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By Root 1954 0

possible for Roosevelt to act. On August 5, 1940, Time bannered Britain’s need for destroyers. The New York Times and the Herald Tribune followed suit. The Century Group scored another coup on August 11, when the Times published a long and closely reasoned letter from Dean Acheson and three other prominent lawyers arguing that the president could transfer the destroyers to Britain on his own authority without additional legislation.66 “At the time my friend and classmate Charles Merz had charge of the editorial page of The New York Times,” wrote Acheson. “I showed him the opinion and suggested putting it forth as a letter to the Times, to be prominently displayed on the editorial page in the Sunday edition. He approved of this and published it.”67 Acheson’s letter was a reworking and expansion of Ben Cohen’s original memo, and it found a responsive audience. Stimson thought the prospect of getting Congress to act was poor, but Acheson’s “carefully worked out paper … adds a speck of light on the situation.”68

Until Acheson’s letter appeared, no one at the upper levels of the administration contemplated bypassing Congress. But Frankfurter supported the idea, and on August 15 Stimson called FDR. “He said he felt very, very much encouraged,” the secretary recorded in his diary. Roosevelt told Stimson he “would talk it over with the Attorney General tomorrow morning and is evidently ready to push it ahead.”69

Negotiations with Willkie were not going as well. While White and members of the Century Group urged the GOP nominee to speak out forthrightly, Herbert Hoover and other figures in the party advised him to avoid any commitment. The upshot was that Willkie remained silent. “It’s not as bad as it seems,” White telegraphed FDR. “I have talked with both of you on this subject and I know there is not two bits worth of difference between the two of you.”70 When Willkie officially announced his candidacy on August 17, he came tantalizingly close to backing the swap without explicitly endorsing it. He proclaimed his “wholehearted support for the president in whatever action he might take to give the opponents of force the material resources of the nation,” adding that “the loss of the British fleet would greatly weaken our defense.”71

Armed with Acheson’s letter to the Times, Jackson provided FDR with an official Opinion of the Attorney General supporting the president’s authority to trade the destroyers for bases under his authority as commander in chief.72 Jackson said the intervening statutes, such as the Espionage Act of 1917, were not intended to apply to such transactions.* With the green light from the Justice Department, the details fell into place. The United States agreed to deliver the fifty destroyers in parcels of eight to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where British crews would be waiting to take possession. In return, Great Britain would provide the United States with ninety-nine-year leases to bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, Saint Lucia, Trinidad, and British Guiana—a total of eight. To satisfy British pride (Churchill had also to consider public opinion) and to avoid any appearance that His Majesty’s Government had been outbargained, it was agreed that the bases in Newfoundland and Bermuda would be a free gift to the United States from Great Britain, the other six provided in return for the destroyers.73 General Marshall and Admiral Stark had no trouble signing off—the bases provided far more security than fifty World War I destroyers—and on August 30, 1940, Stark ordered the Commander Destroyers Atlantic Squadron to proceed to Boston with the first eight destroyers. D-Day for the transfer would be September 6.74

Roosevelt announced the deal while on a war plant inspection tour in Charleston, West Virginia. “This is the most important action in the reinforcement of our national defense since the Louisiana Purchase,” he said to newsmen traveling with him.75 Churchill told Parliament that the affairs of the United States and Great Britain henceforth would be “somewhat mixed up together. I