FDR - Jean Edward Smith [393]
Though his health was obviously failing, Roosevelt’s spirit appeared undaunted. He resumed his twice-weekly press conferences in the Oval Office, and his bantering with newsmen continued unabated. Asked by Tom Reynolds of the Chicago Sun to reflect on his presidential years, FDR replied, “The first twelve were the hardest.” That moved May Craig to inquire whether “the word first” had any significance.129
Inauguration day, Saturday, January 20, 1945, dawned bitterly cold, an inch of snow blanketing the capital. Because of the war Roosevelt dispensed with the traditional parade (“Who’s going to march?”), and shifted the scene from the Capitol steps to the south portico of the White House. Leaning once again on the arm of his son James, the president, hatless and coatless, made his way laboriously to the lectern, repeated the oath after Chief Justice Harlan Stone, and delivered a brief, five-hundred-word address before several thousand people assembled in the snow. This was the first time since Bremerton that Roosevelt had worn his leg braces and the last time he would deliver a speech standing. “We have learned that we cannot live alone at peace, that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other Nations far away. We have learned to be citizens of the world. We have learned, as Emerson said, ‘The only way to have a friend is to be one.’ ”130
Rosenman recalled the simple majesty of the scene.131 John Gunther called it something from Brueghel, “with sharply colored figures etched on the loose snow, the throng of tall men in dark clothes above, and the fluid, informal movement of the listeners.”132 Roosevelt was chilled to the bone and afterward felt the same kind of angina attack he had experienced at San Diego. He rested briefly in the Green Room with his son James before heading into the reception that had been laid on in the State Dining Room. “Jimmy, I can’t take this unless you give me a stiff drink. You’d better make it straight.” His son brought him half a tumbler of scotch, which Roosevelt downed virtually in one gulp, after which he went off to the reception.133 Dr. Bruenn, evidently unaware of the president’s seizure, reported that Roosevelt seemed in excellent spirits.134 The New York Times said, “the President appears in good shape to carry on his job” and noted that “he looks as well as he did several years ago.”135
Others who had not seen Roosevelt recently were shocked by his appearance. Gunther, who attended the ceremony with Orson Welles and Mark Van Doren, said he was terrified. “I felt certain he was going to die. All the light had gone out under the skin. It was like a parchment shade on a bulb that had been dimmed.”136 Mrs. Woodrow Wilson whispered to Frances Perkins, “He looks exactly as my husband did when he went into his decline.”137
Two days after the inauguration Roosevelt departed for Norfolk, Virginia, where he boarded the cruiser Quincy (sister ship of the Baltimore), bound for the Mediterranean island of Malta. There he rendezvoused with Churchill before proceeding seven hours by air to Yalta, a Soviet resort town on the Black Sea, where Stalin waited. The meeting of the Big Three was intended to review current military matters and reach agreement on the structure of the postwar world. Roosevelt’s primary concern was not to keep the Soviets out of Eastern Europe, where the presence of the Red Army was an accomplished fact, but to secure early Russian entry in the war against Japan. The atomic bomb had yet to be tested, and whether it would be available was problematic. If the Japanese home islands had to be invaded, the Joint Chiefs estimated the fighting would continue through 1946 and cost perhaps a million American casualties.138
The Crimea conference (ARGONAUT) convened in the Livadiya Palace, the vacation