Prelude to History

(See Cover)

The President of the U. S. is a big man, huge-shouldered and long-armed, with sausage-size fingers on his freckled, hairy hands. His greying hair is thin, little hollows dwell on his massive temples, brown shadows sit under his deep, narrow-set eyes, and two big seams hook down from his clear-cut nose to make grim parentheses around his mouth.

Last week he looked tired. But weariness sat on him lightly, like a film of ash over a smoldering fire. Powerful, solid, imperturbable, he sat at his desk with an air of utter confidence--the alert, nonchalant confidence of a skilled worker moving swiftly in a routine task. The crushing responsibilities of 1940 he wore as familiarly, as easily as his speckly seersucker suit, buttoned into thick wrinkles over his paunch.

Even now he slept well, six or seven hours a night. But he slept best on a boat. At near-midnight after his last fireside chat he motored to the Navy Yard in Washington, sailed downriver on the yacht Potomac. Afloat, he slept till 11 a.m., and went back to the White House at noon with all his old bounce.

The President was working hard--incredibly hard--at the job which has broken so many men. Daily he averaged 15 callers (on Thursday he saw 40 men, besides a special press conference); as always, he did most of the talking. To handsome Marguerite (Missy) LeHand, his private secretary, he dictated 15 to 20 letters a day. Constantly reports, documents, State papers, cables, digests, correspondence streamed over his desk. There were speeches to write, messages to plan, policies to determine. Above all, there was a world to watch, a world in which total war looked more & more like world revolution.

The President watched the world. Daily he scanned maps. For three weeks he has discussed battlefield contours in military detail with U.S. experts; again & again they have whistled respectfully at his apparent knowledge of Flanders--hills, creeks, towns, bridges. The President's particular forte is islands: he is said to know every one in the world, its peoples, habits, population, geography, economic life. When a ship sank off Scotland several months ago, experts argued: Had the ship hit a rock or had it been torpedoed? The President pondered latitude & longitude, said: "It hit a rock. They ought to have seen that rock." Naval Aide Daniel J. Callaghan recalled the rock, disagreed: "At high tide, Mr. President, that rock is submerged." No such thing, said the President, even at high tide that rock is 20 feet out of the water.

The family life of the Nation's First Familyman was in abeyance. For the last three weeks he has missed the evening movies in the big second-floor corridor in the White House. But he averaged three swims a week in the pool set between the Mansion and the Executive Offices.

His appetite was good, his taste for game still as keen as when Mrs. Roosevelt said he liked any food "that flies through the kitchen." Sea food was still his favorite dish, terrapin in any form his prime favorite, with a gastronomic nook always reserved for kedgeree, a dish of flaked white fish, rice, hardboiled eggs. He is a cheese connoisseur, but likes ice cream to the point of second helpings. He honestly likes hot dogs. One Scotch highball at teatime is his usual ration, but on a night out he ups that limit: often at banquets the flower vases before his place conceal as many as four Old-Fashioneds, which he downs before one can say "Jack Garner."

His day begins around 8:30 a.m., with a leisurely breakfast in bed, a review of news and the day's work with Secretary Stephen T. Early, a careful check through New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Baltimore newspapers; a look at overnight cables. Often, these days, there are also quick conferences with State Department chiefs. Languid, shrewd Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins often sits in, listening more than talking, unmindful of smoke curling into his eyes from a forgotten cigaret. When the grandchildren are on a visit, one is usually climbing around the bed (Franklin III or Sara).

Dressed, he sits on a little wheelchair that looks like a typewriter table--no arms or back--and an attendant places his hand on the President's broad shoulders, pushes him to the elevator, down the pillared outside passage (if the day is fair) and into the Oval Room to his desk. Walking is still a difficult, lurching task to him, only possible with a cane and an aide's arm.

