Power at 59

Last week Franklin Roosevelt became 59. Few men on their 59th birthday could say what he said of himself last week.

One day, at Congressman Sam Rayburn's insistence, he got out of bed, where he had been nursing a cold, dressed, put on his best face and held a conference with House and Senate leaders in his second-floor study. They had come to discuss with Mr. Roosevelt H.R. 1776, the Lend-Lease Bill (see p. 17). In the comfortable room at the White House, the argument came down to the kind of simple talk any U. S. citizen could understand. Present were Speaker Rayburn, Senators Barkley and George, and Congressmen MacCormack, Bloom and Luther Johnson -- and the two Republican leaders: Senator McNary and Congressman Joe Martin. The dialogue was almost as simple as this : Joe Martin: What's your objective, Mr.President -- what do you want?

Franklin Roosevelt: Joe, I want to help England lick Hitler.

Martin: Mr. President, what about the tremendous power this bill confers on you? Then the President made his extraordinary statement.

Roosevelt: Joe, this bill can't give me as much power as I already have. I am Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. The power of that position frightens me sometimes. I am not interested in more power.

Then he went on to add: "All I want is to get the job done. . . . Suppose you simply voted two or three billion dollars and set up some kind of agency, or used the RFC. Who do you suppose is going to administer it? Why, I am, of course. And I think we can do the job more efficiently this way."

The conference lasted an hour and a half. The President was quiet, reasonable, listened more than he spoke. At the end, Charles McNary said politely: "Mr. President, I want you to know that I appreciate your position." He and Joe Martin knew that votes would decide the argument, and that the Democrats had the votes. Then the conference broke up, and Franklin Roosevelt, the man who at 59 thought he had all the power he could wish for, went back to nursing his cold.

Three nights later he spoke to the nation. His cold had left him. That day was his birthday, and that night in Washington, and all over the country, people had been aiding the drive against infantile paralysis by dancing at Birthday Balls. Mr. Roosevelt broadcast his thanks and declared:

"I cannot say, as you can well understand, that this is for me a completely happy birthday. These are not happy days for any of us in the world. Shall we say that American birthdays this year are being made at least happier than they would otherwise be because all of us are still living under a free people's philosophy? ... It is because we believe in and insist on the right of the helpless and the weak and the crippled everywhere to play their part in life -- and survive."

Last week the President also: > Declared that he had been too busy celebrating his birthday to read Hitler's speech (see p. 21). To a reporter's remark that the speech had been meant as a birth day present, Mr. Roosevelt quipped that he had not opened all his presents yet.

> Signed the 77th Congress' first law: a $300,000,000 authorization to install modern anti-aircraft defenses on warships.

>Told newsmen that the Government was prepared to take over Ford Motor Co., or any factory in the country, if that action were necessary for defense.

>Added fuel to his old feud with Isolationist Senator Burton Wheeler. Three weeks ago, when Senator Wheeler charged that the President was going to "plow under every fourth American boy," Roosevelt retorted that the remark was " dastardly." Last week, Mr. Roosevelt passed on a piece of gossip about Senator Wheeler. According to the memoirs of the late William E. Dodd, Roosevelt's Ambassador to Germany, Senator Wheeler had remarked at a dinner given him by Brain-Truster Rexford Tugwell, "some time in 1934," that Nazi domination of Europe was "inevitable." Ambassador Dodd had told him about it at the time, said Roosevelt. Asked whether the President interpreted the remark to mean that Senator Wheeler favored a German victory, Mr. Roosevelt pointed out that the word "in evitable" was a very comprehensive word indeed.* Did Mr. Roosevelt think Senator Wheeler held the same opinion now? The President had no comment.

Because Jan. 30, which is the date of the President's birthday, is also the birthday of Anna Sklepovich, Anna had sent a letter with her best wishes. Anna was to be 14. Back to her home in the mining town of Gary, W. Va., fortnight ago, came a formal thank-you note over the President's signature. But before Anna got the letter, her 18-year-old brother Steve had opened it, prankishly written a postscript : "We would like to have you come to the White House and meet the President." Anna read the postscript and was thrilled. Mother Sklepovich and Father Sklepovich, a mine mechanic, were thrilled too. They scraped together bus fare for the 350-mile trip to the Capital, and sent Anna off. Still clutching the note, Anna presented herself at the White House door.

An attendant took a look at the note, saw the postscript was a hoax. Next thing Anna knew, she was being hustled away by a Secret Service guard. Bitterly disappointed, Anna sobbed herself to sleep that night at the Receiving Home for Children.

Capital newsmen heard the story, and next day Washington papers front-paged it. In bed that morning, Mr. Roosevelt read about it, pressed a button, uttered a command. Wonderful things began to happen to Anna.

George E. Allen, balding, round-faced chairman of the President's Birthday Ball Committee, whisked her to the White House, where she shook the Presidential hand. Shyly she said: "Happy birthday, Mr. President. I am very glad you can see me." Then she was whirled off on a sightseeing tour, to a store to buy a pink formal evening gown, to a hairdresser's, to a suite at the Mayflower Hotel.

Next night, as Washington staged its annual President's Birthday Ball, Anna Sklepovich helped Eleanor Roosevelt cut the President's birthday cake, posed for pictures with cinema stars, scribbled her autograph. Then back to the Mayflower she went, through goggling crowds. There she sighed happily, took off her new white, green and gold wedgies, ended the most exciting birthday she had ever known.

*Said Senator Wheeler, recovering from influenza at the Florida home of Joseph P. Kennedy: "This slanderous attack on me--attributed to a dead man--is absolutely false."

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