Mr. President, Buzz, et al.

HOW WAR CAME: AN AMERICAN WHITE PAPER FROM THE FALL OF FRANCE TO PEARL HARBOR--Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley--Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

The authors of this informative, sparkling book are two able Hoosiers (one a Republican, the other a Democrat), both veteran New York and Washington journalists, both familiar with Europe at first hand. In 332 highly readable pages they reach two extremely important conclusions: 1) "idealism, consistency and strength" have characterized the foreign policy of Roosevelt, Hull and Sumner Welles in the past three years; 2) together with Britain, the U.S. has laid down firmly "a pattern of post-war aspirations and behavior" which should result in a fair and decent peace.

It is strictly Hoosier to think of embodying so hefty a theme in a book which in patches is light to the point of ribaldry. It is cheeky to call such a book a "white paper." But these days Washington is a breezy hub of the world, where cuss words, flippancy and wisecracks distinguish the august and the great. The Secretary of State lisps, and therefore says "Jesus Kwyst!," report Davis & Lindley, whose admiration for Cordell Hull's profanity and cracker-box yarns about mules, shirttails and barnyard fowl is right in the Washington groove.

Judge Hull, for example, compares the plight of the U.S. with a one-ocean navy to the embarrassment of a man with a shirt so short that when he pulls it down in front it exposes him behind, and vice versa. It was in a White House bathroom, the authors note gleefully, that Prime Minister Winston Churchill was sold the phrase "United Nations" by President Roosevelt. The President had fixed on it in bed before breakfast, shouted it through the bathroom door. The two biggest guns of democracy are now on such good terms that they can "say anything to each other, however painful." But as they chat back & forth, face to face or on the trans-Atlantic telephone, it is always "Winston" and "Mr. President," never "Franklin."

Mr. Hull calls the Japanese war party "Dillinger" for short. He has the "prevision of a frontiersman" and his "prudent judgments" are the obverse, in State Department coin, of the President's driving self -confidence. Mr. Roosevelt kicked over the traces with his undiplomatic dagger-in-the-back reference to Mussolini. But "18th-Century" Sumner Welles, who was vexed about the dagger, is "erroneously regarded by left-wing intellectuals in this country as a 'reactionary' force in foreign policy." Davis & Lindley prove their point by revealing that while U.S. relations with the Soviet Union were at their worst, Mr. Welles on his own initiative held innumerable secret conferences with Soviet Ambassador Oumansky. In January 1941 Welles tipped off the Bolsheviks that the Nazis would invade Russia in June. Both Churchill and Roosevelt were convinced that Welles's tip was sound. Stalin was not. Davis & Lindley claim that Stalin was as completely surprised by the Nazi Blitz as Roosevelt and Churchill were later surprised by the Japanese foul at Pearl Harbor. Orator Churchill was so sure Hitler was going to attack Russia in June that for "two months" previously he rehearsed and tried out on friends the sonorous periods in which he later informed a breathless world that "any man or state who fights against Naziism will have our aid."

The industrious Hoosiers also do a thorough and not unscholarly job of tracing State Department policy, especially down the long, long trails to Vichy and Tokyo. Davis & Lindley feel that the Administration was never hoodwinked by the Lavals or Tojos and in the main successfully finessed them. Secretary Hull is pictured as having worn himself down in health and strength by some 60 secret conferences, mostly at night, with Japanese Ambassador Nomura in the last desperate months before Pearl Harbor. Hull's explanation of these parleys in his apartment: "The military fellows [U.S. and British] are after me to hold 'em [the Japs] off a little longer until we can get stronger out there."

Hull believes that the Japs would have struck in 1940 but for his policy. So do Davis & Lindley.

The authors describe a curious domestic scene in the White House on Dec. 7. The President was sitting tieless and in shirt sleeves, munching an apple and chatting with "Buzz" (his nickname for Harry Hopkins). Buzz, in V-necked sweater and slacks, was lounging on a couch. Suddenly the phone jangled and a White House operator apologized, for disturbing Mr. Roosevelt, but Secretary Knox was on the wire, insisting. When the President was told by his Secretary of the Navy that bombs were raining down upon Pearl Harbor, his instant reflex action was a cry of "No!" Later in a sudden spurt of anger he told Buzz that what the Japanese had just done was neither "decent nor Christian."

In dealing with Germany, Japan and Italy, say Davis & Lindley, there is little doubt that the U.S. and Britain have been decent and Christian--no doubt whatever that the President in his foreign policy has moved in the last two and a half years always just one step behind the leadership of U.S. public opinion as expressed in public-opinion polls. Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes and "Henry Morgenthau Jr., humorless and intensely anti-Nazi," are listed by Davis & Lindley as having urged the President to strike at Japan before we were struck. Instead, there was a period when Mr. Roosevelt very seriously considered going out into the Pacific for a personal conference with the Japanese Premier. If it had taken place, this meeting would have ranked with Mr. Chamberlain's flight to Berchtesgaden.

How War Came teems with many another weighty fact lightly presented:

> In Paris, after the Government fled and before the Germans entered, the Communists broadcast urgent appeals to the masses to rise in revolt, but nothing happened.

> At Vichy, a loud thump on the ceiling of Laval's bedroom meant that Petain was asking him to come up by pounding with a cane.

> The United Nations have impounded $2,000,000,000 in French funds, largely shipped out of France "to safety" at the urging of U.S. Ambassador Bullitt. This money will talk to any future French regime.

> Cordial though Stalin has been in the Kremlin to United Nations bigwigs, it was for a visiting Japanese official that he bothered to go down to the Moscow railway station to say good-bye and talk earnestly about "all . . . Asiatics together."

> In 1940 four-fifths of the U.S. General Staff were extremely bearish on Britain's holding out through the year. In 1941 they were just as bearish on Russia. But sagacious Winston remarked to Buzz in London: "The Red Army is going to be a tougher nut to crack than our people, and yours, believe."

When Buzz was asked by Mr. Roosevelt to fly to London and get the absolute low-down on whether the British could and would hold, or might make peace, he plaintively grumbled to the President: "I know what you'll want me to do, go over to the State Department for instructions and get the views of a lot of people. I won't learn anything that way; all I need is a long talk with you." The President permitted Buzz to buzz off without benefit of State Department advice.

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