At 10 or 10:30 appointments begin. Lunch is a conference over desk trays. The President is not skillful with his hands: they fumble with papers, with spectacles; the wood matches he uses often break under his heavy fingers. When he appears casual, easy, charming, his hands are still. He likes to laugh, even these days --a delighted roar that shakes him up & down--and still in the hoarded minutes of his day finds time to write lusty wisecracks in memos to his aides; to think up little gags to spring on his press conferences.

In more than seven years in the White House he hasn't spent 30 days in bed. Dr. Ross Mclntire vows his ward could pass his 1930 life-insurance examinations ($560,000) at his 1930 ratings. Only his family, anxiously aware of the mortality rate of Presidents, is not sure he can beat the averages.

He has one priceless attribute: a knack of locking up his and the world's worries in some secret mental compartment, and then enjoying himself to the top of his bent. This quality of survival, of physical toughness, of champagne ebullience, is one key to the big man. Another key is this: no one has ever heard him admit that he cannot walk.

The Mystery. Last week Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 58 years old, seven generations removed from a Dutch settler of 1644, son of a country gentleman and the belle of the Hudson River valley, was head of the last great democracy still at peace, with 33 weeks left of his second term. Yet, although he was in his eighth year as President, although he had moved, worked, eaten, laughed, exhorted, prayed in the intensest glare of public scrutiny; although his every facial grimace, the tone of his voice, each mannerism, the dark mole over his left eyebrow, the mole on his right cheek--although all these were public property, intimate to every U. S. citizen, still there was no man in the U. S. who could answer the question: Who is Franklin Roosevelt?

Many were the snap answers: he is a great man, he is a menace, he is a phony. But no one knew; to his closest intimates he remained an upper-case X in an equation of variables. This in spite of the fact that the U. S. has a vast, sure talent for knowing its leaders.

To hillmen and lowlanders in the farthest reaches of the U. S., to the nearest of his friends this week in the damp June heat of Washington, the name Franklin Roosevelt meant many things--interesting, exciting, even dangerous things--but no one thing they could all agree on or put a name to.

Those men who have worked with him at close range, who know that a deep, almost bottomless patience controls his every action, have two theories about him:

1) that, serenely sure of his own judgment, he meets any given situation with impulsively quick action, does all that can be done, then relaxes with a clear conscience:

2) a complex belief, expressed by Newshawk Marquis W. Childs, St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent, that "in his heart of hearts he is a sad man, having seen through the illusions and futilities of his time. Nevertheless, he has the courage to be cheerful and to do good in the sight of God. This theory endows Mr. Roosevelt with the humility of true greatness. . . ."

Theory I explains Franklin Roosevelt as the Great Improviser, impetuously patching up the irremediable, a dextrous three-shell manipulator, now-you-see-it, now-you-don't man. Theory II makes him a sitting Lincoln, streamlined for 1940, wearing a club tie instead of a shawl.

Solution. Perhaps not this week, not this month, but soon--in six weeks, almost certainly--the U. S. will know who Franklin Roosevelt is. The answer will come piecemeal, in reactions to his words, movements, decisions. To a U. S. gnawed by anxiety at the overwhelming, catastrophic fulfillment of Spenglerian prophecies, to a nation wondering whether its morale, mind, muscles have been too much enfeebled (by years of cynicism, of tolerance without discrimination) to fight now for the things democracy holds dear; to such a worrying, mistrustful, anxious country the answer will come clear only if Franklin Roosevelt acts boldly to forfend the crisis piled on crisis, if he boldly, surely chooses among the variety of desperate choices, if he strongly decides, and strongly acts.

The nation clearly, almost violently wanted a man of action, a powerhouse of strength and sureness. Only in New York and Washington, traditionally bad indexes to the national will, was there a panicky agreement that Franklin Roosevelt was the man the hour required. The rest of the U. S., willing to be convinced, remained to be convinced. Judgment was not reserved, it was only suspended--the hanging sword of national opinion.

