SEVEN

WAR

These dear, good people like W.J.B. [William Jennings Bryan] and J.D. [Josephus Daniels] have as much conception of what a general European war means as [four-year-old] Elliott has of higher mathematics.

—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, AUGUST 2, 1914

AFTER A YEAR as assistant secretary, FDR grew restive in Washington. While he relished the ceremonial trappings of his office and reveled in the proximity to national power, he was still a pale second to Secretary Daniels and relegated to department housekeeping rather than the grand strategy and high politics to which he aspired. Much of the day-to-day work in the Navy Department he found tedious. He could recommend, but final authority rested with Daniels. Senator Elihu Root had recognized the trait: Roosevelts were accustomed to ride in front. A southern wit like Addie Daniels, Josephus’s wife, would simply have said that Franklin was getting too big for his breeches.

Through Louis Howe, FDR kept tabs on New York politics. The state Democratic party was in more than the usual disarray, and Franklin maneuvered to exploit the confusion. If further advancement in Washington was temporarily blocked—as it clearly was—he would rekindle his career by seeking statewide office in New York. Roosevelt’s perspective was clouded by Potomac myopia, the affliction of self-importance that often causes senior Washington officials to overestimate their significance in their home states, and in FDR’s case he assumed that the governorship of the Empire State was within easy grasp.

“Plain Bill” Sulzer, who had been Tammany’s handpicked choice for governor, had run afoul of the organization and was removed from office in October 1913. He was replaced by the reliable Martin H. Glynn, a Democratic stalwart from Albany. But the heavy hand of Tammany had tainted the impeachment process and made Glynn vulnerable. He was also Catholic, the first of that faith to occupy the governor’s chair, and whether a Catholic could win a statewide election in 1914 was far from clear. In addition, New York had recently enacted the direct-primary law for which FDR had worked so diligently in the legislature. As Franklin saw it, that would limit Tammany’s ability to dictate the party’s nominee and open the way for a candidate with strong grassroots support—support that the name Roosevelt virtually ensured. Finally, FDR envisioned himself as the anointed candidate of the Wilson administration, departing Washington with the president’s blessing to smite the Murphy machine on behalf of political reform.

Wilson’s support was crucial to FDR’s campaign. Yet throughout late 1913 and early 1914 the president refused to commit himself. He may have savored the thought of a reform victory in New York, but he needed the votes of the state’s Tammany-dominated congressional delegation to put the New Freedom legislative program across. Howe launched a series of trial balloons for FDR in the New York press and did his utmost to hint at Wilson’s support, but it was wishful thinking.¹ In March 1914, Roosevelt tried to force Wilson’s hand. Ralph Pulitzer of The New York Worldhad asked FDR to write an article for his paper on the political situation in the Empire State. Franklin asked Wilson for guidance. Could he have five minutes of the president’s time to discuss the matter?² Wilson declined. Instead, he sent FDR a brief note advising him to say nothing. Events in New York were still unfolding, said the president, and “the plot is not yet clear.”³ That was scarcely the vote of confidence Roosevelt needed to challenge a Tammany incumbent in the primary.

When Franklin dispatched intermediaries to canvass Cousin Theodore’s support, the result was equally disappointing. TR said he admired his young Hyde Park relative but was too busy mending fences with liberal Republicans to offer a Progressive endorsement.⁴ The final blow to FDR’s gubernatorial aspirations was administered by Congressman John J. Fitzgerald of Brooklyn, the powerful chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the Tammany spokesman in the House. Unless Wilson disavowed self-appointed critics of Tammany within the administration, said Fitzgerald, he and twenty other New York Democrats would find it difficult to support the New Freedom legislative agenda.⁵ That finished FDR. Wilson issued a public statement saying he had the highest regard for Mr. Fitzgerald and certainly did not endorse the characterization of Tammany congressmen as “representatives of crooks, grafters, and buccaneers”—campaign rhetoric that had become a staple for FDR.^6*

Roosevelt recognized the impossibility of his quest and put an upbeat spin on the outcome. “Thank God,” he wrote Eleanor, “the governorship is out of the question.”⁷ To the Times he denied that he had ever been a candidate: “When I said I was not a candidate and would not accept the nomination, I did not say it in diplomatic language, but in seafaring language, which means it.”⁸

The reason for FDR’s jauntiness soon became apparent: an even more desirable statewide office was available. In May 1913 the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the direct election of senators, was added to the Constitution. Senator Elihu Root’s term was expiring, and Root, who had opposed the amendment in Senate debate, announced that he would not seek reelection.⁹ That provided an opportunity FDR had not anticipated. The venerable Root was one of the most distinguished members of the Senate—secretary of war under McKinley, secretary of state under TR, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912. Had Root run, he would have been unbeatable. Now the race was wide open. Even better, there was no Democratic incumbent to contest the nomination. Franklin could barely contain his excitement as he broke the news to Eleanor that he planned to seek both the Democratic and Progressive nominations for the U.S. Senate. “I really would like to be in the Senate just so as to get a summer with my family once every three or four years.”¹⁰

FDR’s 1914 flirtation with elective office was interrupted by events in Sarajevo, far off in the Balkans. On the morning of June 28, Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Hapsburg throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot and killed by a nineteen-year-old Bosnian terrorist while riding in an open car in downtown Sarajevo. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, one of seven young Bosnian co-conspirators, believed that by killing the archduke he would liberate Bosnia from Hapsburg captivity.¹¹ The Serbian government was implicated in the assassination, and the Austrians demanded satisfaction. Germany backed Austria and gave Vienna a blank check to proceed as it wished. Diplomatic demands escalated, armies mobilized, governments miscalculated, and events took on a life of their own. The Concert of Europe, elaborately crafted by Viscount Castlereagh and Count Metternich one hundred years earlier and embellished by Otto von Bismarck and Benjamin Disraeli in the 1870s, came crashing down like a house of cards. The year before his death, Bismarck had predicted that “some damn foolish thing in the Balkans” would ignite a general war in Europe. Princip provided the spark that set things off.^12*

