Juggernaut South

Like a mighty political juggernaut, the President's train plowed through the South last week. All observers (and even some of the principals) agreed that the President left in his wake the wreckage of the anti-fourth term movement.

At all bridges and at practically every fence post along the 4,000-mile right-of-way, armed soldiers stood guard.* Hawkeyed secret-service men swarmed about the roped-off stations. At the stops were cheering crowds, parading soldiers, marching WAACs; and always, above, clouds of planes. At Fort Benning, Ga. there was a sham battle with deafening noise--an improvised grenade (a potato stuffed with gunpowder) hit the President's car; at Maxwell Field, Ala. the signals got crossed: soldiers puffed 15 times over the obstacle course before a halt was called. After the Army camps came the Douglas bomber plant at Tulsa.

Also, everywhere, on Franklin Roosevelt's second secret inspection trip of World War II, were politicians and Governors: South Carolina's Olin D. Johnston, Georgia's Ellis Arnall, Alabama's Chauncey Sparks, Tennessee's Prentice Cooper, Arkansas' Homer Adkins, Oklahoma's Robert Kerr.

Only a few weeks ago, revolt against the New Deal had fired the Governors to high talk. They were solemnly resoluting again when Franklin Roosevelt headed south. Each Governor scurried to his home state to meet the President. After they had ridden with him in pomp & circumstance, the Governors whistled a notably different tune.

Said fearless Governor Arnall, day before Franklin Roosevelt's arrival: "We are beginning to demand [States' rights]: we are going to keep on irritating people until we get them."

Said meek Governor Arnall, after Franklin Roosevelt's visit: "I don't subscribe to this moth-eaten doctrine of states' rights."

The Southern Governors, instead of being anti-Roosevelt, now began to scramble to be his next Vice President (see p. 24). Franklin Roosevelt told reporters he was getting a tremendous lift out of his jaunt.

South of the Border. After seven days, the trip's secrecy was lifted. Franklin Roosevelt was nearing the Mexican border for his appointed visit with Mexico's President Avila Camacho. At Fort Worth Eleanor Roosevelt got aboard. Southern Governors, who intensely dislike her outspoken views on the race question, had welcomed her earlier absence.

Monterrey had known for five days that it was to have an important visitor. As Franklin Roosevelt rode through the pennant-bedecked streets, senoritas threw flowers and confetti from the balconies. That night, he and Avila Camacho sat down to a seven-course dinner. While Eleanor Roosevelt tried her newly learned Spanish on Senora Camacho, the two Presidents conversed through an interpreter. Then they rose to address their countries by radio. Their speeches were filled with Good Neighborliness, but nothing much else.

Next day, on the 107th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, in which Sam Houston had trounced the Mexicans and assured Texas' independence, Avila Camacho returned the visit by accompanying Franklin Roosevelt to Corpus Christi. After Avila Camacho left, Franklin Roosevelt's movements, free of military censorship for 24 hours, were again shrouded in secrecy.

*Four U.S. and two Mexican soldiers were killed, either by the President's train or by others immediately preceding it.

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