Routine Declaration

President Roosevelt sent to Congress a 136-word message that took less than two minutes to read...."The long-known and the long-expected has thus taken place...." This was his only I-told-you-so to all the isolationists who had so long insisted that nothing of the sort would ever take place.

That morning (Dec. 11, 1941) Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had done some routine ranting, had roared some routine lies, had returned to their routine aggression--after declaring war on the U.S.

With a single speech, without one wasted word, the Senate voted war with Germany, 88-to-0, war with Italy, 90-to-0. The House voted war with Germany, 393-to-0. (In both House votes, Republican Pacifist Jeannette Rankin cinched her footnote place in history piping "Present"--a refusal to vote.) After the declaration of war with Germany was passed, the House galleries held up the second roll call by noisily tromping out. War with Italy (399-to-0) wasn't worth sitting for.

The President's message had been read at about 12:30 p.m.; by 3:06 p.m. he had the two declarations.

(Carter Glass, 83-year-old Virginia Senator, watched the signing. He told the President that some Senators had wanted to phrase the declaration so as not to hurt the feelings of the Axis nations. Snarled the aged fireball: "I said: 'Hell, we don't want to hurt their feelings, we want to kill them.' ")

The years-long Great Debate was over. The U.S. was of one mind at last. The dreaded thing came almost as an anticlimax--not step by step and through-the-back-door, but with the simple routine gesture of a postman handing in the mail. Thus, as it must to all good peoples, war with the Nazis came to the U.S.

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