Read The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt Online
Authors: Eleanor Roosevelt
One of the workers with whom I talked told me that the hardest thing was to keep on at your job when you knew the bombs were falling in the area of your home and you did not know whether you would find your home and family still there at the end of your day’s or night’s work. When we lunched with some of the women who were daily feeding the dockworkers, they told me: “We used to look down on the dockworkers as the roughest element in our community. We were a little afraid of them; but now we have come to know them well and will never feel that way again.”
Women from many different backgrounds, who had never worked together before, were working side by side, just as the men were fighting side by side. These British Isles, which we always regarded as class-conscious, as a place where people were so nearly frozen in their classes that they rarely moved from one to another, became welded together by the war into a closely knit community in which many of the old distinctions lost their point and from which new values emerged.
When I visited a center where bombed-out people were getting clothes and furniture and other supplies, one young woman with a child in her arms and another dragging at her skirt said to me very cheerfully: “Oh, yes, this is the third time we have been bombed out, but the government gives us a bit of help and you people in America send us clothes. We get along and none of us was hurt and that’s the main thing.”
Back in London I had dinner with Prime Minister and Mrs. Churchill. During the dinner I had a slight difference of opinion with Prime Minister Churchill on the subject of Loyalist Spain. The prime minister asked Henry Morgenthau whether we, the United States, were sending “enough” to Spain and whether it was reaching there safely. Henry Morgenthau told him that he hoped we were, and I said I thought it was a little too late, that we should have done something to help the Loyalists during their civil war. Mr. Churchill said he had been for the Franco government until Germany and Italy went into Spain to help Franco. I remarked that I could not see why the Loyalist government could not have been helped, and the prime minister replied that he and I would have been the first to lose our heads if the Loyalists had won—the feeling against people like us would have spread. I said that losing my head was unimportant, whereupon he said: “I don’t want you to lose your head and neither do I want to lose mine.” Then Mrs. Churchill leaned across the table and said: “I think perhaps Mrs. Roosevelt is right.” The prime minister was quite annoyed by this time and said: “I have held certain beliefs for sixty years and I’m not going to change now.” Mrs. Churchill then got up as a signal that dinner was over.
Before I left for home my aunt, Maude Gray, Tommy and I drove out one day to Windsor Castle, for I wanted to report to Queen Elizabeth on my trip. While we were talking in her sitting room, the King, who had spent the day visiting our air force troops, came in with the children. Both the King and I had rather bad colds, which necessitated a good deal of attention to our noses. As we drove away from Windsor Castle my aunt said to me in shocked tones: “Darling, I never was so humiliated in my life. Your using those nasty little tissues and wadding them in your hand while the King used such lovely sheer linen handkerchiefs! What could they have thought!”
As the time for my return trip approached, my husband and Ambassador Winant and the prime minister discussed how I should travel. Tommy and I had our return passage on an American Export Lines plane. Both Ambassador Winant and the prime minister pointed out that, while I might not be concerned personally with the possibility of the Germans’ discovering I was on a plane bound for Lisbon, I would be jeopardizing the other passengers. Finally, after many conversations over the transatlantic telephone, my husband, who did not want me to travel on a military plane, gave in and said: “I don’t care how you send her home, just send her.”
AFTER WE HAD
been back from London a few days a Washington columnist wrote for his paper a story asserting that Miss Thompson had asked me for a few days off to go to see her mother, who was ill. I was alleged to have said: “Why, Tommy, I didn’t know you had a mother, but I am afraid we are much too busy for you to be away now.”
It was so ridiculous that neither of us was annoyed. Miss Thompson wrote to the gentleman as follows:
“Your column quoting my request for a few days’ holiday and Mrs. Roosevelt’s alleged reply has just been brought to my attention.
“For your information, my mother died in 1928 and in order that there be no confusion about which parent I wanted to visit, my father died in 1932. Nothing could give me more satisfaction than to be able to visit either or both of my parents and get back to my job. If you, in your omnipotence, can tell me how to accomplish this, I shall be most grateful.”
