FDR - Jean Edward Smith [69]
Wilson backed Daniels, and that should have ended the discussion. But the admirals, accustomed to having their way under Taft and TR, appealed the decision. Wilson came down hard. It was the duty of the military to follow orders, not to challenge them, he told Fiske. The president thereupon ordered the Army and Navy Board not to meet again without his express authorization. The war scare subsided, and the board remained in limbo for the next two and a half years until, with World War I lapping at America’s shores, Daniels recommended that it be reconvened.39
The second key event for FDR involved the Navy’s contracting authority. Daniels hated monopolies, and the collusion among American steel companies bidding for Navy contracts aroused his special ire. FDR enjoyed telling how in the spring of 1913 he was present when Daniels met with representatives of Bethlehem, Carnegie, and Midvale Steel, each of which had submitted an identical bid for the armor plate to be used in constructing the battleship Arizona. Daniels threw the bids out and asked the companies to submit new figures by noon the next day. “I loved his words,” FDR recalled, reflecting on the pained expressions of the businessmen as they left and his and Daniels’s pleasure at their distress. But at noon the next day the steel men returned with exactly the same figures. Daniels threw those out as well and told FDR to take the next train to New York and meet with Sir John Hatfield, the leader of a British steel consortium who had just arrived in the United States. Hatfield submitted a substantially lower bid, which the American companies agreed to meet. Daniels told Congress that the Navy had saved $1,110,084 (roughly 10 percent of the total cost) as a result.40
For the first six months FDR led a bachelor’s life in Washington, living first at the Willard, then at the Powhatan Hotel, an aging landmark at the corner of Eighteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, little more than a block from his office. He joined the ultraexclusive Metropolitan Club (Wilson was not tendered an invitation), the Army-Navy Club, the University Club, and the Chevy Chase Country Club—these in addition to the New York clubs to which he already belonged: the New York Yacht Club, the Knickerbocker Club, the City Club, the Racquet and Tennis Club, and the Harvard Club—to all of which he paid dues regularly.41 Eleanor was in New York with the children, then at Campobello for the summer. Franklin visited for the July Fourth weekend and ordered one of the Navy’s largest battleships, the 22,000-ton North Dakota, to stand off Eastport, Maine—just across the narrow strait from Campobello—for the Independence Day celebration. The Roosevelts entertained the officers on the island, and FDR, who relished the pomp and ceremony attached to his office, later went aboard ship. He would not dress formally, he told the captain, but would appreciate the seventeen-gun salute to which he was entitled since his Campobello neighbors would expect it.42
Shortly thereafter, FDR ordered the destroyer Flusser to take him to the naval base at nearby Frenchman’s Bay for an inspection. The Flusser was commanded by Lieutenant William F. Halsey, Jr., the famous Bull Halsey of World War II. Roosevelt asked Halsey’s permission to pilot the ship through the treacherous Lubec narrows between Campobello and the mainland. With some misgiving, Halsey agreed. Handling a 700-ton destroyer under full power is a lot more complicated than sailing a pleasure boat. According to Halsey, “a destroyer’s bow may point directly down the channel, yet she is not necessarily