FDR - Jean Edward Smith [433]
NINE | The Campaign of 1920
The epigraph is from a letter by FDR, November 9, 1920. Quoted in Alfred Steinberg, Mrs. R.: The Life of Eleanor Roosevelt 121 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958).
1. The George Washington was built as a passenger liner for North German Lloyd by A. G. Vulcan at Stettin in 1908. Displacing 33,000 tons, with a cruising speed of 18 knots, it was one of the largest liners afloat, accommodating 568 passengers in first class; 433 in second class; 452 in third class; and 1,226 in steerage. When war began in 1914, George Washington sought refuge in New York, a neutral port, where it remained berthed until the United States entered the war in 1917. It was thereupon seized by the United States government, converted to a troopship, and made eighteen round-trips to France during the war, transporting 48,000 troops.
Under the peace settlement, George Washington became the property of the United States and was reconverted to passenger service, where it sailed on the transatlantic run under the flag of the United States Lines until 1931. Laid up by the Depression, it was reacquired by the Navy in 1941 and served again as a troopship until taken out of service in 1947. Damaged by fire at her mooring in Baltimore, George Washington was scrapped in 1951. Arnold Kludas, 1 Die grossen Passagierschiffe der Welt, 2 ed. 122–123, (Oldenburg/Hamburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1972).
2. ER to Isabella Ferguson, July 11, 1919. Greenway Collection, Arizona Historical Society, Tucson.
3. Among the papers at Eleanor’s bedside when she died was a sonnet by Ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice extolling the statue:
O steadfast, deep, inexorable eyes
Set look inscrutable, nor smile nor frown!
O tranquil eyes that look so calmly down
Upon a world of passion and of lies …
Quoted in Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 237 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971).
4. Elizabeth Cameron was the daughter of Senator John Sherman of Ohio and the favorite niece of General William Tecumseh Sherman. See Blanche Wiesen Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 235, 245–247, 539 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992); Eugenia Kaledin, The Education of Mrs. Henry Adams 183, 245 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981). Also see Otto Friedrich, Clover 330–331 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), and Arline Boucher Tehan, Henry Adams in Love 86–90 (New York: Universe Books, 1983).
5. ER to SDR, January 3, 1919, 2 The Roosevelt Letters 355, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1950).
6. Joseph L. Gardner, Departing Glory: Theodore Roosevelt as Ex-President 394 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973).
7. Ibid. 400.
8. FDR to Daniels, January 9, 1919, Daniels Papers, Library of Congress.
9. ER to SDR, January 9, 1919, 2 Roosevelt Letters 355.
10. ER to SDR, January 11, 20, February 11, 1919, ibid. 359, 361, 373.
11. Orlando bitterly withdrew from the conference on April 24, 1919, protesting the refusal of Wilson to grant Italy the former Austrian city of Fiume and the province of Dalmatia on the Adriatic. “Now President Wilson, after ignoring and violating his own Fourteen Points, wants to restore their virginity by applying them vigorously where they refer to Italy.” Following his withdrawal, Orlando’s government won a whopping 382–40 vote of confidence in the Italian Parliament. Aldrovandi Marescotti, Guerra Diplomatica 262 (Milan: Mondadori, 1946).
12. Wilson, like Lloyd George, spoke only English. Perhaps because he had been the president of Princeton, conventional wisdom has considered Woodrow Wilson an intellectual. Professor Arthur Link, his biographer and the longtime editor of The Wilson Papers, disputes this. According to Link, Wilson “had little command of foreign languages and almost no interest in political developments abroad before he entered the White House; he was indifferent to the great scientific developments that were transforming the