• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1927 0

He and Eleanor remained in Europe five weeks, during which time Franklin devoted himself to disposing of the Navy’s foreign assets. Roosevelt spoke French fluently and lubricated the discussions while Hancock and Spellacy hammered out the details.20 “The most successful thing I pulled off in Paris,” FDR remembered, was the sale of the Navy’s Lafayette Radio Station near Bordeaux, the most powerful transmitter in the world at the time. The French had been dragging their feet, hoping the United States would simply abandon the installation. According to Roosevelt, André Tardieu, the French minister responsible (and later premier, 1929–30), “offered a ridiculous sum counting on the fact that the cost of dismantling and removing it would be prohibitive.” Just when the meeting reached an impasse, a messenger handed a telegram to FDR that read, “Dismantle and ship station to America. [Signed] Daniels.” Tardieu immediately gave in and agreed to buy the facility at FDR’s asking price of 22 million francs. Roosevelt later boasted to friends that he had written the telegram himself and arranged to have it delivered to him at the meeting.21 “This is a big success,” Eleanor wrote Sara, “but don’t mention it.”22

On February 15, 1919, the Roosevelts left Paris for Brest and the return home on the George Washington. Among their fellow passengers were President and Mrs. Wilson, who were taking a quick break from negotiations so that the president might return to Washington to sign the final flurry of legislation passed by the outgoing Sixty-fifth Congress.23 Wilson proudly carried with him the draft covenant of the League of Nations, which had just been completed. The president had insisted that the peace conference establish the League as its first order of business, and, with British acquiescence and French ambivalence, he had prevailed. “I like the League,” Clemenceau was quoted as saying, “but I do not believe in it.”24

Aboard the George Washington Wilson remained aloof and kept more or less to his cabin. “He seemed to have very little interest in making himself popular with groups of people whom he touched,” Eleanor remembered.25 One day, to FDR’s surprise, the president summoned him for a discussion about the League and what it meant for the future. The invitation came out of the blue, and FDR recalled Wilson’s intensity. A day or so later, Franklin and Eleanor were included in a small luncheon party given by the Wilsons. For the most part the conversation was unremarkable, though Eleanor remembered two things: Wilson said that since the war began he had read no newspapers; his secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, clipped them for him, giving him only what was important.* The second was that Wilson had spoken with great emotion about the League. “The United States must go in or it will break the heart of the world, for she is the only nation that all feel is disinterested and all trust.”26

The George Washington’s original destination had been New York, but after she was under way Wilson advised the captain that he wished to land at Boston, where he was scheduled to speak at Mechanics Hall and introduce the League. The captain adjusted course but to his horror discovered he had no charts on board for a Boston landfall. He would have to feel his way. To complicate the task, a heavy North Atlantic fog descended as the ship slanted southward along the Massachusetts coast. “I was awakened in my berth by a shuddering noise,” FDR recalled. “Thinking the George Washington must be aground, I rushed to the bridge in my pajamas and bathrobe to discover that the ship’s engines had been reversed and cut off—that was the noise—and that she lay between two jagged rocks, with little way between, facing a shoreline with a row of summer cottages. I recognized the settlement as Nahant, where I had frequently made port, and in a general way I was able to tell [the captain] where he would find Boston harbor. He then gave the order for backing the ship out of its perilous location, and proceeded safely to Boston. President Wilson, who had not been awakened,