Anniversary

On his tenth anniversary as President of the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt said Amen to a prayer. He did not have the prayer said in strictest privacy, but in the East Room of the White House. And there to say Amen with him were the men & women of high rank in Washington: 250 Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, Congressional leaders, generals and admirals. It was a ritual the President has observed every March 4 since 1933.

The President's head was bowed as Navy Chaplain Frank R. Wilson, onetime rector of Franklin Roosevelt's own St. James Episcopal Church at Hyde Park, intoned the Collect for Peace: "Defend us, Thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies, that we, surely trusting in Thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries. . . ."

Franklin Roosevelt's Amen was loud and clear above the others. It boomed out again at the close of the Prayer for Social Justice: "Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression. . . ."

The brief service over. Vice President Henry Wallace gravely shook the President's hand. When the President returned to the executive offices, photographers were waiting. He grouped his faithful secretaries and military aide about his desk and posed for anniversary pictures. Then, putting his cigaret holder in his mouth at a rakish angle, jutting his chin forward, in the pose cartoonists use, he said: "Let's make one this way, boys." Franklin Roosevelt was putting on his "stern face." The result (see cut) showed what a remarkable resemblance the President, now 61, bears to his late mother.

Low Point. As he began his eleventh year in the White House, Franklin Roosevelt's fortunes, although at high tide in the world at large, were at a new low at home. To a man of his courage, Dutch stubbornness, and physical optimism this was not a matter of awful concern. He has never minded reaching a low point the year before an election. But on the day of his anniversary came strong strictures from a longtime thick-&-thin Roosevelt supporter, strictures to make even an optimist look to his political fences. Said the New Deal New York Post:

"Why should [the President] go to such lengths to upset his supporters, to drive their spirits down and sometimes, even, to make them snatch at their thumbs? A certain American majority . . . has elected Mr. Roosevelt three times. We do not think that majority put him in there to appease Franco. . . .

"There comes a time when too much is too much. There comes a time when you see the Department of Agriculture throw out the friends of the small farmer. . . . And then you see an Ambassador sent to Spain who describes Dictator Franco as 'wise.' And then you see . . . oil now going to Spain as it once went to Japan. . . .

"How much harder has our present job been made by past appeasement? . . . The great majority, which elects Presidents, watches and wonders, and the thing in its heart which makes enthusiasm and election victories begins to shrivel a little. There comes a time."

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