Needless to say, there was no answer to this letter and no correction in the column.
The day I arrived home we had a large dinner for the President of Ecuador, who was to be an overnight guest. I should have liked at least one evening to catch up on my family, for I had been away several weeks, but this is a pleasure a public person cannot always count on.
Very soon I began to realize that there would shortly be other trips about which I had better know very little. On January 9, 1943, Franklin left for Miami, Florida, and took off on the 12th for Casablanca. It was his first long trip by air across the water and I had hoped he would be won over to flying, but instead he disliked it more than ever.
Admittedly, a flight like this in time of war entailed some personal danger, but that was something Franklin never gave a thought to. Long ago, when Mayor Cermak was killed, Franklin and I had talked it over and decided that that kind of danger was something you could do nothing about. You cannot be protected from a person who does not care whether he is caught or not. The only possible course is to put the thought of danger out of your mind and go ahead with your job as you feel you must, regardless of what might be called its occupational risks. In the case of the Casablanca trip there was also the fact that Franklin was doing an unprecedented thing, and he knew there would be criticism. That again was a consideration he could not let weigh with him. All the arrangements for the trip were made through the Secret Service; his departure was as secret as possible; the flag which indicates that the President is in residence was never taken down from the White House, and I went on with my daily routine exactly as though he were there.
When Franklin returned he was full of stories. He loved particularly to tell us how he had made Mr. Churchill unhappy by teasing him about his “bad boy,” General de Gaulle. Mr. Churchill, of course, was responsible for General de Gaulle and the general had proved difficult about going to the meeting. Back of Franklin’s teasing, however, there had been a serious purpose because he had felt that if Mr. Churchill put the screws on, General de Gaulle would have to come to Casablanca, since Great Britain was providing him with the money necessary to carry on his activities at the time. When the general did go, it was not altogether a happy meeting.
Afterwards when I questioned him about the meeting, Franklin said, “General de Gaulle is a soldier, patriotic, yes, devoted to his country; but, on the other hand, he is a politician and a fanatic and there are, I think, in him almost the makings of a dictator.”
Another thing Franklin talked much about was the horrible conditions of the natives in the places he had stopped. He never minced words in telling Mr. Churchill that he did not think the British had done enough in any one of the colonial areas he had seen on this trip to improve the lot of the native peoples. He agreed with me that the United States, too, had a serious responsibility in Liberia, which we had never lived up to, and I was particularly happy when Edward Stettinius later went ahead with the plans for Liberia which he discussed with Franklin at that time. He formed a company to develop the natural resources of the country—a project that was only a dream when he talked with my husband after his return from Casablanca.
In early February I made a trip to Portland, Maine, where Cary Bok met me and took me to Camden to visit his shipyard, where he was building wooden vessels. This was something in which Franklin was greatly interested.
Later in the month I flew to Des Moines, Iowa, with Colonel Oveta Hobby, head of the WAC, to inspect their main training station. While I was there I took a side trip to speak at a college in Columbia, Missouri, and was back in the White House in plenty of time to greet Madame Chiang when she first arrived in this country. At that time she was in the Medical Center in New York City for treatment.
Madame Chiang seemed so small and delicate as she lay in her hospital bed that I had a desire to help her and take care of her as if she had been my own daughter. Occasionally I took someone to see her because I felt she would tire of seeing only me, and many people were anxious to meet her.
When it came time for her to leave the hospital we offered her our house in Hyde Park for a few days before she came to Washington. She spent several days there and then, accompanied by two nurses and her nephew and niece, Mr. and Miss Kung, who acted as her secretaries, she came to the White House and stayed until the 28th of the month. She should have been an invalid with no cares; but she felt she had work to do, that she must see important people in our government and in the armed services who could be helpful to China, and that she must fulfill certain official obligations.
