FDR - Jean Edward Smith [314]
After Argentia, Roosevelt moved quickly to protect British shipping. When a German submarine fired torpedoes at the American destroyer USS Greer in early September, he seized on the incident to invoke a “shoot-on-sight” policy. “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.” The president said, “from now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.”94* Later in the month, off Newfoundland, the Canadian Navy turned over a fifty-ship convoy out of Halifax to five American destroyers, which safely shepherded the vessels across the North Atlantic into the hands of the Royal Navy just south of Iceland.95
FDR always took the political stance of the Catholic Church seriously, and he worried about possible criticism of Lend-Lease aid to Russia. On September 3, at the suggestion of two American prelates who supported the administration, the president appealed directly to Pope Pius XII.96 “I believe that the survival of Russia is less dangerous to religion, to the church as such, and to humanity in general than would be the survival of the German form of dictatorship,” he wrote.
Furthermore, it is my belief that the leaders of all churches in the United States [including the Catholic Church] should recognize these facts clearly and should not close their eyes to these basic questions and by their present attitude on this question directly assist Germany in her present objectives.97
Considering the president was writing to the Pope, his tone was as sharp as diplomatic practice permitted. Whether Pius XII was convinced is doubtful. His response on September 20 skirted the issue.98 But the Pope, who as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli had lunched with Roosevelt at Hyde Park immediately after the 1936 election, chose not to take issue with the president. At the end of September he wrote the apostolic delegate in Washington calling his attention to an often-overlooked paragraph in the encyclical Divini redemptoris that distinguished between the Communist government of the Soviet Union and the Russian people, “For whom We cherish the warmest paternal affection.”99 By implication, aid to the Russian people was permissible—a position that was made explicit in a pastoral letter by Archbishop John Timothy McNicholas of Cincinnati in October.100
Roosevelt was hammered by personal tragedy in 1941. First Missy, then, on September 7, two weeks before her eighty-seventh birthday, Sara died. During the summer at Campobello her health began to fail. Eleanor assisted her return to Hyde Park and on Friday, September 5, called Franklin at the White House and suggested that the end was near. Roosevelt immediately left by train and arrived at Hyde Park the morning of the sixth. He spent the day sitting with Sara, describing his shipboard meetings with Churchill, filling her in on Washington gossip, talking of old times. That evening at dinner she seemed better. But at 9:30 she lost consciousness. A blood clot had lodged in her lung, and her circulatory system collapsed. Roosevelt sat with her through the night and most of the next morning. Just before noon her breathing stopped. Her son was at her bedside.101
Sara was buried next to her husband in the small cemetery behind Hyde Park’s St. James’ Episcopal Church. The eight men who had worked longest for the estate—including her chauffeur and butler—carried her coffin to the grave. The Secret Service watched from a distance. “I don’t think we belong in there,” said Mike Reilly, “even if Congress says we do.”102
Roosevelt remained at Hyde Park several days,