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By Root 1955 0

the Harvard Club after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Among those present were Langdon Marvin, Roosevelt’s old law partner; Julius Ochs Adler of The New York Times; Henry L. Stimson; Frank Knox; William J. Donovan; Lewis Douglas, who had been FDR’s first budget director; and Judge Robert P. Patterson of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The group issued a series of manifestos advocating military conscription and established a national network (the MTCA) to press the cause. General Marshall cooperated covertly with the group and in early June dispatched three officers, including Major Lewis B. Hershey, to New York to assist Clark’s organization in drafting a selective service bill. This was the measure Burke and Wadsworth introduced. Hershey subsequently became the first head of selective service. J. Gary Clifford and Samuel R. Spencer, The First Peacetime Draft 14–26 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986); Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope 57–58 (New York: Viking Press, 1966).

* For Jackson’s view of the swap, see his That Man: An Insider’s Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt 86–103, John Q. Barrett, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Jackson’s Opinion was harshly criticized by Professors Herbert W. Briggs and Edwin Borchard in “Neglected Aspects of the Destroyer Deal,” 34 American Journal of International Law 569–587, 690–697 (1940). For support, see Quincy Wright, “The Transfer of Destroyers to Great Britain,” 34 AJIL 680–689 (1940).

* Speaker Bankhead, campaigning for the national ticket in Maryland, suffered a fatal hemorrhage and died at Washington’s Naval Hospital on September 15, 1940. Cognizant of his error at the time of Senator Joseph Robinson’s death, FDR not only attended the funeral in Jasper, Alabama, but instructed his entire cabinet to attend. The Southern Railroad laid on two special trains, one for the congressional delegation, another for the president’s party. Hull was detained in Washington, and Welles substituted for him at the funeral. Irwin Gellman, Secret Affairs: FDR, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles 219–220 (New York: Enigma Books, 1995).

* Willkie deplored the hypocrisy of politics and insisted that his private life was his own. Several times during the campaign he scheduled press conferences at Van Doren’s apartment. “Everybody knows about us—all the newspapermen in New York,” Willkie told his friends. “If somebody should come along to threaten me or embarrass me about Irita, I would say, ‘Go right ahead. There is not a reporter in New York who does not know about her.’ ” Steve Neal, Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie 43–44 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984).

* The reference, following FDR’s castigation of Republican Senators McNary, Vandenberg, Nye, and Johnson, was to Representatives Joseph W. Martin, Bruce Barton, and Hamilton Fish. Martin was House minority leader and had been named by Willkie to be Republican National Chairman; Barton, chairman of the board of the New York advertising firm Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, represented New York’s Seventeenth District on the fashionable Upper East Side; and Fish, Roosevelt’s Dutchess County neighbor and longtime nemesis, was the ranking member on Foreign Affairs.

TWENTY-TWO

ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

The decision as to how much shall be sent abroad and how much shall remain at home must be made on the basis of our over-all military necessities.… We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, DECEMBER 29, 1940

THE THURSDAY AFTER the election, Roosevelt boarded the presidential train in Hyde Park for the long, slow journey back to Washington. At Union Station Vice President–elect Henry Wallace welcomed him along with a swarm of jubilant Democrats. Two hundred thousand cheering spectators lined Pennsylvania Avenue. FDR repeatedly doffed his battered campaign fedora as the open limousine made its way to the White House. Thousands of well-wishers followed the car through the open gates of the Executive Mansion chanting “We Want Roosevelt” until the president