Part 14 (2/2)

As their fortieth wedding anniversary came in March, Eleanor had spent nearly twenty-seven years since learning of her husband's love affair taking refuge in public affairs. Now, sadly, Roosevelt was losing his ability to meet her on that common ground.

STALIN WAS ALREADY breaking his Yalta promises, strengthening the communist hand in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. Churchill began inundating Roosevelt with cables-thirteen in the thirty days since they parted. ”I feel that this is a test case between us and the Russians of the meaning which is to be attached to such terms as Democracy, Sovereignty, Independence, representative Government and free and unfettered elections,” Churchill wrote Roosevelt of Poland. In the middle of March, however, Roosevelt was willing to see how events turned out as Allied diplomats in Moscow wrangled over Poland, telling Churchill: ”I feel that our personal intervention would best be withheld until every other possibility of bringing the Soviet Government into line has been exhausted.” Churchill was stymied again.

Stymied, but thinking warmly of the president. ”I hope that the rather numerous telegrams I have to send you on so many of our difficult and intertwined affairs are not becoming a bore to you . . . ,” Churchill wrote on March 17.

I always think of those tremendous days when you devised Lend-Lease, when we met at Argentia, when you decided with my heartfelt agreement to launch the invasion of Africa, and when you comforted me for the loss of Tobruk by giving me the 300 Shermans of subsequent Alamein fame. . . .

I am sending to Was.h.i.+ngton and San Francisco most of my ministerial colleagues on one mission or another, and I shall on this occasion stay at home to mind the shop. All the time I shall be looking forward to your long-promised visit. Clemmie is off to Russia next week for a Red Cross tour as far as the Urals to which she has been invited by Uncle Joe (if we may venture to describe him thus), but she will be back in time to welcome you and Eleanor.

Peace with Germany and j.a.pan on our terms will not bring much rest to you and me (if I am still responsible). As I observed last time, when the war of the giants is over, the wars of the pygmies will begin. There will be a torn, ragged and hungry world to help to its feet: and what will Uncle Joe or his successor say to the way we should both like to do it? . . . The advantage of this telegram is that it has nothing to do with shop. . . . All good wishes.

Winston.

Roosevelt did not answer, which worried Churchill the way Roosevelt's silence in 1940 about the reelection telegram did. Thirteen days later, Churchill added this line to another cable: ”By the way, did you ever receive a telegram from me of a purely private character . . . ? It required no answer. But I should like to know that you received it.”

In the end, it was as it had been in the beginning-an anxious Churchill, a colder Roosevelt. The next day, from Warm Springs, Roosevelt finally replied, saying, ”I did receive your very pleasing message. . . . We hope that Clemmie's long flying tour in Russia will first be safe and next be productive of good which I am sure it will be. The war business today seems to be going very well from our point of view and we may now hope for the collapse of Hitlerism at an earlier date than had heretofore been antic.i.p.ated.”

Roosevelt seemed to be moving closer to Churchill's vantage point on Russia. ”I cannot conceal from you the concern with which I view the development of events of mutual interest since our fruitful meeting at Yalta,” Roosevelt wrote Stalin.

Churchill had another case to press with Roosevelt: the race to Berlin. Eisenhower was pursuing a strategy that might allow the Soviets to reach the German capital first. Calling themselves ”the truest friends and comrades that ever fought side by side,” Churchill urged Roosevelt to overrule Eisenhower. ”I say quite frankly that Berlin remains of high strategic importance . . . ,” Churchill told Roosevelt. ”The Russian armies will no doubt overrun all Austria and enter Vienna. If they also take Berlin, will not their impression that they have been the overwhelming contributor to our common victory be unduly imprinted in their minds, and may this not lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future?” Told a change in course might cost one hundred thousand casualties, Roosevelt turned down Churchill's impa.s.sioned request. On April 5, throwing in his hand, Churchill wrote, ”I regard the matter as closed and to prove my sincerity I will use one of my very few Latin quotations, 'Amantium irae amoris integratio est.' ”

The map room's translation: ”Lovers' quarrels always go with true love.”

