United
States.
The leader of his people in
a great war, he lived to see the assurance of the victory but not to
share it. He lived to see the first foundations of the free and peaceful
world to which his life was dedicated, but not to enter on that world
himself.
His fellow countrymen will
sorely miss his fortitude and faith and courage in the time to come. The
peoples of the earth who love the ways of freedom and of hope will mourn
for him.
But though his voice is
silent, his courage is not spent, his faith is not extinguished. The
courage of great men outlives them to become the courage of their people
and the peoples of the world. It lives beyond them and upholds their
purposes and brings their hopes to pass.
Last updated: 1st November,
2002
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