The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (43 page)

Puerto Rico was seething with activity and did not seem to me at all like the quiet, restful spot I had visited ten years previously. Rex Tugwell was the governor of the island at the time of my second visit, and he was trying out some of the ideas he had become interested in during his first survey; and Adrian Dornbush was doing research to develop new uses for Puerto Rican materials—bamboo, sugar cane, palms, and the like.

I was joined in Belém by the wives of some of the Brazilian government officials, who had been sent to meet me, and by our ambassador, Mr. Caffrey, and his wife. I enjoyed having them with me on my visit to Natal and Recife, where, as in Belém, I saw all the army aand navy activities and inspected the recreation facilities.

The airfield at Recife had a special fascination for me because it was from there the men were checked out to start their long trek across the ocean. I had a chat with a boy who was getting his last orders before leaving for India, where he would be flying the Hump—one of the most dangerous trips. He had just been home on leave, and he told me that when flying low over some of the midwestern country on his way back to a base near his home, he had looked down and said to himself: “I wish I could say to you people below me, ‘Do you know how lucky you are? What wonderful lives you have? How rich is your security in comparison to the millions of people I have seen in India and China?’” He was one of the many boys who, in India, saw famine at firsthand; I doubt if any of them will ever forget it.

One place my husband allowed me to go that was not, strictly speaking, a service base was Venezuela. I was driven from the airport up a steep road to Caracas. Franklin had said it was one of the most beautiful roads he had ever seen, and I agreed with him after driving over it. We were told that the road was built entirely by hand by men and women who had worked on it for several years; it was a sort of WPA project. My visit was merely one of good will but while I was there I learned something of the awakening interest among women of the country in the better care and feeding of children.

After a brief stop in Colombia we flew to the Canal Zone, where I was able to get a good view of the Panama Canal from the air. General Brett and Admiral Train had mapped out quite an active tour there, and I was glad to be able to visit boys in lonely camps, to ride in a PT boat to inspect the base, and in general to see as much of our men as possible.

I had an unexpected pleasure in Panama. The U.S.S.
Wasp
, the ship on which my son John was assistant supply officer, was going through the day I arrived and since he had four hours shore leave, he came to see me. It was the last time I saw him until the end of the war.

On leaving the Canal Zone I paid a brief visit to Ecuador, where a few men were stationed, and then flew to the Galapagos Islands. Quite a number of people thought this was an unnecessary trip, and various USO entertainers had been persuaded not to go there, to the great disappointment of the men. However, it was one place where my husband insisted I go, because he knew the men there were probably having a duller and more trying time than men stationed anywhere else in the world. After visiting it, I realized that he was right. We were much amused at the sign over the door: “Women Invited.” We were the only women who had ever been on this island!

The climate at the coast station in Guatemala was terrible; the men found the heat and the insects and reptiles hard to bear. Over the door of their recreation room they had a sign: “Home of the Forgotten Men.” Guatemala City, however, had a delightful climate and had I been on a pleasure trip I should have liked to spend some time visiting the old capital and some of the Indian villages.

The President of Guatemala gave a formal reception for me in his palace; all were seated according to protocol and brought up to be presented to me in groups according to rank or position. The palace is luxurious. As I was entering the building to attend this reception, escorted by our military officers, a flashlight bulb exploded, and before I could take a breath Guatemalan soldiers seemed to spring up out of the floor, and our officers seized my arms and rushed me away. It had sounded like a shot and no one was taking any chances.

Since this trip was not within easy reach of the enemy, it was publicized before I left, and countless mothers, wives, sweethearts and sisters wrote to beg me to try to see their menfolk. When I left home, I took with me a file of cards with the names and identification numbers of the men I’d been asked to look up, and as I reached each place, I gave the cards of the men stationed there to one of the officers and asked, if possible, to see them. The young men would be told, without explanation, to be at a certain place—usually an officer’s room—at a given time. They would arrive, nervous and apprehensive, and when I appeared would invariably look surprised and greatly relieved. On my return I had letters to write to hundreds of people, because during the trip many other boys I met asked me to write to their families back home.

On this trip, too, I managed to have meals with the enlisted men, the noncommissioned officers, and the officers. It meant breakfast at 5:55
A
.
M
. and not 6:00, dinner at noon, and supper at 5:00 or 5:30
P
.
M
. In one place some Puerto Rican soldiers brought Miss Thompson and me our coffee at breakfast time all prepared the way they like it—mostly sugar and canned milk.

Everywhere I went I was treated with the greatest courtesy and consideration, though some of the top-ranking officers were frank in telling me they had not anticipated my visit with pleasure. Nevertheless, Ambassador Caffrey and some of the generals and admirals were kind enough to write to Washington that my trip had been helpful, and I have always hoped that I was able to give the men some pleasure and encouragement, which had been my husband’s thought in suggesting this tour.

We stopped at Havana on the way back, where, as in any foreign country I visited, I met the government officials or their deputies. This always gave me a welcome opportunity to learn something about the country itself and to express the good will of our people toward our neighbors to the south.

We landed back in Washington, after having covered 13,000 miles by air, and many, many miles on foot going through hospital wards, camps and so forth.

In two days both Tommy and I felt that the trip already lay far behind. The accumulated work demanded such concentration to catch up that we were back in the daily routine almost before we had an opportunity to report on what we had seen and done.

Twenty-seven
    

The Last Term: 1944-1945

ALL THROUGH
the winter of 1943-44 my husband had run a low fever at intervals and we thought he had picked up a bug on the trip or perhaps had acquired undulant fever from our cows at Hyde Park. Franklin seemed to feel miserable, which was not astonishing, considering that he had been through so many years of strain. Finally, on April 9 he made up his mind that he would go down and stay with Bernard Baruch at his plantation, Hobcaw, in Georgetown, South Carolina. Mr. Baruch had offered to take in his whole entourage.

