FDR - Jean Edward Smith [303]
On December 9 Roosevelt’s thoughts were stimulated when a Navy seaplane set down alongside Tuscaloosa, lying at anchor off Antigua. In the mail pouch was a historic letter from Churchill, a four-thousand-word cable that the prime minister considered “one of the most important of my life” and that historians describe as “the most carefully drafted and re-drafted message in the entire Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence.”11
The letter was Churchill at his best: articulate, comprehensive, well argued, dignified yet deferential. The prime minister began with a masterly restatement of the military situation. He traced the war in minute detail from the North Sea to Gibraltar to Suez to Singapore. “The danger of Great Britain being destroyed by a swift, overwhelming blow has for the time being very greatly receded. In its place there is a long, gradually maturing danger, less sudden and less spectacular, but equally deadly.” Churchill reviewed the problems of war production and sea tonnage, both imperiled by persistent attacks by German bombers and U-boats. But the most serious problem Britain faced was financial:
The moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies. While we will do our utmost, and shrink from no proper sacrifice to make payments across the Exchange, I believe you will agree that it would be wrong in principle and mutually disadvantageous in effect if at the height of this struggle Great Britain were to be divested of all saleable assets, so that after the victory was won with our blood, civilization saved, and the time gained for the United States to be fully armed against all eventualities, we should stand stripped to the bone.12
Hopkins recalled that Roosevelt read and reread Churchill’s letter as he sat alone in his deck chair, and for two days he did not seem to reach any conclusion. “He was plunged in intense thought, and brooded silently.”13 Then one evening it all came out: the program the world would know as Lend-Lease. “He didn’t seem to have any clear idea how it could be done legally. But there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he’d find a way to do it.”14 Essentially, the president’s plan was that the United States would lend Britain whatever it needed, at no cost, and the British would repay the United States by giving back what it had borrowed, or in some other tangible manner, when it could.15 Like a creative artist, FDR had devoted his time on the cruise to evolving his conceptual idea. Once he saw it clearly, he moved decisively.16
Back in Washington a week later, tanned and rested from his cruise, Roosevelt unveiled his masterpiece—“one of the greatest efforts of all his years in office,” said Morgenthau.17 Meeting the press the afternoon of December 17, he broke the news. There had been no staff studies, no diplomatic discussions, no touching of political bases. It was pure Roosevelt. The president took the initiative himself.18 The working press, especially the White House press corps, was always FDR’s greatest ally, and he initiated the debate with a homey analogy:
Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now what do I do? I don’t say to him, “Neighbor, my garden hose cost me fifteen dollars; you have to pay me fifteen dollars for it.” No! I don’t want fifteen dollars. I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.
“What I am trying to do is eliminate the dollar sign,” he continued. “Get rid of the silly,