On July 23, more than three weeks after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian government, believing itself ready for war and confident of German support, presented Serbia with an ultimatum couched in language carefully crafted to make it all but impossible for Belgrade to accept.¹³ The Serbian reply, deliberately evasive, was rejected by Vienna on July 25, and both nations mobilized. Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28; Russia mobilized to support Serbia on July 30; France mobilized to support Russia the following day; and Germany called up its reserves immediately afterward.^14† Last-minute diplomatic efforts failed, and on August 1 Germany declared war on Russia. Locked in by military planning predicated on a two-front war, Germany declared war on France on August 3 and crossed into Belgium to outflank the French Army, which was drawn up facing the Franco-German border. The violation of Belgian neutrality brought Great Britain in on France’s side, and Europe was at war.

The Central Powers believed that victory would be quick. “You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees,” the kaiser told departing guards regiments in Potsdam the first week in August.¹⁵ The British took a different view. “The lamps are going out all over Europe,” lamented Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”¹⁶ General Lord Kitchener, recalled from retirement by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, said that the war “will take a very long time. No one living knows how long.”¹⁷

FDR was fulfilling a speaking engagement for the Navy in Reading, Pennsylvania, when Germany declared war. Summoned by telegram to Washington, he jotted a quick note to Eleanor from the train: “The latest news is that Germany has declared war against Russia. A complete smashup is inevitable, and there are a great many problems for us to consider. These are history-making days. It will be the greatest war in the world’s history. Mr. D. totally fails to grasp the situation and I am to see the President Monday a.m. to go over our own situation.”¹⁸ Whether Franklin was referring to the war in Europe or his political ambitions in New York is unclear, but Wilson had no time on Monday or any day that week: his wife, Ellen, was dying of cancer.¹⁹

With the possibility of war looming, FDR found it even more difficult to play second fiddle. His letters to Eleanor in early August brim with his own activity, in stark contrast to the lethargy he perceived around him. Inexperienced and impulsive, Roosevelt failed to appreciate Daniels’s more cautious approach. The following day he wrote that upon his arrival in Washington,

I went straight to the Department, where as I expected, I found everything asleep and apparently utterly oblivious to the fact that the most terrible drama in history was about to be enacted.

To my astonishment nobody seemed the least bit excited about the European crisis—Mr. Daniels feeling chiefly very sad that his faith in human nature and civilization and similar idealistic nonsense was receiving such a rude shock. So I started in alone to get things ready and prepare plans for what ought to be done by the Navy end of things.…

These dear, good people like W.J.B. and J.D. have as much conception of what a general European war means as Elliott has of higher mathematics. They really believe that because we are neutral we can go about our business as usual.…

All this sounds like borrowing trouble I know, but it is my duty to keep the Navy in a position where no chances, even the most remote, are taken. Today we are taking chances and I nearly boil over when I see the cheery “mañana” way of doing business.²⁰

Franklin told Eleanor he saw no hope of averting the conflict. “The best that can be expected is either a sharp, complete and quick victory by one side, a most unlikely occurrence, or a speedy realization of impending bankruptcy by all, and a cessation by mutual consent, but this too I think unlikely.”²¹

Eleanor said she understood. “I am not surprised at what you say about J.D. or W.J.B. for one could expect little else. To understand the present gigantic conflict one must have at least a glimmering of understanding foreign nations.… Life must be exciting for you and I can see you managing everything while J.D. wrings his hands in horror. There must be so much detail to attend to and so many problems which must, of course, be yours and not J.D.’s.”²²

As it turned out, Daniels was more in tune with administration policy than his brash assistant secretary. On August 4, 1914, President Wilson issued the first of ten neutrality proclamations that would be promulgated during the first three months of the war. These committed the United States to complete neutrality and made it a crime for anyone to be partial beyond the “free expression of opinion.”²³ Two days later Wilson told Daniels to order all officers “to refrain from public comment of any kind upon the military or political situation on the other side of the water.” The Navy was instructed to “watch things along the coast,” protect the neutrality of American ports, and prevent the shipment of munitions to any of the belligerents.²⁴ FDR was appointed to two quickly established cabinet-level committees, one to translate the principles of the neutrality proclamations into practical policy, the other to provide relief for Americans stranded in Europe by the war. He arranged for the battleships North Carolina and Tennessee to sail for the Continent loaded with gold bullion to subsidize the credit of Americans caught in the war zone and organized a coastal patrol to prevent belligerent warships from venturing too close to U.S. shores. “Most of those reports of foreign cruisers off the coast have really been my destroyers,” Franklin proudly wrote Eleanor on August 7.²⁵

FDR was consumed by the war in Europe and the Navy’s responsibility. “I am running the real work, although Josephus is here,” he told Eleanor.²⁶ But over his shoulder, Roosevelt watched what was happening in New York. The prospect of succeeding Elihu Root in the Senate was too enticing to let slip. Treasury secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, who considered himself the de facto leader of the reform wing of the Democratic party in New York, was urging FDR to run, and on August 13, following a lightning visit to Manhattan, Franklin announced his candidacy.²⁷ “My senses have not yet left me,” he wired Louis Howe, who was vacationing with his family on the Massachusetts shore.²⁸

Daniels sought to dissuade FDR. “I told him that I had a hunch he could not win in the primary, and even if he did the indications were that the Republicans would carry the State [in November].”²⁹ Franklin refused to be deterred. “I had no more idea or desire of offering myself as a ‘white hope’ than I had of attempting to succeed Kaiser Wilhelm,” he disingenuously told a friend shortly after he announced. “I protested, but finally agreed to be the goat. Now I am going into the fight as hard as I can.”³⁰ FDR was confident that the Democratic nomination was his for the taking. He remained at Campobello for the remainder of August and did not bother to appear at the campaign kickoff rally Howe organized at New York City’s Cooper Union on September 2. Primary day was September 28, and thus far no opposition candidate had announced.

