The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

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СКАЧАТЬ time passed to be one of increasing friendliness. As a result, America as a whole was to become the most disappointing of all continents to the Axis, and what might have been a fruitful field for the tares of Nazi diplomacy was very largely denied to it. Neither, however, the ‘good neighbour’ policy nor his desire to prevent war was to keep him from forceful comment on the increasingly aggressive and tyrannical acts of the German and Italian dictators, and he denounced Germany’s disregard of treaties soundly. When, moreover, he went to Canada in 1938 to open the new international bridge over the St Lawrence he made the historic pledge: ‘I give you the assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if Canadian soil is threatened by any other Empire.’

      In 1938 also Roosevelt began more fully to employ his influence in the affairs of Europe. Consequently when the crisis in regard to Czechoslovakia was at its height he addressed messages to both sides begging them to reach a peaceful solution by negotiation: and not to break off their deliberations. He sent, too, a second appeal to Hitler urging the maintenance of peace and then, when all negotiations seemed to have broken down at Godesberg, he established touch with Mussolini and had a hand in bringing about the Munich Conference, thus delaying war for a season. Throughout, however, the several critical years before it came he had no illusions in regard to the sinister nature of the dictators’ policies. ‘It is no accident,’ he had said, when he visited Buenos Aires for the Pan-American Conference, ‘that the nations which have carried the process of erecting trade barriers the farthest are those which proclaim most loudly that they require war as an instrument of policy.’ Incidentally, he concluded on that occasion with the remarkable words, ‘We took from our ancestors a great dream. We offer it back as a great unified reality. We offer hope for peace and more abundant life to the peoples of the world.’

      Opposition to Hitler

      Roosevelt saw far too deeply into the European situation to be set at rest by the achievement of Munich. At the beginning of 1939 he told Congress that he would go to any length short of war to stop the aggressor, and added that there were effective means of doing so. His speeches during the months which followed contained strong declarations for peace, but still more powerful vindications of democracy. His policy, he declared, was the defence of civilization against militarism. Thus he opposed to the morbid race theory and overweening demands of Hitler the broad and humane sanity of his democratic faith. At the same time he proceeded to strengthen the material defences of the United States and, as a precaution, ordered a comprehensive survey of American industry.

      When in March Hitler seized what remained of Bohemia he sent messages to him and Mussolini as a ‘friendly intermediary’ asking them to give a guarantee not to attack for 10 years a specified list of nations. If they agreed he said he would be prepared to ask for reciprocal guarantees and call an international conference to which the United States would give every support in order to try to reach a settlement of all international difficulties. It was, in fact his last great bid; but Hitler would have none of it.

      During the summer of 1939 the King and Queen toured Canada and took the opportunity of visiting the United States. The President and Mrs Roosevelt received them at Washington and were their hosts at the White House and then for a weekend at Hyde Park. It was a happy interlude in grave and anxious days. Then, as towards the end of August war drew nearer, Roosevelt appealed twice to Hitler to preserve peace and to the President of Poland to continue negotiations. He also sent a personal message to the King of Italy asking him to use his influence in promoting negotiations. Next, on September 1 when war seemed inevitable, he begged the Powers concerned to declare publicly that they would not bomb civilian populations or unfortified cities. The German answer was the devastation of open Polish towns and villages. After this there was nothing for him to do except to fulfil his obligation to proclaim neutrality, and, under the laws which had been adopted in recent years with the purpose of keeping America out of war, he had to forbid American ships to enter the zone of combat, to warn Americans not to travel there, and to preclude the supply of ammunition or armaments to the belligerents and the raising of loans by those who still owed war debts in America. In the autumn, however, on his urgent insistence, the ban on armaments was relaxed so as to permit the sale of aeroplanes, munitions, and weapons to France and Great Britain under the ‘cash and carry’ plan. In this country it was a very welcome amendment, and was the beginning of the pro-allied legislation which he was determined to enact. He had indeed many weapons in his armoury and was prepared to use them all. He could warn and thunder and impose embargoes and trade sanctions but he lacked the only one to which Hitler might have paid attention, for he could not offer the threat of war. A biographer has written of him that at this time he was ‘a crusader wielding a sheathed sword’.

      National Defence

      With the overrunning of Europe and the fall of France the attitude of the people of the United States began to change. Demands for a vast programme of national defence arose, and Roosevelt, responsive as ever to national feeling, announced that there could only be peace ‘if we are prepared to meet force with force if the challenge is ever made’. The last despairing appeal of France moved him deeply; but he was compelled to point out that assistance by armed forces was not for him but for Congress to give. By June, 1940, American opinion had moved so far that he was able to say of Italy that ‘the hand that held the dagger had struck it into the back of its neighbour’ and to add that America sent forward her prayers and hopes ‘to those beyond the seas who are maintaining with magnificent valour the battle for freedom’. In July, 1940, at a Press conference he defined the ‘five freedoms’, the aims to be realized if peace were to return to the earth.

      In the election of 1940 Mr Wendell Willkie was the Republican candidate. There was an honoured and unbroken tradition which forbade a third term to any President, and for a long time Roosevelt refused to say whether he would be prepared to stand. At last, however, having made it clear that he had no desire to do so, he yielded to a unanimous request from the convention at Chicago. Willkie was a strong opponent of the New Deal and of most of Roosevelt’s internal legislation. He was, however, in general agreement with him on a more vigorous defence policy and fuller aid for Britain. It was therefore to those matters that the President confined his attention, inaugurating meanwhile a huge programme for the production of munitions with the aid of leading businessmen whom he called in to assist and advise. He also took two leading Republicans, Colonels Knox and Stimson, into the Cabinet, transferred 50 destroyers to Great Britain in return for naval bases, and worked out a defence policy with Canada. He thus fulfilled his slogan ‘Full speed ahead’ in war production. In the campaign itself, however, he took little part and made only a few speeches towards its close, when he said he had been misrepresented.

      Third Time President

      Once again, although Mr Willkie did better against him than either Mr Hoover or Mr Landon, he won handsomely – he was elected by a majority of some 5,000,000 on the popular vote – and thus opened up new fields of leadership. Almost immediately he brought forward his lend-lease proposals, which were embodied in a measure entitled ‘An Act to promote the defense of the United States’. These proposals were to enable him to provide war supplies for Great Britain and in fact for ‘the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States’. Thereafter he kept on enlarging his production plans and stated that America would be ‘the arsenal of democracy’. He also pushed her naval patrols farther into the ocean than they had gone in defence of neutrality, and, after the Italians had been driven from Eritrea, sent American supply ships to the Red Sea. Calling for ‘unqualified immediate all-out aid for Britain, increased and again increased until total victory has been won’, he urged that there should be no idle machine and that they should operate 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Speaking in May at the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, he said: ‘He taught us that democracy could not survive in isolation. We applaud his judgment. We applaud his faith.’ Thus, by arming his country for its own defence and in the meantime sustaining the resistance of Great Britain, he served what was in fact the single purpose of saving democracy.

      On May 27, 1941, Roosevelt delivered one СКАЧАТЬ