THE DAY BEFORE he left for a rest in Warm Springs at the end of March, Roosevelt had a word with Frances Perkins. Perkins asked if she could bring by some guests for a quick meeting in the middle of May. ”I can't do that,” Roosevelt told her. ”I am going out to San Francisco to open the meeting, make my speech, and receive the delegates in a social and personal way.” After that it was on to England with Eleanor. ”I have long wanted to do it,” Roosevelt said. ”I want to see the British people myself. Eleanor's visit in wartime was a great success. I mean a success for her and for me so that we understood more about their problems. I think they liked her too. But I want to go. We owe it as a return visit, and this seems to be the best time to go. It is going to be all right. I told Eleanor to order her clothes and get some fine ones so that she will make a really handsome appearance.”

”But the war!” Perkins said. ”I don't think you ought to go. It is dangerous. The Germans will get after you.”

”The war in Europe,” Roosevelt said, ”will be over by the end of May.”

Churchill was also thinking of Roosevelt's pending visit to England. As he ate breakfast in bed at Chequers one morning, he talked about Roosevelt with Sam Rosenman, who was back in England. ”The look which came into Churchill's eyes as he talked showed the strong bond of affection that had grown between these two great leaders,” Rosenman recalled.

”There are two things which I wish you would convey for me to your great President-both matters of personal interest to me,” Churchill said. ”First, as you know, the President and Mrs. Roosevelt have accepted the invitations of their Majesties to make a visit to England during the month of May. Will you tell him for me that he is going to get from the British people the greatest reception ever accorded to any human being since Lord Nelson made his triumphant return to London? I want you to tell him that when he sees the reception he is going to get, he should realize that it is not an artificial or stimulated one. It will come genuinely and spontaneously from the hearts of the British people; they all love him for what he has done to save them from destruction by the Huns; they love him also for what he has done for the cause of peace in the world, for what he has done to relieve their fear that the horrors they have been through for five years might come upon them again in increased fury.

”Here is the second thing I want you to tell him,” Churchill continued, Rosenman noted, ”a bit sheepishly.”

”Do you remember when I came over to your country in the summer of 1944 when your election campaigning was beginning? Do you remember that when I arrived, I said something favorable to the election of the President, and immediately the a.s.sociates of the President sent word to me in no uncertain terms to 'lay off' discussing the American election? Do you remember I was told that if I wanted to help the President get re-elected, the best thing I could do was to keep my mouth shut; that the American people would resent any interference or suggestion by a foreigner about how they should vote?”

With what Rosenman called ”one of his most engaging laughs,” Churchill said, ”Now what I want you to tell the President is this. When he comes over here in May I shall be in the midst of a political campaign myself; we shall be holding our own elections about that time. I want you to tell him that I impose no such inhibitions upon him as he imposed upon me. The British people would not resent-and of course I would particularly welcome-any word that he might want to say in favor of my candidacy.” Rosenman was impressed with his host. ”I felt anew the glow of his warm personality-frank, blunt and direct.”

Rosenman would never have a chance to deliver Churchill's message.

”We have fifteen minutes more to work”

Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd at Warm Springs, April 1945.

CHAPTER 13.

YOU KNOW HOW THIS.

WILL HIT ME.

The Last Letters-.

”I Had a True Affection for Franklin”-.

Churchill in Winter.

IN THE MIDDLE of March 1945, Isador Lubin, the White House statistician, brought Roosevelt a new supply of gin from London. Roosevelt wrote to thank him in code, referring to the liquor as ”it.” ” 'It' is going to Warm Springs and I am made very happy by 'it,' ” Roosevelt wrote Lubin. ” 'It' will be doled out with extreme care.” The president had a bad cold. ”All I need is some early spring sun and I'll be all fine,” he said to Chester Bowles, the administrator of the Office of Price Administration. Anna could not come along to Georgia-her little boy Johnny was sick-but Roosevelt arranged for Daisy and Polly Delano to join him. ”I kissed him goodbye and wished him a restful holiday,” recalled Eleanor.

In the Little White House, Roosevelt relaxed, dipping into a new paperback mystery, The Punch and Judy Murders, an installment in the Sir Henry Merrivale series. A highlight of the stay was to be a big barbecue hosted by the mayor on Thursday, April 12; Roosevelt was then due in San Francisco for the founding meeting of the United Nations, where Anthony Eden would represent Britain. And, after that, at last, to London.