Early press reports indicated New York publisher William Randolph Hearst might seek the nomination. FDR wrote Howe he was “offering up prayers” that the reports were true. “It would be magnificent sport and also a magnificent service to run against him.” But Hearst stepped back.³¹

In late August, Governor Glynn endorsed Roosevelt, and hope rose that Tammany would let the nomination pass by default. “The truth is that they haven’t a thing to say against you,” Howe told Franklin. “No one is anxious to bell the cat—particularly when they have an idea that the President occasionally pats him on the back and calls him ‘pretty pussy.’ ”³²

Once again FDR underestimated the political skill of Charles Murphy. On September 6, the next-to-the-last day for filing, Tammany unveiled its candidate: James W. Gerard, United States ambassador to Germany and former State Supreme Court justice, an independently wealthy, impeccably honest adherent of the New York City organization who had already distinguished himself assisting Americans stranded in Germany by the war. Even worse for Roosevelt, Gerard had cleared his candidacy with the White House.³³ The ambassador said his duties in Berlin would not permit his return to campaign, which compounded FDR’s problem. Not only did he have no visible opponent to attack, but he could scarcely pose as the administration’s candidate when Wilson’s personal representative in Berlin remained at his post with the president’s approval. With one bold stroke Murphy undercut Roosevelt’s campaign and proved why under his leadership Tammany had become so formidable.

FDR was caught unprepared. He had not expected a rival and was not ready to campaign. He crisscrossed the state several times but made little impression on the voters. Roosevelt had no particular message other than his opposition to “bossism” and he had surprisingly little grasp of the issues facing the state. “When compared to such a man as Elihu Root he cuts a sorry figure as a great statesman,” commented one upstate paper.³⁴

When the votes were counted on September 28, FDR was swamped by his absentee opponent. Gerard received 210,765 votes to Roosevelt’s 76,888. The ambassador led FDR 4 to 1 in New York City and 2 to 1 upstate. Franklin’s only consolation was to carry twenty-two of the state’s sixty-one counties, including Dutchess, which he won 461–93. “I wonder if you are disappointed,” his mother wrote. “I hope you are not. You made a brave fight and can now return to the good and necessary work of the Navy Department, which you have missed all these weeks.”³⁵

Franklin assured Sara that he was not disappointed and cheerily told the press it had been a good fight.³⁶ Within weeks he put a Roosevelt twist on the disaster, claiming to have carried a majority of the state’s counties and losing only because of “the solid lineup of New York City,” ignoring the fact that Gerard had trounced him 2 to 1 upstate.³⁷ Daniels, who had watched the campaign from a distance, believed the loss hurt FDR more than he cared to admit. “I refrained from telling him ‘I told you so.’ ”³⁸

As Daniels had predicted, November was a bad month for Democrats. In the general election, the GOP gained 69 seats in the House of Representatives and picked up seven governorships. In New York, Gerard, who remained at his post in Berlin, lost the Senate race to James Wadsworth of Geneseo by 70,000 votes; Glynn lost his bid for reelection as governor to Charles S. Whitman; and the Republicans recaptured both houses of the legislature.

Both Franklin and Charles Murphy learned from the debacle. Murphy recognized that while Tammany could dictate the party’s nominee, it could not guarantee victory in the general election. FDR learned that running statewide was far more complicated than contesting a three-county Senate seat. He also learned he could not defy the New York City organization if he wanted the nomination, nor could he win in November without Tammany’s support. Howe suggested to Franklin that it was time to make peace, and FDR needed little coaxing. Never again did he publicly criticize Tammany Hall.³⁹

By 1915 Roosevelt had become a virtual regular in the New York organization. He endorsed Al Smith, Tammany’s candidate for sheriff of New York County, supported Senate leader Robert Wagner for postmaster of New York City,^* and posed happily with Charles Murphy at Tammany’s annual Fourth of July celebration. There was even talk that FDR might head the ticket in 1916 as Murphy’s candidate for governor.⁴⁰

FDR made peace with Tammany because his political career required it. But he never forgave Gerard for having defeated him. In October 1914, Colonel House, Wilson’s political majordomo, wrote McAdoo to urge Franklin to come out strongly for Gerard before the November election. Roosevelt returned the note with “NUTS F.D.R.” scrawled across the top.⁴¹ Years later, as president, Roosevelt still held a grudge. James Farley, whose job it was to keep tabs on Democratic donors, urged that Gerard (one of the largest contributors and in Farley’s words “a faithful servant of the Democratic Party”) be appointed ambassador to Italy. “Roosevelt was evasive,” said Farley, “and William Phillips was nominated. I proposed Gerard for Paris, but William C. Bullitt was named.” Eventually Farley persuaded FDR to name Gerard as his representative to the coronation of King George VI in 1937, but that was a one-shot ceremonial appearance.⁴² In 1943, Eleanor attempted to make peace between the president and Gerard, but Roosevelt’s answer was still no.⁴³

Back in Washington, FDR turned his attention to the Navy’s preparedness. From an Allied point of view, the war was not going well. The great German offensive in the West had been blunted, but the battle line was forty miles from Paris. The French government had decamped for Bordeaux, virtually all of Belgium was in German hands, and trenches stretched from Ostend on the English Channel to the Swiss border. In the East, General Paul von Hindenburg had turned back the Russian invasion of East Prussia and was moving eastward toward the Vistula. On the Serbian front, the Austrians advanced, retreated, and advanced again, taking Belgrade for the second time. The one glimmer of hope was the war at sea, where the powerful British Navy kept the German High Seas Fleet bottled up in ports along the North Sea, reluctant to risk a direct engagement.

