"Total Politician"

Crusty old (77) Jesse Jones had no reason to be surprised that the influence boys have been working on the RFC. During the twelve turbulent years that Jones supervised the open-handed Government corporation, politicians from President Roosevelt down continually eyed the jam pot. In a book published this week (Fifty Billion Dollars, Macmillan; $6), Jones takes this and many another angry cut at the Administration of which he was a part and at the President under whom he served.

Private Smoosh. Every now & then, says the ex-chairman, there were around the RFC "meddlers wanting to muscle in for a little private smoosh." More often than not, the approach was made through the White House. One day in 1941, after a visit from Alfred E. Smith, President Roosevelt sent a memo to Jones. He thought the RFC ought to buy the Empire State Building of which Smith was president. "We all know that the [building] is a losing proposition," wrote the President, "but. . . it is ideally located for a central Federal Office Building." After an investigation, Jones reported that the price was far too high. "Yes, Jess," Roosevelt replied, "all that is probably true, but I would like to do something for Al Smith. He is broke and has an expensive family."

Jones stubbornly refused to buy. Ex-Governor Smith, he recalls, came to see him "two or three times during the negotiations and indicated clearly his real feeling toward the President--which was that of utter contempt. He made it plain he had gone to the White House . . . only to help his friend Mr. Raskob [onetime chairman of the Democratic National Committee] get some of his money out of a losing venture."

After Roosevelt's fourth inaugural, a long squabble with Henry Wallace cost Jones his job as Secretary of Commerce. Now, six years out of Government service, he remembers that Roosevelt never harbored a grudge. "In the twelve years I worked for and with [Roosevelt] we never had an argument." Looking back, however, Jones writes as if he had quite a grudge of his own.

No Intention of Leaving. He says that Roosevelt was "all things to all men--always a politician." Jones expands this theme: "I understand perfectly what is meant by 'total politician'--Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . After the start of World War II ... he was always fighting two wars at the same time, the political struggle for the presidency, which he never lost sight of, and the military conflict. Regardless of his oft-repeated statement, 'I hate war,' he was eager to get into the fighting that would insure a third term . . .

"He had no intention of leaving the White House until voted out--or carried out... In no sense did I feel his superiority over other men except that he was President, and the greatest politician our country has ever known, and ruthless when it suited his purpose . . .

"He began to see himself as a great world figure of all time, a Caesar, maybe, or an Alexander the Great. But he must bring Joseph Stalin under his influence ... At Teheran the President made various promises and commitments to Joe. Still determined but... weakened in mind and body, Roosevelt went ... to meet Stalin at Yalta. There he made still further commitments from which our country and the rest of the non-Communist world may never recover. A few weeks later he was dead--his ambition unattained."

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