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By Root 1856 0

were at any time to leave the Assistant Secretaryship it could only be for active service.”38 Roosevelt’s motives were mixed. So long as the war continued, he believed his place was to serve the war effort, either as assistant secretary or in uniform. To abandon his post would be tantamount to desertion. He also thought 1918 would be another Republican year. Whether he could unseat a popular incumbent was far from clear. Having lost one statewide race, Roosevelt did not want to lose another. What could not be foreseen was that the war would be over by election time and the political equation would have changed. The Democrats nominated Al Smith in FDR’s place in 1918, and Smith went on to win a stunning upset victory over Governor Whitman.39 In later years, Roosevelt claimed to have engineered Smith’s nomination.* “I see that you have been called the ‘best equipped’ man” for governor, FDR wrote Smith on the night of the Democratic primary. “May I tell you that this is not only true, but that I trust that the people of the State will realize that this is not a mere phrase—it is based upon actual fact.”40

As with Franklin, the war gave Eleanor the opportunity to move beyond her limited social circle. Her first four years in Washington as wife of a member of Wilson’s subcabinet had been almost as circumscribed as her life had been in New York, restricted to paying formal calls and leaving visiting cards, entertaining and being entertained, while supervising a household that grew larger each year. When war came, Eleanor found herself in great demand outside that narrow world, and like Franklin she threw herself into her new role with an enthusiasm she had not experienced since her days as head girl at Allenwood. She became an indefatigable organizer of Red Cross volunteers. Scarcely a troop train could pass through Union Station without Eleanor being there with a bevy of assistants to hand out coffee, sandwiches, and hand-knitted woolen socks.41

Despite her wide exposure, some prejudices died hard. Eleanor never felt completely comfortable with the Roman Catholic clergy and the Irish politicians with whom FDR consorted, and her tolerance for those of the Jewish faith grew slowly.* Eleanor was distressed in January 1918 when she was obliged to attend a gala given by the British Embassy to honor Bernard Baruch, then head of the War Industries Board. It would be “mostly Jews,” she wrote Sara, and “I’d rather be hung than seen there.” Afterward she reported, “The Jew party was appalling. I never wish to hear money, jewels, and sables mentioned again.”42

Several months later Eleanor was surprised when FDR brought the young Harvard professor and Washington consultant Felix Frankfurter home for lunch. She found Frankfurter unappealing. “An interesting little man,” she wrote Sara, “but very Jew.”43 Later she would refuse to read Maurice Low’s interpretive biography of Woodrow Wilson because the author was “such a loathsome little Jew.”44 Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor’s elegant biographer, noted, “ER’s caustic comments concerning Jews remained a routine part of her social observation for many years, diminishing as her friendship with Baruch and other Jews flourished.”45

FDR did not have that problem. Although his half brother, Rosy, was a notorious anti-Semite, neither Sara nor Franklin’s father, James, was infected with the virus. James had numerous Jewish friends, including August Belmont and Henry Morgenthau, Sr., and he told Sara on several occasions that although he was not Jewish, “if he were he would be proud of it.”46 FDR enjoyed ethnic jokes and often told them himself, but he drew the line at sectarian slurs, especially if directed at particular individuals. And he recognized early in his career that he needed support across the religious spectrum. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., his neighbor in Dutchess County, was one of Franklin’s closest friends. They shared the interests of gentleman farmers, comparing notes on everything from breeds of dairy cattle to selective timbering. “Two of a kind,” FDR inscribed across a photograph of