Smarting from his defeat in the New York primary, Roosevelt was eager to resume the struggle to put the Navy on a war footing. In late October, when Daniels left Washington to inspect facilities on the Gulf Coast, FDR took advantage of the secretary’s absence to release a memorandum prepared by the Navy’s brass documenting the fleet’s deficiencies. Thirteen battleships were laid up because the Navy lacked sailors to man them. Eighteen thousand men were needed urgently, but Congress had failed to authorize them. The New York Times printed the memorandum in full, much to the discomfort of the White House.⁴⁴ “The country needs the truth about the Army and Navy instead of a lot of soft mush about everlasting peace,” Franklin wrote Eleanor. “I am perfectly willing to stand by [the memorandum] even if it gets me into trouble.”⁴⁵

Trouble may have come more swiftly than FDR anticipated. Daniels was not happy with his deputy’s performance, and when he returned to Washington he took Franklin to the woodshed. The next day Roosevelt issued a disclaimer. “I have not recommended 18,000 more men,” he told the press, “nor would I consider it within my province to make any recommendation on the matter one way or the other.”⁴⁶

On December 8, 1914, Wilson forcefully restated the administration’s policy. Speaking to Congress on the state of the union,^* the president counseled against turning the United States into an armed camp:

We are at peace with the world. We mean to live our own lives as we will; but we also mean to let live. We are, indeed, a true friend to all the nations of the world, because we threaten none, covet the possessions of none, desire the overthrow of none. Therein lies our greatness.

Wilson rejected any increase in the size of the regular Army, dismissed an expansion of the reserves, and said an accelerated naval construction program would require greater study to determine precisely what type of ships should be built. “We shall not alter our attitude because some amongst us are nervous and excited.”⁴⁷

The following day Daniels assured the House Naval Affairs Committee that ship for ship the U.S. Navy was the equal of any navy in the world. He said the Navy would continue its program of building two battleships a year and requested no increase in the number of enlisted men.⁴⁸

The committee called FDR to testify on December 16. He had plainly learned his lesson. “It would not be my place to discuss purely matters of policy,” Roosevelt told the congressmen at the outset.⁴⁹ Pressed repeatedly during the five hours he was at the witness table, he steadfastly declined to discuss administration policy and did not contradict Daniels or the president at any point. In his testimony, FDR hewed closely to the facts. He had the details of every program at his fingertips and frequently cited Navy department studies to make the point that if war should come, a rapid expansion would be necessary. He was anything but shrill, and at times he was even amusing. “It is a necessity as a matter of economy that all our ships should not be in commission all the time,” he told the committee. “No navy does that except that of one country.”

“What country is that?” demanded several members in unison.

“Haiti,” replied Roosevelt, smiling broadly. “She has two gunboats and they are in commission all the year around.”⁵⁰

FDR’s testimony was a success. The New York Herald praised him for his promptness in answering questions and his candor. “He showed that in the short time he has been Assistant Secretary he has made a most complete study of the problems of national defense.” The Sun said Roosevelt “exhibited a grasp of naval affairs that seemed to astonish members of the committee who had been studying the question for years.”⁵¹

Franklin wrote Sara that the hearings had been “really great fun … as the members who tried to quizz me and put me in a hole did not know much about their subject and I was able not only to parry but to come back at them with thrusts that went home. Also I was able to get in my own views without particular embarrassment to the Secretary.”⁵²

Eleanor wrote afterward to her friend Isabella Ferguson, “War is in all our thoughts and the horror of it grows. We are distinctly ‘not ready,’ and Franklin tried to make his testimony before Congress very plain and I think brought out his facts clearly without saying anything about the administration policy which would of course, be disloyal.”⁵³

FDR was eager to see the naval war firsthand. In mid-December, immediately after his House testimony, he sought to go to London to study the workings of the Admiralty. Winston Churchill was then first lord of the Admiralty, the British equivalent of secretary of the Navy, and he was piqued that the United States had not yet entered the war. He claimed he was far too busy to receive a delegation of visiting Americans. “I have asked the First Lord as to the possibility of affording facilities to Mr. F. D. Roosevelt and a staff of United States Naval Officers,” the permanent undersecretary of the Admiralty informed the American embassy on December 19. “The First Lord desires me to express his regret that the present pressure of work in the Department would render it impossible to offer the assistance necessary for the accomplishment of the object of such a visit.”⁵⁴ That was FDR’s only brush with Churchill until the two met four years later at a dinner given for the British war cabinet by Lloyd George. That too was unpromising.⁵⁵ Twenty-three years later, when the two statesmen met off Newfoundland to frame the Atlantic Charter, Churchill (to FDR’s chagrin) had no recollection of their prior meeting.⁵⁶

In 1915 the war at sea accelerated. On February 4 Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone: Allied vessels would be sunk on sight; neutral merchantmen that entered did so at their own risk.⁵⁷ Britain responded on March 1 with a counterblockade of German ports.⁵⁸ Wilson composed the United States’ reply to the German announcement at his own typewriter and warned Berlin it would be held to “strict accountability” for the loss of American lives or property.⁵⁹ The response to Britain, prepared jointly by Wilson, Secretary Bryan, and Department of State counselor Robert Lansing, was milder in tone and enjoined London to treat American shipping according to the “recognized rules of international law.”⁶⁰

