To the Lighthouse

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me.

So spoke Woodrow Wilson on a fresh, sunny winter day 27 years ago, in his first inaugural address. Among his many listeners was Franklin Roosevelt, 31 years old, light-haired, lean, tall, a bit dandified, bundled "in a greatcoat against the chill.

On that inaugural day he too was entering the service of the nation for the first time, unsuspecting, perhaps, that some day he might have to speak to the nation in similar terms.

This week's election for a third term in the White House was no ordinary election; there would be neither space nor time now for the ordinary aftermath of victory. Not because the U. S. wanted a third term, but because the country faced one of the most threatening crises in its history, had the U. S. people assigned Franklin Roosevelt his staggering task.

Once before, in 1932, the nation had called on him in an emergency, and he had driven to his first inauguration in grey weather, confident and cheery, beside dour Herbert Hoover. Now millions of people the world over, in even greyer weather, looked on the White House as a symbolic lighthouse in the worldwide blackout of democracy.

He had said "Only the people themselves can draft a President" and a majority of the people had indeed drafted him--in spite of the third-term tradition. That in itself was an expression of faith greater than any American had ever received.

But he had asked for a vote of confidence and in terms of his 57.4% popular majority in 1932, his 60.2% majority in 1936, it appeared that in 1940 he had received a vote of less confidence. On him therefore rested a greater moral responsibility for the welfare of the nation as a whole, just as in a world at war, more depended on his vision than ever before.

His Job No. I in Term No. 3 was U. S.

safety. From the course that the campaign had taken it was apparent that only on that issue had he an overwhelming mandate from the people. To the growing exclusion of domestic affairs and of ordinary politics, Franklin Roosevelt had, since the outbreak of World War II, become chiefly preoccupied with this biggest job. Working at it on the principle that this war was more diplomatic than military, he had tried to lay foundations for international political successes, and ma neuver toward a peace that no man could anticipate.

The problems of foreign policy were both vast and minute. Martinique, 385 square miles, pop. 246,712, was a typical illustration: six months ago a map flyspeck of no consequence to the U. S. people, but now vital. Just in time, the Havana Conference had assembled the machinery to meet such problems: occupation of any American danger point by any American nation; joint administration of such occupied territories.

But in this war timing had often been more important than anything else. There was a "when" to do everything. Until now the President's defense moves have, willy-nilly, had to be timed with due consideration for domestic politics. For the President had been officially a candidate for office for more than three months. Every move he made, whether political or not, could be construed as political. As a candidate he had to dodge the suspicion that he was acting as the leader of the Democratic Party rather than of the nation. Thus he had or thought he had to resort to dodges and left-handed dealings; to dillydally on the destroyers-for-bases deal until he was certain that almost the last isolationist voter was convinced that the deal was good; to have conscription proposed by anti-New Dealers outside of Congress, and the Conscription Bill itself introduced by an anti-New Deal Democrat and a Republican.

But now all this politicking was presumably over. Now that the election had been held, the necessity of politicking would be reduced from the problem of handling 50,000,000 voters to that of dealing with a comparative handful of professional politicians. With a corresponding reduction of the political pressures on the Presidency, Franklin Roosevelt, with or without a mandate from the whole people, could now act like a President.

Meanwhile his luck, and the luck of the U. S., had held. England still lived.

Berlin was still being bombed. The British Fleet still kept a wall of steel between the U. S. and the day of reckoning. To arm for that day the U. S. needed one thing even more than money, or men: time.*To the men closest to the problem, the fate of the U. S. seemed to hang on the hour hand. Time was needed to convince those whose understanding of events had lagged; time was needed to tell some citizens what time it was. Time was needed to mobilize the entire country, its people, resources and spirit, into one vast fist whose punching power would be so great, so paralyzing, it might not have to strike.

The words "national defense" went only halfway; they were words of an era when isolation had been more possible than in 1940. The case for U. S. peace today was based far more on freedom of the seas; anything less would always mean a world of armed camps, of constricted commerce between nations. And if U. S. security meant anything, it meant freedom of commerce, it meant preventing the development of a world of isolated, ingrown States ringed with steel and suspicion.