The President moved fast and consistently. In the midst of exchanging apparently casual repartee with a press conference last week, he slipped over a blue-ink-typewritten memo from Missy LeHand. announced the revival, under the 1916 National Defense Act, of a Council of National Defense--six Cabinet members and seven coordinators to organize the still shadowy effort to arm the country.

The council looked good. But the U. S. had listened to Herbert Hoover when he insisted that boards, councils, conferences would not do the job--one man had to have the power. From the White House came the answer. Big Bill Knudsen, bowing to the President with Old-World courtesy, straightened up to ask bluntly: "Who's boss?" "I am," said Franklin Roosevelt.

There was part of the answer. The big man was prepared to take over all the portfolios, handle the entire vast effort himself. Could any one man do it? Can Franklin Roosevelt do it?

Mr. Roosevelt has many qualifications even for that stupendous job. Much has happened since he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in World War I, when he first emerged as a farsighted, clearheaded, efficient public servant. Franklin Roosevelt laid up war materials for two years, preparing the Navy so thoroughly that less foresighted War Department chiefs had to beg Woodrow Wilson to give them vital materials out of Mr. Roosevelt's hoarded plenty. More than any man's, his was the vision that saw the need of mining the North Sea's northern entrance, the strength to override the two Admiralties that said "impossible," the ability to get the minefields laid that helped to end the German submarine menace.

A man who is as close to the Presidential enigma as anybody answered thus last week: "Franklin Roosevelt is the toughest guy in this country, perhaps in the whole world. He's the toughest guy I've ever seen and that's a big statement. I sometimes think he is the toughest guy in U. S. history.

"Above all, he is utterly, supremely confident. You and I and the Man-in-the-Street might bend or break or get frightened under the terrific load, the terrific pressure of responsibility he carries. Not he. I know that the President, alone at night in his bedroom, thinking the whole scene over, doesn't even have a palmtingling in his hands. He is ready. He may not have been born for this time, but he's trained, hardened, forged, groomed and polished for this job."

Say the Roosevelt intimates: the U. S. M-Day plan is perfect, so perfect that the actual Nazi program of complete national mobilization for a knockout blow was based on it, after a six-month study in 1934. Say they: he also has a pre-M-Day plan. All that has come out of the White House thus far--$1,182,000,000 for armament, plus "more than a billion dollars" for more armament, a request for additional authority to call out the National Guard and reservists--all that is merely educational, preliminary; a step-by-step, carefully graduated plan to prepare the Nation imperceptibly for whatever may come, economic or political.

Amid these plans there was perhaps one big thing that he overlooked. He apparently thought it superfluous to ask the people to cooperate, to invite them formally to participate in a national effort for preparedness, an effort for which they were obviously eager. In his own immense self-confidence he took the job on his own shoulders and in effect said, "I'll do it."

Denouement. Last week the President told the country: "Planes cost money ... a lot of it." The cost of the effort to change the U. S. over into a military economy was as yet inestimable. Billions no longer shocked the U. S., incalculable budgets had become like fairy tales, with a fairy tale's gossamer insubstantiality.

Seven years of crisis-shouting had blunted the national sensibilities. Over & over again Franklin Roosevelt had cried "Crisis!" Now there was a crisis indeed; the U. S. did not have to be told so. Shocked awake by the crash of events, the U. S. wanted now not merely vast appropriations, advisory councils, coordinators, movement. The U. S. wanted the President to be its leader: it did not want to consider him any longer as the head of the Democratic Party, but as the head of a united nation.

But up to last week the President had not yet made it clear to the nation that preparedness against war was not a New Deal program but a national program. Many a stubborn citizen could honestly ask: Am I offering my support to the President or to the Politico?

The minutes fled, like the hawk-shadows of bombers across June-green farmlands in the Rhone Valley. In the White House the President sat confidently, easily, an air of certainty on his big, tanned, handsome face. The nation, having asked its anxious question, waited for the answer it demanded, the answer only its leader could give.

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