Wilson’s effort to maintain American neutrality suffered a severe shock on May 7, 1915, when the Cunard liner Lusitania, the largest and fastest on the North Atlantic run, was torpedoed in the Irish Sea and sank in eighteen minutes. Of the 2,000 persons on board, 1,198 perished, including 128 Americans. Public opinion was outraged. Newspapers railed against the “wanton murder” of helpless civilians.^*

Wilson sought to calm the nation. “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight,” he declared and dispatched a protest note to Berlin reasserting the right of Americans to sail the high seas and demanding indemnity for the loss of American lives.⁶¹ Except for war hawks like TR, the note struck a responsive chord with the public: “a model of restraint and understatement,” said The New Republic. “It reproduces with remarkable skill the mean of American opinion.”⁶² Berlin’s reply, drafted with an eye to German public opinion, expressed regret, placed the blame on Cunard for carrying passengers and munitions on the same ship, and requested a delay in settling the matter until the facts could be established.⁶³ At the same time, and unknown to Washington, the German government ordered its U-boat commanders not to attack large passenger liners, “not even an enemy one,” until further notice.⁶⁴

The American press greeted the German reply harshly. Wilson believed Berlin was unresponsive and stalling for time. Again he pecked out a rejoinder, this time insisting that Germany renounce its “ruthless” submarine warfare and condemning the sinking of Lusitania as a crime against humanity.⁶⁵ Bryan, who thought the German response more than adequate, welcomed the delay Berlin requested so tempers might cool. He was certain the president’s note carried the risk of war and, rather than sign it, submitted his resignation. “A person would have to be very much biased in favor of the Allies to insist that ammunitions intended for one of the belligerents should be safeguarded in transit by the lives of American citizens.”⁶⁶

Bryan’s resignation threw Washington into an uproar. The secretary was assailed for unspeakable treachery, weakening the president’s hand and suggesting to foreign nations that the United States was divided. FDR joined the chorus. “What d’ y’ think of W. Jay B.?” he asked Eleanor. “It’s all too long to write about, but I can only say I’m disgusted clear through. J. D. will not resign.”^67*

Daniels and the other members of the cabinet rallied to the president’s support, as did FDR. To Wilson he wrote, “I want to tell you simply that you have been in my thoughts during these days and that I realize to the full all that you have had to go through—I need not repeat to you my own earlier loyalty and devotion—that I hope you know. But I feel most strongly that the Nation approves and sustains your course and that it is American in the highest sense.”⁶⁸

Wilson’s longhand reply was heartfelt. “Your letter touched me very much,” said the president. “Such messages make the performance of duty worthwhile, because, after all, the people who are nearest are those whose judgment we most value and most need to be supported by.”⁶⁹

In the months following Bryan’s resignation, FDR toiled diligently to enhance the Navy’s readiness—but always within the policy bounds Wilson and Daniels had established. Charles Murphy had taught Roosevelt the importance of disparate political alliances and Democratic solidarity: “They may be sons-of-bitches, but they’re our sons-of-bitches.” Daniels taught him to be a team player—a lesson TR never learned. Franklin sometimes chomped at the restraint and occasionally overstepped, but he was careful never to challenge administration policy directly.

FDR was recuperating at Campobello from a bout of appendicitis in late July 1915 when Daniels summoned him to Washington to help draft plans for the Navy’s expansion.^† Wilson had become increasingly worried about Germany’s intentions as well as his reelection chances. Public opinion, particularly on the East Coast and in the South, had become increasingly militant and the president decided it prudent to stay in step. On July 21 he instructed Daniels and Secretary of War Lindley Garrison to prepare a program for “an adequate national defense” that might be submitted to Congress when it convened in December.⁷⁰ FDR was elated. He returned to Washington in mid-August to serve as acting secretary while Daniels vacationed, and helped pull plans together. To achieve supremacy at sea, the Navy’s General Board urged immediate construction of 176 ships at a cost of $600 million—the largest peacetime construction program in the nation’s history. The proposal included ten battleships, six battle cruisers, ten light cruisers, fifty destroyers, and one hundred submarines, along with the sailors to man them.⁷¹ Wilson approved the plan and submitted it to Congress on December 7, 1915. Daniels, whose peace-loving credentials were unassailable, undermined the pacifist opposition and shepherded the legislation through Congress, which authorized completion of the entire program within three years.^*

For the next fourteen months the argument within the administration turned on how rapidly the United States should mobilize, not whether mobilization was necessary. FDR devised a plan for a Council of National Defense to oversee war production and took it directly to Wilson, who was unwilling to go that far. “It seems that I can accomplish little just now,” Franklin wrote Eleanor. “The President does not want to ‘rattle the sword,’ but he was interested and will I think really take it up soon.”⁷² Roosevelt continued to press the project, and the council came into being in August 1916, the proposal attached as a rider to the Army appropriations bill. The council was empowered to place defense contracts directly with suppliers and draw plans for the “immediate concentration and utilization of the resources of the nation.”⁷³ FDR played an important role in establishing the council and would draw on that experience in 1940, after the fall of France, when he reactivated the council’s advisory panel as the first significant defense agency of World War II.⁷⁴

