FDR - Jean Edward Smith [82]
“What country is that?” demanded several members in unison.
“Haiti,” replied Roosevelt, smiling broadly. “She has two gunboats and they are in commission all the year around.”50
FDR’s testimony was a success. The New York Herald praised him for his promptness in answering questions and his candor. “He showed that in the short time he has been Assistant Secretary he has made a most complete study of the problems of national defense.” The Sun said Roosevelt “exhibited a grasp of naval affairs that seemed to astonish members of the committee who had been studying the question for years.”51
Franklin wrote Sara that the hearings had been “really great fun … as the members who tried to quizz me and put me in a hole did not know much about their subject and I was able not only to parry but to come back at them with thrusts that went home. Also I was able to get in my own views without particular embarrassment to the Secretary.”52
Eleanor wrote afterward to her friend Isabella Ferguson, “War is in all our thoughts and the horror of it grows. We are distinctly ‘not ready,’ and Franklin tried to make his testimony before Congress very plain and I think brought out his facts clearly without saying anything about the administration policy which would of course, be disloyal.”53
FDR was eager to see the naval war firsthand. In mid-December, immediately after his House testimony, he sought to go to London to study the workings of the Admiralty. Winston Churchill was then first lord of the Admiralty, the British equivalent of secretary of the Navy, and he was piqued that the United States had not yet entered the war. He claimed he was far too busy to receive a delegation of visiting Americans. “I have asked the First Lord as to the possibility of affording facilities to Mr. F. D. Roosevelt and a staff of United States Naval Officers,” the permanent undersecretary of the Admiralty informed the American embassy on December 19. “The First Lord desires me to express his regret that the present pressure of work in the Department would render it impossible to offer the assistance necessary for the accomplishment of the object of such a visit.”54 That was FDR’s only brush with Churchill until the two met four years later at a dinner given for the British war cabinet by Lloyd George. That too was unpromising.55 Twenty-three years later, when the two statesmen met off Newfoundland to frame the Atlantic Charter, Churchill (to FDR’s chagrin) had no recollection of their prior meeting.56
In 1915 the war at sea accelerated. On February 4 Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone: Allied vessels would be sunk on sight; neutral merchantmen that entered did so at their own risk.57 Britain responded on March 1 with a counterblockade of German ports.58 Wilson composed the United States’ reply to the German announcement at his own typewriter and warned Berlin it would be held to “strict accountability” for the loss of American lives or property.59 The response to Britain, prepared jointly by Wilson, Secretary Bryan, and Department of State counselor Robert Lansing, was milder in tone and enjoined London to treat American shipping according to the “recognized rules of international law.”60
Wilson’s effort to maintain American neutrality suffered a severe shock on May 7, 1915, when the Cunard liner Lusitania, the largest and fastest on the North Atlantic run, was torpedoed in the Irish Sea and sank in eighteen minutes. Of the 2,000 persons on board, 1,198 perished, including 128 Americans. Public opinion was outraged. Newspapers railed against the “wanton murder” of helpless civilians.*
Wilson sought to calm the nation. “There is such a thing as a