IN WARM SPRINGS, Churchill and war were in the foreground. ”Another beautiful, warm day,” Daisy noted on April 10. ”F had his usual morning, with me reading the paper by his window, while he had his breakfast [and] read all the war dispatches in 2 or 3 papers-He has the whole western front in Europe in his head, knows exactly where each army is at any one moment. He says he has to, for sometimes he has to make decisions about operations. I was surprised at this, thinking that Eisenhower would have the final say about such things, but F explained it this way: Some time ago, Eisenhower made a forward movement in the southern part of the line. Winston Churchill promptly cabled F a protest. . . . F, knowing what the plans were, sent an explanation to W.S.C. backing up Eisenhower.”

Roosevelt now shared Churchill's belief that Yalta was in tatters. ”We've taken a great risk here, an enormous risk, and it involves the Russian intentions,” Roosevelt had said to his aide Chester Bowles before leaving Was.h.i.+ngton. ”I'm worried. I still think Stalin will be out of his mind if he doesn't cooperate, but maybe he's not going to; in which case, we're going to have to take a different view”-in essence, Churchill's view, which was, Bowles recalled, ”Let's shake hands with the Russians as far east as possible.”

Stalin was furious over reports that the Americans and the British were having conversations with an SS commander about the potential surrender of German forces in Italy. The Soviets, Churchill recalled, ”might be suspicious of a separate military surrender in the South, which would enable our armies to advance against reduced opposition as far as Vienna and beyond, or indeed towards the Elbe or Berlin.” The Kremlin was indeed suspicious, and Stalin dispatched scorching telegrams protesting the fact that the Soviets had not been included in the talks, which had taken place in Bern, Switzerland. In a blunt message of his own, Roosevelt told Stalin that ”it would be one of the great tragedies of history if at the very moment of victory, now within our grasp, such distrust, such lack of faith should prejudice the entire undertaking after the collossal [sic] losses of life, materiel and treasure involved.” Roosevelt sent a copy of the note to Churchill.

Churchill read it with satisfaction. This was more like it-Churchill and Roosevelt versus Stalin, not Roosevelt and Stalin versus Churchill. ”If they are ever convinced that we are afraid of them and can be bullied into submission, then indeed I should despair of our future relations with them and much else,” Churchill told Roosevelt on Thursday, April 5. Roosevelt agreed. ”We must not permit anybody to entertain a false impression that we are afraid,” he replied to Churchill the next day from Warm Springs. ”Our Armies will in a very few days be in a position that will permit us to become 'tougher' than has heretofore appeared advantageous to the war effort.”

BULLISH TALK, but Churchill could tell Roosevelt was feeling low. In a letter to Clementine, who was in Russia, Churchill said that ”my poor friend is very much alone and, according to all accounts I receive, is bereft of much of his vigor.”

In his weariness, Roosevelt was weighing drastic steps. He told Daisy and Polly that he was thinking of retiring in 1946, ”after he gets the peace organization well started,” Suckley said. ”I don't believe he thinks he will be able to carry on. . . . On thinking further, one realizes that if he cannot, physically, carry on, he will have to resign. There is no possible sense in his killing himself by slow degrees, the while not filling his job-Far better to hand it over, and avoid the period of his possible illness, when he wouldn't be able to function.”

It was a scenario he would mention again as he smoked a last cigarette on the night of Sat.u.r.day, April 7. ”He talked seriously about the S. Francisco Conference, & his part in World Peace, etc.,” Daisy wrote. ”He says again that he can probably resign some time next year, when the peace organization-The United Nations-is well started.” It is difficult to imagine he would ever have followed through with these most intimate of musings. He thought he was, as Daisy said elsewhere, ”the hope of the world.” And like Churchill, he had never surrendered.

AT CHEQUERS ON Friday, April 6, Churchill spoke of Roosevelt's nation with admiration and envy. ”Talk was of the Americans, the P.M. saying that there was no greater exhibition of power in history than that of the American army fighting the battle of the Ardennes with its left hand and advancing from island to island towards j.a.pan with its right,” Jock Colville wrote. Churchill hated that the empire was no longer the great force in the world. He felt the loss. ”The only times I ever quarrel with the Americans are when they fail to give us a fair share of opportunity to win glory,” he wrote Clementine that same day. ”Undoubtedly I feel much pain when I see our armies so much smaller than theirs. It has always been my wish to keep equal, but how can you do that against so mighty a nation and a population nearly three times your own?”