Another pet project involved creation of a naval reserve. FDR was impressed with the training camp Cousin Theodore and General Leonard Wood had established at Plattsburgh, New York, to drill young gentlemen in the rudiments of military life, and he wished to establish a naval counterpart.^* Initially, the going was heavy. Daniels feared the reserve would appeal primarily to rich young Ivy Leaguers and well-to-do yachtsmen and would have an upper-class bias. Franklin assured him otherwise. “You may take my word for it,” he told Daniels, the reserve would be constituted “on absolutely democratic lines.”⁷⁵ Daniels was won over and permitted a preliminary cruise in the summer of 1916 but procrastinated establishing the reserve itself. On September 2, with Daniels away, FDR as acting secretary ordered the creation of a Naval Reserve of fifty thousand men along with an auxiliary complement of patrol boats.⁷⁶ “Today I sprang the announcement … and trust J.D. will like it,” Franklin wrote Eleanor. “It is of the utmost importance and I have failed for a year to get him to take any action, though he never objected to it. Now I have gone ahead and pulled the trigger myself. I suppose the bullet may bounce back on me, but it is not revolutionary nor alarmist and is just common sense.”⁷⁷

Nineteen-sixteen was a presidential election year, and as a preparedness Democrat FDR was a distinct asset to the administration: a Roosevelt on display to offset the criticism of Cousin Theodore and the interventionist wing of the GOP. Wilson’s chances looked dim. His narrow victory in 1912 traced to the split in Republican ranks between party regulars under Taft and progressive insurgents backing TR. But in the spring of 1916 the Colonel returned to the fold. The GOP regulars were a sordid bunch, he told friends, but “a trifle better than the corrupt and lunatic wild asses who seem most influential in Democratic councils.”⁷⁸ Wilson’s recent marriage to the Washington socialite Edith Galt, a widow considerably younger than he, also did not help his chances, coming so quickly after his first wife’s death. And the preparedness issue cut both ways. While TR lambasted the administration for being too weak, many in the Middle West—where isolationist sentiment was strong—condemned Wilson for being too bellicose.

When the Republican National Convention convened at Chicago in early June, anticipation of victory was in the air. Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes quickly emerged as a compromise candidate and was nominated virtually without opposition on the second ballot.⁷⁹ Twice elected governor of New York, Hughes had established a solid record of reform but had turned away from partisan politics following his elevation to the bench in 1910. His remarkable intellect and good judgment had made him the leader of the Court’s liberal minority, while his stately bearing and conservative demeanor endeared him to Republican regulars. The only Supreme Court justice in the nation’s history to be tapped by a major party, Hughes looked more presidential than any candidate in recent history.

On June 14, 1916, four days after Hughes was nominated, the nation celebrated Flag Day with preparedness parades throughout the country. Wilson led the Washington procession himself, a flag carried decorously over his shoulder. Civilian employees from each government department marched, and FDR headed the Navy’s contingent. “The Navy Department made an excellent showing,” he wrote Eleanor. “When I passed the President’s reviewing stand I was sent for to join them and spent the next four hours there.”⁸⁰ Press coverage the next day featured photographs of Wilson standing foursquare for preparedness, a Democratic Roosevelt beaming at his side.⁸¹

FDR campaigned for the ticket in New England and the middle Atlantic states. He defended the administration’s preparedness record and shielded Daniels from Republican attack, suggesting that criticism of the mobilization effort was counterproductive and unpatriotic. “How would you expect the public to be convinced that a dangerous fire was in progress if they saw members of the volunteer fire department stop their headlong rush toward the conflagration and indulge in a slanging match as to who was responsible for the rotten hose or lack of water at a fire a week ago?”⁸² The fire hose analogy was one of the homey metaphors FDR sometimes called up to explain the necessity for cooperation in times of crisis. In early 1940 he employed it again to support his proposal for Lend-Lease to Great Britain: “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire.”⁸³

Hughes waged a lackluster campaign—TR called him “Wilson with whiskers”—but he remained the overwhelming favorite.⁸⁴ New York bookmakers quoted the final odds at 5 to 3. On election night, FDR attended a large dinner given by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., for party bigwigs at New York’s Biltmore Hotel. Morgenthau chaired the Democratic finance committee, and the politicians present that evening hoped against hope the bookies had it wrong. Gloom settled in quickly. Early returns from the East showed a landslide for Hughes. Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all of which Wilson had carried in 1912, had swung Republican. North of the Mason-Dixon Line, only New Hampshire remained in doubt. At midnight Franklin left the Biltmore to catch the last train to Washington, certain that Wilson had lost. Newsboys were already hawking Wednesday’s New York Times proclaiming Hughes elected in banner headlines. At press time, the Republicans had carried or were leading in eighteen states with 247 electoral votes to Wilson’s 135. Two hundred sixty-six votes were needed to win, and Hughes was only 19 shy.

Results from the West were slow coming in. But when FDR reached his office the next morning, Hughes’s lead had narrowed. In addition to the Solid South, Wilson appeared to be adding one after another of the states beyond the Mississippi. The Democrats campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war,” had fallen on receptive ears in America’s heartland. By noon the race had become too close to call. Franklin scribbled a quick note to Eleanor at Hyde Park: “Dearest Babs, [This] is the most extraordinary day of my life. Wilson may be elected after all. It looks hopeful at noon.”⁸⁵Uncertainty continued through Thursday. “Returns have been coming in every hour,” FDR wrote Eleanor. “Wilson seems to have 251 votes safe.… It appears we have North Dakota (5 votes) and in California (13) we are well ahead, though there are still 200 districts to hear from. New Hampshire looks better and we may carry it.”⁸⁶ Not until Friday morning was the California vote count complete. Wilson carried the state by 3,420 votes. That was the Democrats’ margin of victory. Wilson had 277 electoral votes to Hughes 254. The popular vote was 9,129,606 for Wilson, 8,538,321 for Hughes.