There were times when Mr. Baruch differed with my husband on policies. There were also times, as often happens to any president, when the people around him became jealous of outside advisers such as Mr. Baruch and made it difficult for cordial relations to exist. However, my husband was inclined to be impervious to stories or rumors about anyone who he felt could be helpful; and, since Mr. Baruch is one of the people who can ignore the past, he was always ready to be useful when called upon. The personal relationship remained unbroken through all the years Franklin and I knew him.

Hobcaw was just the right place for Franklin, who loved the country and the life there, and he stayed almost a month. One day Anna and I flew down for lunch, along with the prime minister of Australia and his wife, Mr. and Mrs, Curtis, and I came home feeling that it was the best move Franklin could have made. I have always been grateful to Mr. Baruch for providing him with that holiday.

June 6, 1944, was a red-letter day. We had known for a long time that invasion preparations were being made, but everything had been kept very secret. When the time came, Franklin went on the air to give his D-day prayer, and for hours our hearts were with the men on the beaches. The news came in little by little. In spite of the sorrow our losses brought to many families, it was a great relief to know that permanent landings had been made and that the liberation of Europe had really begun.

Another election lay ahead in the fall of 1944. I knew without asking that as long as the war was on it was a foregone conclusion that Franklin, if he was well enough, would run again. A number of doctors were called in and he was given a thorough physical examination. Since to hand over to anyone else at that particular point would have been extremely difficult, it was decided that if he would agree to follow certain rules laid down by the doctors, he could stand going on with his work.

There appeared in a magazine an article written by a doctor who does not give his sources of information. This doctor states that my husband had three strokes while he was in the White House, one, at least, prior to this examination. I asked Dr. Ross T. McIntire whether my husband had had a stroke and he assured me that he had never had one. It would have been impossible for him to have had a stroke without some one of us, who were so constantly with him, noting that something was wrong. My husband would have been the last person to permit doctors to slur over anything which might have made him less able mentally to continue his work.

On July 7, while I was in Hyde Park, General de Gaulle lunched with Franklin in the White House. We wondered whether this visit would change his feeling about the general, but their meeting was evidently entirely formal though pleasant, and I saw no difference in Franklin’s attitude.

From the 15th of July to the 17th of August Franklin was away on a trip to the Pacific. He had been in the European area a good deal; and he wanted to establish personal contact with the officers in the Pacific area and go over their plans for the war. Consequently, a meeting was arranged in Hawaii. From there he went to Alaska and the Aleutians. It was this trip that gave rise to the extraordinary tale that Fala had been left behind on one of the islands and a destroyer sent back for him. I have no idea where this story started, though I assumed it was with some bright young man in Republican headquarters.

In July I made a trip to Lake Junaluska in North Carolina to speak before a group of Methodist women. I had been hesitant about going anywhere in the South, because my conviction that the colored people should have full civil rights had, over the years, aroused a good deal of feeling there. This hostility found an outlet, particularly in election years, in a number of disagreeable letters and editorials and I felt my presence would not be helpful. However, this group was insistent and I was glad afterwards that I went.

I had great admiration for the courage of Mrs. M. E. Tilly of Atlanta, Georgia, who was the executive secretary of the Methodist women’s organization. I was told that whenever a lynching occurred she went alone, or with a friend, as soon as she heard of it, in order to investigate the circumstances. Only a southern woman could have done this, but even for a southern woman it seemed to me to require great moral as well as physical courage. She was a Christian who believed in all Christ’s teachings, including the concept that all men are brothers, and though she was a white southern woman she deeply resented the fact that white southern women are so often used as a pretext for lynching. Mrs. Tilly served with distinction on President Truman’s Civil Rights Committee, and gained for herself the admiration of both Northerners and Southerners.

We were all saddened by the death of Marguerite LeHand on August 2. I was glad that I had been able to see her not long before when I went to Boston to visit the Chelsea Naval Hospital. She had worked for so many years with my husband and she had been so loyal and devoted, living with us practically as a member of the family, that I knew he would feel sad not to be able to pay a last tribute of respect by attending her funeral.

On September 10 we all left for Quebec for another war conference. Mrs. Churchill was to be there with her husband and Franklin had asked me to go. At first, Mr. and Mrs. Hull had planned to go, but Secretary Hull decided that he was not well enough. Later Franklin asked Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to come up to confer on a postwar plan for Germany.

Franklin was anxious that it should be made impossible for Germany again to start a war. I heard him discuss many plans, even the possibility of dividing Germany into its original principalities. He realized that the industrial power of Germany lay in the Ruhr, and he considered the possibility of international control of that region.

He undoubtedly discussed with Henry Morgenthau all of his ideas, including the possibility of reducing Germany to a country more dependent on agriculture than in the past, allowing her only such industry as was essential to a self-supporting state, and making sure that the economy of the rest of Europe would not again be so dependent on Germany for its prosperity.

Apparently there was a lack of co-ordination among even the highest levels of government thinking, both in our own country and in Great Britain. The net result of it all seems to have been that the President’s intentions were not carried out—intentions which were shared by the Supreme Commander of the European Theater, General Eisenhower.

Franklin emphasized three points which he felt were important psychologically in Germany. I think they might well be remembered today:

“The first, that Germany should be allowed no aircraft of any kind, not even a glider.

“The second, that nobody should be allowed to wear a uniform.

“The third, that there should be no marching of any kind.”

The prohibition of uniforms and parades, he thought, would do more than anything else to teach the Germans that they had been defeated.