I shall never forget the day I went with her when she addressed the House of Representatives, after meeting the senators. A little, slim figure in Chinese dress, she made a dramatic entrance as she walked down the aisle, surrounded by tall men. She knew it, for she had a keen sense of the dramatic. Her speech, beautifully delivered, was a remarkable expression of her own conception of democracy.
I saw another side of Madame Chiang while she was in the White House, and I was much amused by the reactions of the men with whom she talked. They found her charming, intelligent, and fascinating, but they were all a little afraid of her, because she could be a coolheaded statesman when she was fighting for something she deemed necessary to China and to her husband’s regime; the little velvet hand and the low, gentle voice disguised a determination that could be as hard as steel.
A certain casualness about cruelty emerged sometimes in her conversations with the men, though never with me. I had painted for Franklin such a sweet, gentle and pathetic figure that, as he came to recognize the other side of the lady, it gave him keen pleasure to tease me about my lack of perception. I remember an incident at a dinner party during one of her visits which gave him particular entertainment. John L. Lewis was acting up at the time, and Franklin turned to Madame Chiang and asked: “What would you do in China with a labor leader like John Lewis?” She never said a word, but the beautiful, small hand came up and slid across her throat, a most expressive gesture. Franklin looked across at me to make sure I had seen, and went right on talking. He enjoyed being able to say to me afterwards: “Well, how about your gentle and sweet character?”
Her two young secretaries created a slight confusion when they first arrived in the White House, because her niece, Miss Kung, insisted on dressing like a man, and the valets, thinking I had made a mistake in assigning the rooms, unpacked Miss Kung under the impression that she was Mr. Kung. Then they went to the ushers’ office and reported that I had made a mistake, only to learn much to their confusion that they had unpacked a lady. Franklin was also confused by her type of dress and when she came into the study where we all met before dinner, he greeted her as “my boy.” Harry Hopkins quickly wrote a note saying: “This is Miss Kung.” Franklin tried to cover up by saying blandly: “I always call all young things ‘my boy’”; but everyone knew quite well that her clothes had completely fooled him. I do not believe she was offended by his mistake, for that was the impression she was trying to give. She hated being a girl—I suppose in protest against the inferior position sometimes assigned to women in China.
After Madame Chiang left us, she made a long trip by special train throughout the United States, out to the West Coast and back. It must have been a strenuous and difficult trip for her, and after her return she questioned Tommy carefully. Tommy and I had taken practically the same trip, following in her footsteps, a few days behind her, and heard about her everywhere. What mystified Madame Chiang was how it was possible for us to travel alone while she had forty people, yet never enough to do the things she needed to have done.
She asked Tommy who packed our bags, and Tommy said she packed hers and I packed mine. She then asked who answered the telephone, and Tommy said that whichever one of us was nearer it answered. She also asked who took care of the mail and telegrams and was told that we did it jointly. Her next question was, who looked after our clothes, and Tommy told her that if a dress needed pressing, we asked the hotel valet to do it. Finally she asked about my safety. Tommy explained that we did not consider “protection” necessary, since everyone was good to us, but that, of course, in various cities people would sometimes be assigned to meet us at the train and see us off and motor us about if we were going to be in large crowds; that this, however, was entirely dependent upon how the local authorities felt.
I have never asked for or wanted protection and in all the miles I have traveled and the many places I have visited I never have had an unpleasant incident. People might become a bit too enthusiastic; but it was all kindly meant and I felt it was because they loved my husband. I have had a tail pulled off my fur scarf as a souvenir, but nothing worse than that has ever happened.
During the month of April I went on a short trip with Franklin to inspect some war plants in Mexico and to meet the President and spend a few hours in Monterrey. It was an interesting trip to me, because it was the first time I had been in that country. My impression of the city is rather vague, for we drove fast and were watching the crowds rather than the city itself; however, Mexican hospitality, as expressed at the dinner we all attended and in the kindness of everyone with whom we came in contact, made a deep impression on the whole party. We traveled back with a feeling that Mexico was a close neighbor in spirit. My husband already felt close and friendly to the Mexican people, but to many of us this was a new experience.