Instead of making ready to leave Washington, Franklin and Eleanor settled in for another four years. “It is rumored that a certain distinguished cousin of mine is now engaged in revising his most noted historical work, The Winning of the West,” FDR joked to an audience of party faithful immediately after the election. To Eleanor he confided, “I hope to God I don’t grow reactionary with advancing years.”⁸⁷

In France, the military stalemate continued. The Allied lines were stretched thin but remained intact. Imperial Russia was on the verge of collapse and revolution loomed, but the British naval blockade was taking a dreadful toll on the German home front. Eager to drive Britain from the war, the German high command concluded that unrestricted submarine warfare—the one weapon they had not yet employed—would force the island to its knees in six months. That might bring the United States into the war, but the German military was convinced the fighting would be over before America’s power could be felt. On January 9, 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm revoked his earlier edict and ordered unrestricted submarine warfare to commence on February 1. German embassies were instructed to inform their host governments on January 31, which left no time for a diplomatic protest. Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann dispatched an additional note to the German ambassador in Mexico City:

We shall endeavor to keep the United States neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.⁸⁸

On February 3, following the U-boat sinking of the freighter Housatonic, Wilson went before Congress to announce that he had severed diplomatic relations with Germany.⁸⁹ FDR was inspecting the Marine occupation of Santo Domingo at the time and received an urgent message from Daniels to return to Washington immediately.⁹⁰ “No one knew anything for certain except that the German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, had been given his passports and it seemed probable that the United States and Germany were already at war,” Roosevelt recalled. “As we headed north on our way to Hampton Roads no lights were showing, the guns were manned and there was complete radio silence.”⁹¹

When FDR arrived in Washington, he found it was business as usual. Wilson hoped that by breaking relations he would convince Germany to rescind its submarine campaign, and the administration settled into a period of watchful waiting. But the president’s hopes were soon dashed. By the end of February German U-boats had sunk an unprecedented 781,500 tons of Allied shipping. Reeling under the impact, the British Admiralty furnished the U.S. Embassy in London a decoded copy of Zimmermann’s January telegram to his ambassador in Mexico City.^* The embassy passed the message to Washington, and on March 1, 1917, an infuriated Wilson released it to the press. A wave of anti-German sentiment swept the country, and the United States inched closer to war.

With hostilities looming and Daniels out of town, FDR as acting secretary asked Wilson for permission to bring the Atlantic Fleet north from Guantánamo Bay so that it could be fitted out for war. Wilson declined. “I want history to show,” Roosevelt remembers the president saying, “not only that we have tried every diplomatic means to keep out of the war; to show that war has been forced upon us deliberately by Germany; but also that we have come into the court of history with clean hands.”⁹²

Daniels shared Wilson’s view. “If any man in official life ever faced the agony of a Gethsemane,” he wrote later, “I was that man in the first four months of 1917.”⁹³ Not surprisingly, Daniels became the whipping boy for interventionists in the GOP, the Navy League, Wall Street, and the steel industry, as well as the jingoist press, all of which clamored for immediate entry into war. Also, not surprisingly, FDR was praised extravagantly. “Secretary Daniels has been criticized for four years,” wrote Washington’s Evening Star, “but there has been little, if any criticism of his assistant, for the simple reason there has been little to criticize.”⁹⁴ When an old Harvard friend wrote to suggest that he assume Daniels’s position, FDR stood by his chief:

I am having a perfectly good time with many important things to do and my heart is entirely in my work.

Personally I have no use for a man who, serving in a subordinate position, is continually contriving ways to step into his boss’s shoes and I detest nothing so much as that kind of disloyalty.

Franklin said he had “worked very gladly under Mr. Daniels and I wish the public could realize how much he has done for the Navy. I would feel very badly indeed if friends of mine should unwittingly give the impression that I was for a minute thinking of taking his place at the head of the Navy.”⁹⁵

The German U-boat campaign soon resolved whatever tension existed between FDR and Daniels over the speed of mobilization. On March 18 the steamships City of Memphis, Illinois, and Vigilancia were all torpedoed, the Vigilancia without warning. Two days later, Wilson placed the question of war before his cabinet. Daniels was the most reluctant, but in the end, with tears in his eyes, he voted to make the recommendation for war unanimous. “I had hoped and prayed that the hour would not come, but the attitude of the Imperial German Government left us no other course.”⁹⁶

Wilson called Congress back from recess and on the evening of April 2 asked for a declaration of war. The House chamber was packed to capacity that evening as the Senate, the Supreme Court (in a departure from tradition), and the cabinet joined the 435 members of the House.⁹⁷ The galleries were crammed with those fortunate enough to get tickets. FDR sat with Daniels on the House floor, Eleanor in the diplomatic gallery. Setting the tone for the evening, the president was escorted up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol by a mounted battalion from the 1st Cavalry, stationed at Fort Myer. He was greeted by thunderous applause when he entered the chamber. Virtually every member was on his feet cheering, led by the towering figure of the chief justice of the United States, Edward D. White, a seventy-two-year-old Louisianian who had fought for the Confederacy and had long supported the Allied cause.

Wilson spoke clearly, without bombast or excess. Our quarrel was not with the German people, he said, but with their government, which had “thrown to the winds all scruples of humanity.” America’s object was not conquest but peace and justice—a war “without rancor and without selfish object,” a war without revenge. “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

His pastoral Presbyterian voice reverberating through the chamber, Wilson asked Congress to recognize that a state of war “has been thrust upon us.” He requested authorization to draft 500,000 men and bring the Navy to full combat readiness. “There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making. We will not choose the path of submission.” He ended by paraphrasing the words of Martin Luther. America was privileged to spend her blood for the principles she treasured. “God helping her, she can do no other.”⁹⁸

The House chamber erupted in frantic applause. A few members—Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, Senator George Norris of Nebraska, Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, Representative Jeannette Rankin from Montana—sat silent. But Wilson carried the day. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, an inveterate foe of the administration who hated Wilson with a passion, approached the president as he made his way out of the chamber. “Mr. President, you have expressed in the loftiest manner possible the sentiments of the American people.”⁹⁹ FDR told the press that Wilson’s speech would be “an inspiration to every true citizen no matter what his political faith.”¹⁰⁰ Eleanor said she “listened breathlessly and returned home still half dazed by the sense of political change.”¹⁰¹

