Mr. Roosevelt's War

Early this week Franklin Roosevelt moved the U.S. squarely into the Battle of the Atlantic. In Reykjavik, U.S. naval forces had landed, and Iceland was in hand (see p. 17). From where they were New York was 3,900 miles away, but Norway's Nazi-occupied Bergen was only 1,800 miles, Scotland's port of Glasgow only 1,600 miles, and Berlin a mere 2,800 miles as the bomber flies. The Western Hemisphere had stretched once more. The President had taken another great step.

The news of that step came to the public when the President sent a message to Congress. The night before, the President had called seven Congressional leaders to a very secret conference at the White House--Senate Leader Barkley, Senators George (Foreign Relations) and Connally; Speaker Rayburn. Representatives McCormack (Majority Leader), Sol Bloom (Foreign Affairs) and Luther Johnson. The President, sitting back of his big desk in his upstairs study, was serious but in good humor, and he did most of the talking. He frankly admitted that he had taken a serious step and said he wanted to discuss it with them. He did not ask them to approve his act. As Commander in Chief of the armed forces and director of the nation's foreign policy he had become convinced that it was necessary to occupy Iceland in order properly to defend the U.S. He felt he could not consult Congress beforehand because to do so might have placed the occupying forces in extreme danger while they were at sea.

With equal candor the President went on: The move into Iceland might precipitate fighting but he did not think so. He knew that his action would stir up a furor at home and he would be accused of taking an offensive step. But the British had notified him some time before that they needed the forces now in Iceland and intended to remove them. To leave Iceland unoccupied would be an easy opportunity for Germany to seize the island. With 75% of U.S. aid to Britain going over the northern sea route past Iceland's front door, the result would be fatal.

In his firmest tones of the evening he asserted that under those circumstances German occupation of Iceland was something the U.S. could not permit. None of the seven challenged that statement. And none of them challenged his right as Commander in Chief to act without consulting Congress.

Next day at mid-afternoon Franklin Roosevelt sent his message to Congress, transmitting a note from Hermann Jonasson, Prime Minister of Iceland, and his reply. He told the Congress:

"In accordance with the understanding so reached, forces of the United States Navy have today arrived in Iceland* in order to supplement and eventually to replace the British forces. . . .

"As Commander in Chief I have . . . issued orders to the Navy that all necessary steps to be taken to insure the safety of communications in the approaches between Iceland and the United States, as well as on the seas between the United States and all other strategic outposts."

The last phrase was Rooseveltian in the first degree. It might technically include Dakar, Cape Verde Islands or the Azores, although the President had told his visitors the night before that such was not the case. Looking ahead, some speculative analysts thought there might be a time when some port in Eire would also be "a strategic outpost," would also be occupied by the U.S. Navy as a U.S. base.

Then the nation would have completed the crossing of the Atlantic--and still without a declaration of war. Franklin Roosevelt had learned from Adolf Hitler. If the sophisticated Nazis ever smile, there must have been smiles in the Wilhelmstrasse this week as they saw the U.S. President extending "protection" to a little country.

All this had taken place after a Fourth of July weekend when, as for 165 years past, fireworks softly zooped and swished, ending with a bang or a whisper. But the approach of war gave the Fourth of July 1941 a different feel and taste. The President had concluded his brief Independence Day radio speech by telling the nation:

"And so it is that when we repeat the great pledge to our country and to our flag, it must be our deep conviction that we pledge as well our work, our will, and if it be necessary, our very lives."

Before he returned to Washington the President had had eight days of apparently much needed rest at Hyde Park. In the country he alternately swam and lolled, signed minor bills and brooded. It proved to be one of his gestation periods, rather like the creative pauses of Adolf Hitler.

Lounging in seersucker trousers, a blue shirt open at the collar, tieless, he told reporters at Hyde Park that he still hoped that the U.S. could stay out of the war. But he made it clear that his hope was not to be confused with belief. In September 1939 he had said: "I hope the United States will keep out of this war. I believe that it will." Somewhere in the two years the belief had vanished.

But for all he had done he might still have the idea that the U.S. could win the war without fighting it. Five weeks had passed since he had said: "I say that the delivery of needed supplies to Britain is imperative; I say this can be done; it must be done; it will be done." Some cartoonists grew impatient with him (see cut, p. 11) and the New York Times icily observed: "It has not been done." Pundit Walter Lippman tellingly described the President's proclamation of unlimited emergency as "a tremendous imitation of an act . . . not the prelude to action but the substitute for it."

Even when Iceland had been occupied, a great many more less controversial things had not been done. The U.S. and its President, if they faced the facts, had still to face three enormous U.S. failures:

Failure No. 1 was the fumbling and partial stagnation of the defense program, which for all its substantial progress was still far below American standards of efficiency.

Failure No. 2 was the continued inability of the U.S. to make up its mind definitely whether or not, and to what extent, it was in the war.

Failure No. 3, in some ways more important than any, was the failure to control the sinister inflation already resulting from the defense boom. Even OPACS Boss Leon Henderson, seldom a pessimist, now gloomily admitted the U.S. was probably on the edge of credit inflation, although he could not foresee such extremes as the printing of greenbacks.

If Iceland brought shooting nearer, these things were more, rather than less, important. But as regards them the President still seemed to be waiting for the people to catch up, and the people still seemed to be waiting for him to catch up.

* The President also revealed that "substantial" U.S. forces had been sent to the new Trinidad and British Guiana bases.

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