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For the text of the Stimson and Knox speeches, see The New York Times, June 19, 1940. The fact that both Knox and Stimson should advocate conscription in their commencement addresses was scarcely coincidental. On May 22, 1940, the two, joined by William Donovan; former budget director Lewis Douglas; Judge Robert Patterson; Julius Ochs Adler of The New York Times; Grenville Clark, who had clerked with FDR at Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn; Langdon Marvin, Roosevelt’s old law partner; and some ninety other distinguished alumni met at the Harvard Club in New York and agreed to beat the drum for reinstitution of the draft, universal service, and immediate expansion of the regular Army and the National Guard. J. Garry Clifford and Samuel R. Spencer, The First Peacetime Draft 14–26 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986).

63. The New York Times, June 25, 1940.

64. The statement was made by Ruth McCormick Simms, one of Dewey’s principal aides at the convention. Charles Peters, Five Days in Philadelphia 19 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005).

65. Ibid. 20.

66. Taft’s remarks were in a speech he delivered in St. Louis, May 20, 1940. Taft also said that America’s participation in war was “more likely to destroy American democracy than to destroy German dictatorship.” James Patterson, Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft 217 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

67. David Halberstam, The Powers That Be 60 (New York: Knopf, 1975); Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect 310–311.

68. New York Sun, January 16, 1940, reported in Peters, Five Days 25. In 1920, Willkie, as a young lawyer in Akron, Ohio, introduced James Cox (FDR’s running mate) at a Democratic rally. He supported Al Smith at the 1924 Democratic convention, served as an assistant floor manager for Newton D. Baker at the 1932 convention, and voted for Herbert Lehman against Thomas Dewey in the 1938 New York gubernatorial race. Ibid. 30–32.

69. “Fair Trial,” The New Republic 370 (March 18, 1940). Also see “Political Power: The Tennessee Valley Authority,” The Atlantic Monthly, August 1937; “Brace Up, America!” The Atlantic Monthly, 163 (June 1939): 549–561; “Idle Money—Idle Men,” The Saturday Evening Post, 211 (June 17, 1939); “The Faith That Is America,” Reader’s Digest, 36 (December 1939): 1–4; “With Malice Toward None,” The Saturday Evening Post, 212 (December 30, 1939); “We, the People,” Fortune, 21 (April 1940): 64–65; “New Deal Power,” The New York Times Magazine, October 31, 1937, p. 6; “Five Minutes to Midnight,” The Saturday Evening Post, 212 (June 22, 1940).

70. Steve Neal, Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie 57 (New York: Doubleday, 1984).

71. Quoted in Peters, Five Days 41.

72. Neal, Dark Horse 99. Ickes’s characterization was made in a speech to a Democratic rally in Saint Louis on October 18, 1940. T. H. Watkins, The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874–1952 694 (New York: Henry Holt, 1990).

73. Joseph W. Martin and Robert J. Donovan, My First Fifty Years in Politics 101–108 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960). After the convention Willkie named Martin chairman of the Republican National Committee.

74. Time, July 1, 1940. The Republican plank stated, “We favor the extension of aid to all people fighting for liberty or whose liberty is threatened as long as such aid is not in violation of international law or inconsistent with the requirements of our national defense.” Peters, Five Days 91.

75. Ickes, 3 Secret Diaries 223. FDR said that he liked McNary and he “deserved the nomination.”

TWENTY-ONE | Four More Years

The epigraph is from FDR’s campaign speech at Boston, October 30, 1940. 9 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 514–524, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1941).

1. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox 421–422 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956). Walsh’s rider to the appropriations bill left FDR no choice but to sign.

2. Mark S. Watson, The United States Army in World War II: Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Operations 312 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950).