Word for War

President Roosevelt, who wanted a new and better name for the war, could take his pick of suggestions. Letters fluttered into the White House by thousands. Names ranged from flat pomposities like "The Freeman's War" to flat gags like "JIG War" (Japan, Italy, Germany-and their jig will be up soon).

Franklin Roosevelt kept turning the matter over in his mind. On Pan American Day he made a little impromptu speech to the Governing Board of the Pah American Union. Said he:

"I ... think that the idea is being understood more than ever before what would happen if any part of the Hemisphere were dominated by a successful Germany. We wouldn't live the same kind of lives -- that is the easiest way of putting it. Because that new-- not the old German civilization-- that new German civilization is so totally different from what all of us have been accustomed to since we were born. I shudder to think of what would happen to any part of the Hemisphere that came under German domination.

"So I am looking for a word, as I said to the newspapermen a little while ago. I want a name for the war. I haven't had any very good suggestions. Most of them are too long. My own thought is that perhaps there is one word we could use for this war, the word survival. The Survival War. That is what it comes pretty close to being.

"We are going places. We will get somewhere. And we are going to have a couple of years, perhaps three years, before we can make sure that our type of civilization is going to survive. . . ."

At his press conference that afternoon, Franklin Roosevelt again mentioned The Survival War. The name did not exactly sweep the country.

Back -- with the Bacon?

Back to Washington, from their mystery mission in London, flew Harry Hopkins and General George Catlett Marshall, the U.S. Army's Chief of Staff. What they had to say they said only to President Roosevelt.

Hello, Joe, Whaddaya Know?

Joseph P. Kennedy, pre-War isolationist and former Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, who declared in the spring of 1941 that "it is nonsense to say that an Axis victory spells ruin for us," last week called on his onetime friend Franklin Roosevelt. His purpose: to offer his services to his country.

My Day

At 9 a.m. a brown moving van pulled up to the town house. It was probably late; Manhattan moving vans always are. Soon movers had the sidewalk littered with tables and bric-a-brac; they always do.

Eleanor Roosevelt bustled from the house, lugging an armful of prints to a maroon convertible; housewives always clutch the breakables on moving day. Newsmen gathered round. Mrs. Roosevelt brushed them away: "No time for interviews."

At 11 a.m. she stopped the convertible in front of the new seven-room Roosevelt apartment in Washington Square. There were more newsmen to be brushed aside. Under the canopy huddled a group of women; one stepped forth and said bravely: "It's a pleasure to have you for a neighbor." Mrs. Roosevelt, deep in the what-did-I-forget daze of moving day, managed a smile, waved a hand.

She had trouble unlocking the turtleback; moving-day fingers are always thumbs. Once it was up, she and the apartment doorman, pulling out three typewriters and an armload of packages, got in each other's way. Inside the apartment she found that the movers had not yet arrived with the first load; they never have. When they did get there, naturally, they decided to knock off for lunch before unloading. Mrs. Roosevelt went back uptown for her own lunch. She had forgotten to take the car out of gear; it leaped away with her like a stubborn broncho.

All afternoon the procession continued: East 65th Street to Washington Square, Washington Square to 65th Street. Mrs. Roosevelt carried her prints, two Chinese lamps, a bowl of glass daisies. The vans disgorged their cargoes: an old cane-bottomed rocker that the President likes, a walnut highboy, a high chair, a barrel with a box of soap chips sticking out.

Eleanor Roosevelt's frilly white collar turned to sponge; her smile froze into catalepsy. Nothing fit; everything was missing; the movers unquestionably had broken the last piece of china. As housewives always say: If I ever live through this day, I'll never move again. . . . In the evening newsmen tried to talk to

Eleanor Roosevelt. She cut them off, sharply. The newsmen, fellows who always manage to be called to work on their own moving days, did not understand. They traced the license number on the maroon convertible, noted slyly that it belonged to perennial Youth Leader Joe Lash; they noted that a Navy truck had delivered a trunk.

Next day Mrs. Roosevelt, her bones doubtless aching, her nerves still twitching, snapped in her column: "Certain things seemed to me a little ludicrous. . . . The moving men tell me they are always busy, somebody moves every day in the year, so one would think that it would be something to which people were fairly well accustomed. ... A naval friend . . . sent in a trunk to be housed until he gets settled. Another friend lent Mrs. Roosevelt a car, and all this was headline, front-page news. . . ."

Up & down the U.S., female hearts beat sympathetically.

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