Daniels pronounced the most eloquent benediction: “If I should live a thousand years, there would abide with me the reverberation of the fateful ominous sound of the hoofs of the cavalry horses as they escorted Mr. and Mrs. Wilson back to the White House.”¹⁰²

^* In 1916, Wilson sealed his bargain with the New York regular organization when he tapped Martin H. Glynn to give the keynote address at the Democratic convention in Saint Louis, and it was Glynn, in that speech, who coined the slogan “He kept us out of war.” In 1921, as a private citizen, Glynn introduced Prime Minister David Lloyd George to the Irish leader Eamon De Valera and brokered the deal that established the Irish Free State. The New York Times, October 7, 1923.

^* Instability in the Balkans traced to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the defeat of Turkey by Russia in 1878. At the ensuing Congress of Berlin, Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro became independent states and Austria was given a mandate to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1908 Austria unilaterally repudiated its occupation mandate and annexed the two provinces directly into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, precipitating the Annexation Crisis of 1908. Austria prevailed, but the reaction of the south Slavic people to the annexation was unforgiving.

Two minor Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 redistributed the remaining territory of Turkey in Europe among Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Serbia. The ensuing treaties of London (May 30, 1913), Bucharest (August 10, 1913), and Constantinople (September 29, 1913) appeared to resolve all outstanding issues except the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria, which continued to rile Serbian irredentist sentiment. When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, both Serbia and Austria welcomed the showdown, which both believed would be decisive. A balanced account is provided by Fritz Fischer in Germany’s Aims in the First World War 51–57 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967). Also see Gordon A. Craig, Germany: 1866–1945 302–338 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), and the classic study by Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1930).

^† Because of the enormous military advantage acquired by the nation that mobilized first, the common law of European diplomacy held the act of mobilization tantamount to a declaration of war.

^* Wagner, who had his heart set on becoming a judge of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, was taken by surprise and declined the powerful patronage position of postmaster. Three years later he got his wish and was elevated to the bench, where he served until elected to the U.S. Senate in 1926. Wagner was reelected to the Senate in 1932, 1938, and 1944 and served until he resigned because of ill health in 1946.

^* Wilson reinstituted the practice of Presidents Washington and John Adams of delivering the State of the Union message in person to a joint session of Congress—a practice in desuetude since Thomas Jefferson’s time.

^* The sinking of the Lusitania has intrigued historians for almost a century. The ship flew the British flag and, in addition to the passenger complement, carried 4,200 cases of cartridges and 1,250 cases of shrapnel shells. Before it sailed from New York, the German Embassy in Washington placed notices in all major newspapers warning Americans of the danger involved in traveling on a British vessel in a war zone.

The German submarine U-20, which intercepted the ship, had completed its patrol in the Irish Sea and was returning to port with only three torpedoes remaining. Captain William T. Turner of Lusitania had been warned of the presence of a submarine in the area and instructed to sail a zigzag course. Instead, he steered straight ahead and inexplicably reduced speed to eighteen knots, making the ship an easy target. U-20 fired only one torpedo and hit Lusitania on the starboard bow, just behind the bridge. The hit was followed by an enormous explosion and a massive smoke cloud. Diana Preston, Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy 91–241 (New York: Walker & Co., 2002); Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, The Lusitania Disaster 128–225 (New York: The Free Press, 1975); A. A. and Mary Hoehling, The Last Voyage of the Lusitania 102 ff (New York: Holt, 1955).

^* Twenty years later, seasoned by the responsibilities of the presidency, the revelations of the Nye Committee about the prewar machinations of America’s munitions makers, and his own second thoughts, FDR recanted his harsh judgment of Bryan. To Daniels he wrote, “Would that W.J.B. had stayed on as Secretary of State—the Country would have been better off.” FDR to JD, October 3, 1934, Daniels Papers, Library of Congress.

^† Roosevelt suffered a sudden appendicitis attack in Washington the morning of July 1 and was operated on that afternoon. Daniels ordered the secretary’s yacht, Dolphin, to take him to Campobello to recover and checked regularly on his progress. TR wired his concern, as did the Japanese naval attaché, Commander Kichisaburo Nomura. At the time of Pearl Harbor, Nomura was Japanese ambassador to the United States.

^* Daniels saw preparedness as a means of preventing war; FDR looked on it as a prerequisite. Many years later Daniels recalled that Franklin on any number of occasions came into his office and said, “We’ve got to get into this war.” Each time Daniels replied, “I hope not.” Daniels, interview with Frank Freidel, May 29, 1947, quoted in Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship267 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952).

^* Eleanor’s brother Hall and three of TR’s sons were among those who attended the Plattsburgh camp in 1915. Richard Harding Davis, the noted journalist who had immortalized TR’s charge up San Juan Hill for the New York Herald, was just back from covering the war in Europe and also enrolled. Davis recalled that his squad included “two fox-hunting squires from Maryland, a master of fox hounds, a gentleman jockey from Boston, and two steeple chase riders who divided between them all of the cups the country offers.” Quoted in Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament 309 (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).

^* British Naval Intelligence intercepted Zimmermann’s message and quickly decoded it but did not pass it on to the American embassy in London until February 23. Ambassador Walter Hines Page immediately flashed it to the State Department, which was able to verify its authenticity by checking it against American cable intercepts. The United States had the coded German message on file but had not bothered to decipher it. Once its authenticity was established, Secretary of State Lansing, Bryan’s successor, passed the telegram to Wilson.