Decade

THE PRESIDENCY

As Franklin Roosevelt stood on the Capitol steps ten years ago this week, his eyes and mind were on the dark U.S. Depression. His chin out, his voice resolute, he assured the U.S. people: they had nothing to fear except fear itself.

There is little else of his first inaugural speech which is applicable today; it contained no premonition of the 1943 U.S. position in world affairs. (Few days before, he had conferred with French Ambassador Paul Claudel on World War I debts.)

In the decade that followed, the whole focus and direction of the Presidency, and of U.S. life, had been changed. No future President would be able to devote almost all his inaugural speech to domestic affairs. Franklin Roosevelt, too, had changed. There was to be no celebration as he began his eleventh year in the White House. The President had just recovered from a slight intestinal upset; all he wanted to do was to get back to the routine of being President.

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