From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com   
      
   On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 8:06:13 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:   
   > On Saturday, January 8, 2022 at 7:55:11 AM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:    
   > > On Thursday, January 6, 2022 at 2:12:26 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:    
   > > > [...]    
   > > >    
   > > > Franklin Roosevelt’s Sunday morning began as most of his Sundays   
   began: with a cigarette and the Sunday papers in bed. He wasn’t a regular   
   churchgoer, confining his attendance mainly to special occasions: weddings,   
   funerals, his three    
   inaugurations. In his youth and young adulthood he had often spent Sundays on   
   the golf course, but his golfing days were long over, to his lasting regret.   
   This Sunday morning–the first Sunday of December 1941–he read about   
   himself in the papers.    
   The New York Times gave him the top head, explaining how he had sent a   
   personal appeal for peace to the Japanese emperor. Neither the Times nor the   
   Washington Post, which provided similar coverage, included the substance of   
   his appeal, as he had directed    
   the State Department to release only the fact of his having approached the   
   emperor. This way he got credit for his efforts on behalf of peace without   
   having to acknowledge how hopeless those efforts were. The papers put the   
   burden of warmongering on    
   Japan; the government in Tokyo declared that its “patience” with the   
   Western powers was at an end. Heavy movements of Japanese troops in occupied   
   Indochina–movements about which Roosevelt had quietly released corroborating   
   information–suggested    
   an imminent thrust against Thailand or Malaya.    
   > > >    
   > > > Sharing the headlines with the prospect of war in the Pacific was the   
   reality of war in the Atlantic and Europe. The German offensive against the   
   Soviet Union, begun the previous June, seemed to have stalled just short of   
   Moscow. Temperatures of    
   twenty below zero were punishing the German attackers, searing their flesh and   
   freezing their crankcases. The Germans were forced to find shelter from the   
   cold; the front apparently had locked into place for the winter. On the   
   Atlantic, the British had    
   just sunk a German commerce raider, or so they claimed. The report from the   
   war zone was sketchy and unconfirmed. The admiralty in London volunteered that   
   its cruiser Dorsetshire had declined to look for survivors, as it feared   
   German submarines in the    
   area.    
   > > >    
   > > > Roosevelt supposed he’d get the details from Winston Churchill. The   
   president and the prime minister shared a love of the sea, and Churchill,   
   since assuming his current office eighteen months ago, had made a point of   
   apprising Roosevelt of    
   aspects of the naval war kept secret from others outside the British   
   government. Churchill and Roosevelt wrote each other several times a week;   
   they spoke by telephone less often but still regularly.    
   > > >    
   > > > An inside account of the war was the least the prime minister could   
   provide, as Roosevelt was furnishing Churchill and the British the arms and   
   equipment that kept their struggle against Germany alive. Until now Roosevelt   
   had left the actual fi   
   ghting to the British, but he made certain they got what they needed to remain   
   in the battle.    
   > > >    
   > > > The situation might change at any moment, though, the Sunday papers   
   implied. The Navy Department–which was to say, Roosevelt–had just ordered   
   the seizure of Finnish vessels in American ports, on the ground that Finland   
   had become a de facto    
   member of the Axis alliance. Navy secretary Frank Knox, reporting to Congress   
   on the war readiness of the American fleet, assured the legislators that it   
   was “second to none.” Yet it still wasn’t strong enough, Knox said.   
   “The international    
   situation is such that we must arm as rapidly as possible to meet our naval   
   defense requirements simultaneously in both oceans against any possible   
   combination of powers concerting against us.”    
   > > >    
   > > > Roosevelt read these remarks with satisfaction. The president had long   
   prided himself on clever appointments, but no appointment had tickled him more   
   than his tapping of Knox, a Republican from the stronghold of American   
   isolationism, Chicago. By    
   reaching out to the Republicans–not once but twice: at the same time that he   
   chose Knox, Roosevelt named Republican Henry Stimson secretary of war–the   
   president signaled a desire for a bipar­tisan foreign policy. By picking a   
   Chicagoan, Roosevelt    
   poked a finger in the eye of the arch- isolationist Chicago Tribune, a poke   
   that hurt the more as Knox was the publisher of the rival Chicago Daily News.    
   > > >    
   > > > Roosevelt might have chuckled to himself again, reflecting on how he   
   had cut the ground from under the isolationists, one square foot at a time;   
   but the recent developments were no laughing matter. Four years had passed   
   since his “quarantine”    
   speech in Chicago, which had warned against German and Japanese aggression.   
   The strength of the isolationists had prevented him from following up at that   
   time, or for many months thereafter. But by reiterating his message again and   
   again–and with the    
   help of Hitler and the Japanese, who repeatedly proved him right–he   
   gradually brought the American people around to his way of thinking. He   
   persuaded Congress to amend America’s neutrality laws and to let the   
   democracies purchase American weapons for    
   use against the fascists. He sent American destroyers to Britain to keep the   
   sea lanes open. His greatest coup was Lend- Lease, the program that made   
   Amer­ica the armory of the anti- fascist alliance. He had done everything but   
   ask Congress to declare    
   war. The Sunday papers thought this final step might come soon. He knew more   
   than the papers did, and he thought so, too.    
   > > >    
   > > >    
   > > > ***    
   > > >    
   > > >    
      
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