In effect, therefore, Franklin Roosevelt had to work out both a short-term plan and a long-term plan. First the U. S. had to ring itself impregnably with steel--bases, ships, airplanes, strengthened Hemisphere allies. But eventually, perhaps by the time the "two-ocean" Navy was built, a completely armed and completely mobilized U. S. could turn to another objective: peace for our time guaranteed by safety and freedom of the seas and of the air. The logic of the President's policy was to win the armament race so that it could be abandoned.

To accomplish this tremendous plan, Franklin Roosevelt could no longer keep his attention focused on lesser domestic affairs. His motto had always been: first things first. Wendell Willkie had cajnpaigned honestly for things Americans had always believed in: liberation of free enterprise from Government controls; relief of profits from tax burdens (especially punitive taxes); and a steady restriction of the sphere of Government activity.

But Roosevelt, granting that democracy and free enterprise are inseparable, had nevertheless believed (as the London Economist said) that "it is far more important at this stage of history to prove that democracy and communal enterprise are compatible." He foresaw ahead of the U. S. a period wherein civilian needs must come second (already Defense Commissioner Knudsen had warned auto makers they might have no new machine tools in 1941); a period when labor must be mobilized, when plant capacity and raw materials must be rationed according to national needs.

Believing that this imminent necessity meant a suspension of free enterprise, in the fullest sense; perhaps, therefore, a partial suspension of democracy, as in World War I, he had repeatedly pledged himself to preserve the labor and social reforms made under the New Deal. For no one knew better than he how quickly, unless someone in authority was determined to maintain them, those reforms could go out the window in a crisis.

The President had pledged himself irrevocably to be such a guardian, and this pledge, felt if not entirely understood, had bound the labor vote to him in 1940.

Unity. The labor vote was an affirmative vote. But many a vote for Roosevelt had been cast negatively, by men whose doubts of him had been exceeded only by their doubts of Willkie and the Republican leadership. Further, millions of votes had been cast against him, and perhaps a majority of those Willkie votes had been cast against Roosevelt, not for Willkie.

Thus Roosevelt faced a Brobdingnagian chore. He must now win back to his side not a mere electoral majority but a working majority--a far larger number--of the country's citizens. In these inflamed times it was a task for a leader of Lincolnian humility, Wilsonian morality, and the clear, direct leadership of George Washington. Only the truth would persuade men now; the U. S. was sick to death of half-truths and cloudy words; of Presidential silences; of learning in 1940, from an American White Paper, what had gone on in the White House in 1938 and 1939.

And, more than at any time since he had been in the White House, Roosevelt could afford to tell the country the truth, however unpalatable. There was no one he had to please for political reasons, no one to soothe or baby or sweeten up. He came into office this time committed to no man, indebted to no group, bound by no strings. He was committed only to the national good and particularly to national defense, and to what the national defense implied.

To get that unity he would have to do a tall job of convincing. Somehow he must convince angry, embittered businessmen that they needn't sell their businesses and move to Canada (or wherever); that the Federal Reserve Index meant what it said --the U. S. stock was up. He must convince millions who had voted against him that he held no grudge against the crusade that had tried to topple him.

In all his life Roosevelt had only once taken orders from a superior: when he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Landlubber Josephus Daniels. But that was the great formative period of his life. It was then that he had discovered his moving principle: action. Do something. If that fails, do something else. Always action; inaction is conservatism, stagnation, unAmerican. Biographer Ernest Lindley described his as "the type of mind to which little is impossible and nothing inevitable." To be a great President he would have to try and try again for national unity of purpose, letting disagreements over details, methods, means fall where they might. He had long ago learned the prime art of the Presidency: persuasion. He had learned what every President must learn, the reason no President can become a dictator: he can never gain any major end by pressing a button, or issuing an order. Always, eternally, he must persuade. If his Cabinet members are worthy of their jobs, they can command far larger salaries in private life than the Government's $15,000 a year. No President can order a man of such a type to do anything: he must convince and persuade him. And so on down the line, with lesser civil servants, with the Senate, the House, the States. And always, behind everything, the press and finally, the people. All must be persuaded, or the

Government stalls at dead centre until either people or President is convinced.

If the U. S. can be convinced that Roosevelt holds no malice against his bitter foes, that his intent is finally a blueprinting of peace, and that his deeds are for the national welfare and not for politics, the country will be persuaded into unity under his leadership.

*The Washington Post exclaimed editorially: "What the United States needs is a Secretary of Time . . . able to make every official . . . every citizen . . . realize that every minute is priceless. . . ."

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