FDR - Jean Edward Smith [366]
Roosevelt had no choice. A Senate investigation of the incident, particularly as to why the president had kept Welles on the job for almost three years afterward, would deal a blow to Democratic chances in 1944. Of more immediate concern, Roosevelt needed Hull to ensure continued support in Congress—where his majority (at least in the House) was paper thin. Many Southern Democrats idolized Hull, and Roosevelt could not afford to cut him loose. Shortly after meeting with Hull on August 15, FDR sent for Welles and requested his resignation. To soften the blow, he offered Welles a roving ambassadorship to Latin America, which Welles refused. Roosevelt may have hoped he could find a way to retain Welles, because he did not announce his resignation until September 25. The press suggested that differences with Hull were the cause. No mention was made of Welles’s sexual preference.
Roosevelt took the loss bitterly. When Bullitt called at the White House soon afterward and asked to be appointed undersecretary in Welles’s place, the president exploded. “I remember coming back to the White House one day and finding Franklin shaking with anger,” said Eleanor. “He was white with wrath.” According to ER, the president told Bullitt:
Bill, if I were St. Peter and you and Sumner came before me, I would say to Sumner, “No matter what you have done, you have hurt no one but yourself. I recognize human frailties. Come in.” But to you I would say, “You have not only hurt another human being, you have deprived your country of the services of a good citizen; and for that you can go straight to Hell.”45
FDR was bitter not only at Bullitt. After Welles’s departure the State Department found itself shunted into diplomatic limbo. Hull attended the Moscow conference of foreign ministers in October, but after that the diplomats were relegated to the sidelines. Except for providing interpreters and note takers, no one from Hull’s State Department attended a major wartime conference, and the correspondence that passed between FDR and Churchill and Stalin was rarely seen in Foggy Bottom.
With the tide of battle shifting in favor of the Allies, Roosevelt turned briefly to the domestic scene. Mobilization brought unprecedented prosperity to America, and FDR looked to the future. Speaking to the nation in a fireside chat in late summer, the president addressed the problem of reconversion. “While concentrating on military victory,” said Roosevelt, we must not neglect planning for things to come, particularly “the return to civilian life of our gallant men and women in the armed forces. They must not be demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place on a bread line, or on a corner selling apples.”46
That autumn, in a domestic initiative such as the United States had not seen since the hundred days, Roosevelt asked Congress for a massive program of education and training for returning servicemen—soon to be known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. Ever since his early visits to Warm Springs, Georgia, in the 1920s, FDR had been disturbed by the poor quality of education in many parts of the country. As Sam Rosenman noted, “he often made it clear in private conversation that he felt strongly that there was no reason why a child born in some county too poor to sustain a good school system should have to start life in competition with children from sections of the country that had fine schools.”47 Roosevelt saw the returning veterans as a way to level the playing field—a means of introducing a federal aid to education that was politically irresistible.
The president’s message to Congress requested federal support for college and vocational training for every returning veteran for up to four years, with increased stipends for those who were married and had dependents. “Lack of money,” said Roosevelt, “should not prevent any veteran of this war from equipping himself for the most useful employment for which his aptitudes and willingness qualify