The architect of the American achievement was wavering between strength and weakness in his little house. Sitting by the fire, working on his stamps, Roosevelt sketched one to mark the San Francisco UN meeting. ”What do you think of this?” he asked Daisy and Polly, who were on the sofa. ”A simple new stamp without engraving: '3 cents 3' on the top line, 'United States Postage' on the bottom line, and in the middle, 'April 25, 1945; Towards United Nations.' ” Excited, Roosevelt asked for Frank Walker, the postmaster general. Told Walker was at the theater but could call back, Roosevelt sat up until the call came through. The design, Walker told Roosevelt, would be approved by midweek. ”So can people in high places sometimes get things done in a few minutes!” Daisy said.

As he was tucked into bed, Roosevelt indulged in a touching ritual he had begun to play with his cousins. Under orders to take gruel to help regain weight, Roosevelt liked to pretend he was a child who had to be fed, with his cousins playing the role of mother. ”I get the gruel & Polly & I take it to him,” Daisy said. ”I sit on the edge of the bed & he 'puts on an act': he is too weak to raise his head, his hands are weak, he must be fed! So I proceed to feed him with a tea spoon & he loves it! Just to be able to turn from his world problems & behave like a complete nut for a few moments, with an appreciative audience laughing with him & at him, both!” Daisy sensed the absurdity of the scene. ”On paper it sounds too silly for words, and it is silly-but he's very funny and laughs at himself with us.” When the gruel is gone, he is ”left . . . relaxed & laughing-”

LUCY RUTHERFURD AND Elizabeth Shoumatoff arrived on Monday, April 9-they had come through Macon-and were shown their quarters in the cottage up the driveway from the main house. When they appeared in the big room at the Little White House, they found Roosevelt at his card table with c.o.c.ktail supplies. Surrounded by four women, the war going well, Roosevelt was relaxed. When Shoumatoff asked about the distance between Aiken and Macon, Roosevelt was reminded of Churchill's recent joke about the Crimea and happily repeated it for the company: ”Let's not falter twixt Malta and Yalta!”

This led him to another Churchill story. If Shoumatoff's account is accurate, Roosevelt conflated events at Casablanca and Yalta, but the tale, both affectionate and condescending, is typical of Roosevelt's late view of Churchill. ”I was giving a banquet for the King of Saudi Arabia, and you cannot drink or smoke in his presence, according to Eastern etiquette,” Roosevelt said. (He may have meant the dinner for the sultan of Morocco at Casablanca.) ”So I called up Winnie to remind him to have his drinks before, which he promptly forgot. At the dinner table, realizing this, he proceeded to sulk through the whole evening, just like this,” and Roosevelt, Shoumatoff recalled, ”made an amusing imitation of Churchill's expression.” Carrying on with the story, Roosevelt said: ”The idea of the banquet was to exchange friendly bows with the sultan, who controlled great quant.i.ties of oil, and surely Churchill's att.i.tude was of no help. At ten o'clock the sultan started to bid farewell. He had hardly left with his entourage when Winnie was already pouring Scotch into a gla.s.s!”

FOR PEOPLE-INCLUDING Churchill-who thought they ever understood Roosevelt, or that what they saw was what they got, there was one last reminder for his daughter that Roosevelt was a man of shadows. He kept Lucy's visit secret from his daughter. ”He used to call me every night on the phone to find out how Johnny was,” Anna recalled. ”He called me the night before [he died], and he was just fine. He told me all about the barbecue that they were going to have the next day, and everything else. But there was a funny little thing there, just to show that he never discussed his real personal life with anyone. . . . Lucy Mercer was at Warm Springs. . . . In other words, his private life was his private life. And there was no doubt about it. Which I admire him for, I think it's fine. So I didn't know Lucy was there. No idea.”

And he avoided confrontation to the very end. On April 11, Roosevelt, drafting a cable to Churchill at midday in the Little White House, suggested a middle course with Stalin. ”I would minimize the general Soviet problem as much as possible because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arise every day and most of them straighten out as in the case of the Bern meeting,” Roosevelt said. ”We must be firm, however, and our course thus far is correct.”

In the afternoon he took a ride with Lucy and Daisy. ”Lucy is so sweet with F-No wonder he loves to have her around,” Daisy noted of that Wednesday. ”Toward the end of the drive, it began to be chilly and she put her sweater over his knees-I can imagine just how she took care of her husband-She would think of little things which make so much difference to a semi-invalid, or even a person who is just tired, like F.”

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