The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [90]
Like his big brothers, Teddy dove into the water again and again. Years afterward he could remember the day as he did few things in his childhood. “I think it was Joe [Jr.] for the most part who encouraged me to jump off the rock,” he recalled. “I could barely swim at that point. I’d jump in the water and grab hold of them. I did this several times. I think I was pretty scared.”
If Rose even saw the fear that Teddy felt, she would have considered it something that had to be purged. She did see the bonding of her sons, and the trust that little Teddy showed in his brothers. “Joe [Jr.] took Teddy to the high cliff and Teddy dove down with confidence that Joe would be there to catch him when he went down or at least rescue him when he dove down from this tremendous height,” she said. “I used to watch them with that relationship between the brothers.”
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland with all the fires of hell. World War II had begun. Two days later Joe sat at 10 Downing Street with Chamberlain reading the speech that the prime minister was about to deliver to Parliament declaring war. Joe read the haunting, searingly honest words: “Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life has crashed in ruins.” Joe was an emotional man, and he cared for Chamberlain as a man and as a vehicle for ideas that were as much his own as the prime minister’s. And as he sat there reading the words, his eyes filled with tears.
Back at the embassy Joe put in a call to Roosevelt, even though it was 4:00 A.M. in Washington. Joe began by telling the president the substance of Chamberlain’s address. Roosevelt had known that it would come to this one day, and if he was solemn at the thought of what faced him, he was full of resolve.
Joe, however, was almost hysterical. He was a man without hope. He portrayed a desperate, impotent Britain that soon would be overrun. In their fight against fascism, the democracies would come to resemble the very dictatorships that they fought. The world economies would crumble. Those with full stomachs now would go hungry, and those who were hungry now would starve. Joe told the president that the shadows of a new dark age were falling on Europe. Everywhere there would be chaos.
Roosevelt had incalculable weight on his shoulders, and matters more urgent to attend to than listening to the endless laments of a man who despised him. But listen he did, trying to calm an ambassador who should have been trying to calm the president. “It’s the end of the world,” Joe moaned, “the end of everything.” For Joe, the world was his family, and his overwhelming fear was that he would lose his sons.
Joe had no intention of attending Chamberlain’s speech, but Rose, Joe Jr., Jack, and Kathleen hurried out into the streets to Parliament to hear the prime minister’s historic address. Joe’s children did not share their father’s brooding morbidity but presented a frolicsome air to a photographer who captured the impeccably dressed contingent.
They had been a gay presence in the house at 15 Prince’s Gate. For months Joe Jr. and Jack had debated the issues of peace and war vigorously with their father. Kathleen had been full of her tales of life among the privileged, and the other children were almost as outspoken. Now they were leaving England, departing after a final weekend in the country.
America was neutral, but the flames of war burned without reason or selection. On September 3, a German torpedo sunk the Athenia, a British liner whose fourteen hundred passengers included three hundred Americans. Joe asked Jack to travel to Glasgow, Scotland, with his aide, Eddie Moore, to meet and comfort the surviving Americans.
It was no easy audience Jack faced that day. “You can’t trust the goddamn German navy!” a survivor shouted.