FDR - Jean Edward Smith [396]
This time we are not making the mistake of waiting until the end of the war to set up the machinery of peace. This time, as we fight together to win the war finally, we work together to keep it from happening again.160
Roosevelt’s address to Congress was his last major public appearance. On Saint Patrick’s Day he and Eleanor celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary with a small formal dinner in the State Dining Room. The guests included Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, Justice and Mrs. Robert Jackson, and the Nelson Rockefellers. “Thus another milestone is passed in the career of an extraordinary man and wife,” reported White House aide William Hassett.161
Roosevelt had exerted himself to the utmost during the campaign, the trip to Yalta, and his address to the joint session. His health was spent. And he had resumed a taxing schedule. According to Dr. Bruenn, Roosevelt was again working too hard, seeing too many people, and working too late in the evenings. “His appetite had become poor, and although he had not been weighed, it appeared that he had lost more weight. He complained of not being able to taste his food.”162 On Saturday, March 24, the president and Eleanor left for several days’ rest at Hyde Park. ER noticed that for the first time Franklin did not wish to drive himself. He let her drive, and he let her mix the drinks before dinner, something that ordinarily would have been inconceivable.163
Roosevelt returned to Washington briefly on March 29, before leaving for Warm Springs that evening. Grace Tully, who saw FDR upon his arrival, was distressed at his appearance. “Did you get any rest at Hyde Park, Mr. President?” she asked.
“Yes child, but not nearly enough. I shall be glad to get down South.”164
Roosevelt’s last appointment in the White House was with General Lucius D. Clay, who had just been named to head the military government in Germany. Clay was then deputy director of war mobilization, and he was escorted into the Oval Office by James Byrnes. FDR reminisced about his boyhood in Germany and stressed the need for a giant power development in Central Europe, something along the line of the TVA. He never gave Clay a chance to get a word in. “Two or three times Steve Early tried to break it up,” Clay recalled, “but without success. Finally we left, and when we got out, Mr. Byrnes sort of teasingly said, ‘Lucius, you didn’t answer any questions. You didn’t say very much.’
“I said, ‘No, I didn’t. The President didn’t ask me any questions, but I am glad that he didn’t. Because I was so shocked watching him that I don’t think I could have made a sensible reply. We’ve been talking to a dying man.’ ”165
Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs in the early afternoon of March 30, 1945. Mike Reilly of the Secret Service found it difficult to transfer the president to his car—“he was absolutely dead weight”—but once seated behind the wheel FDR appeared to revive and drove from the station to the Little White House joking with his cousins Laura Delano and Daisy Suckley.166
“He is steadily losing weight,” William Hassett wrote in his diary. “Told me he has lost 25 pounds—no strength—no appetite—tires so easily.… The old zest was going.” That evening Hassett told Dr. Bruenn, “He is slipping away from us and no earthly power can keep him here.” Bruenn admitted the president was in a precarious condition but thought the situation was not hopeless. He told Hassett that Roosevelt could be saved “if measures were adopted to rescue him from certain mental strains and emotional influences.” Hassett did not believe Bruenn’s conditions could be met. “This confirmed my conviction that the Boss is leaving us.”167
The weather in Warm Springs was ideal, and Roosevelt seemed to recover. “Within a week,” Bruenn recorded, “there was a decided and obvious improvement in his appearance and sense of well-being. He had begun to eat with appetite, rested beautifully, and was in excellent