Free Roosevelt by James MacGregor Burns Page B

said. “Quote me on that. That really is the rottenest thing that has been said in public life in my generation.”
    As Congress convened and politicians prepared for the great debate, the President took charge of the shape and strategy of the bill. He sought advice and suggestions from a host of advisers and experts, including Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter; tried—and failed—to bypass the isolationist-ridden Senate ForeignRelations Committee; consulted the House and Senate leadership and some internationalist Republicans; counseled Morgenthau, with whom he was working closely, on his presentation to the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and even wrote part of Hull’s opening testimony. The bill itself—happily given the number H.R. 1776—vested sweeping powers in the President to make or procure “any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States”; to sell or transfer or exchange or lease or lend any such article to any such government; to repair or outfit any such defense article for any such government. The President would also have full authority over arranging terms, if any, with such governments.

    April 17, 1941, CD. Batchelor, Times-Herald, courtesy of The News, New York’s Picture Newspaper
    “This is a bill for the destruction of the American Republic,” thundered the Chicago Tribune. “It is a brief for an unlimited dictatorship with power over the possessions and lives of the American people, with power to make war and alliances forever.” Interventionist papers answered Colonel McCormick; soon the debate was raging in the press. Messages to the White House reflected strong support for the bill, especially in the Middle Atlantic states, but Roosevelt knew the dangers of relying on mail as a measure of public opinion.
    “Now don’t be definite,” he had cautioned Morgenthau about his testimony. The Secretary complied. So did Hull, Stimson, and Knox, in testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. To the tune of four-column headlines in the New York Times, the Cabinet members warned of a likely invasion of Britain within three months, expressed fear of an invasion of the United States if the British Navy was beaten or taken, and asked for the widest executive discretion possible under the act. They were evasive on specifics, such as how much money Lend-Lease would require, and what nations besides Britain might be included. The committee members, flanking their chairman, the owlish Sol Bloom, pressed the notables on two key questions: Would not Lend-Lease, to be effective, require United States naval help in convoying munitions across the Atlantic? And would not convoying mean war?
    These questions posed a moral problem for the Secretaries. All four were activists who, in their own ways, wanted to intervene more strongly than the President was yet willing to do. But all had to follow their chief’s step-by-step tactics—and his claim that Lend-Lease would be a way of reducing the chances of war. Stimson’s dilemma was especially painful. Given to blunt talk and direct action, he believed that the Navy must convoy merchant ships and that ultimately the United States would have to go to war. But he could not speak up. Sensing his dilemma, the congressional foes bore down on him—and none more than his old adversary Ham Fish.
    Roosevelt managed to stay clear of the sharpening clashes on Capitol Hill. But when committee members repeatedly questioned his spokesmen as to whether the President under the bill could hand over part of the United States naval forces, the old Navy hand rebelled. “The President—being very fond of the American Navy—did not expect to get rid of that Navy,” he remarked icily at his press conference. The bill did not prevent the President, he went on, “from standing on his head, but the President did not expect to stand on his head.”
    The first witness against the bill