On January 20, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on the front steps of the Capitol in keeping with tradition since the early days of the Republic, was sworn in as President of the United States for the third time in defiance of a far more important tradition. The President addressed himself to those who doubt democracy. He pointed out how under his leadership democracy had survived a crisis at home here in America. And then he said: "No! Democracy is not dying ... We sense it still spreading on every continent." At that very moment it was dying on every continent and had been profoundly weakened in America. The address was couched on a high spiritual note intended to be a document for the ages. Who wrote it is not known. Certainly Roosevelt did not. It bears none of the stigmata of Roosevelt's own style save perhaps in the last four brief sentences, and was worlds below the quality of his first inaugural. Actually it said nothing and did not mention the war. Already men were being called into the military services by conscription. Eighteen billion dollars for national defense had been appropriated. The Times noted that the federal debt apparently had been forgotten. Men were moving in great numbers into the factories all over the land. There were no victory balls, no marching groups, but the index of business activity was marching up week after week until for the first time it would top the great peak of the highest prosperity in 1929. Millions of men were already in jobs or moving into jobs who had not worked in years. Two hundred and twentyfive flying fortresses and pursuit planes staged a great show over the White House. The soldiers who marched in the inaugural parade were real soldiers now. General Marshall, as chief of staff, rode at the head of the parade. Over in England, Harry Hopkins was being presented to crowds of workers who yelled: "Harry, Harry, Harry!"
All the important issues that had been agitating the people's minds were now buried under the rush of the war. The day before the inauguration, Roosevelt received Wendell Willkie, gave him a letter to Churchill and off he went to England. Roosevelt wished him godspeed and this began the movement to take Willkie into Roosevelt's camp, as Stimson and Knox and other Republicans had been taken.
At the moment, on the war front Hitler's forces were poised for what they hoped would be the final knockout blow, while in America Congress was debating the LendLease bill. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs was preparing to hold hearings. The headlines in the newspapers were of the most alarming character. Four days after the inauguration the New York Times carried a headline in big black type: "Hull Urges Full Aid to Britain Lest We Meet Fate of Norway." Next day it was: "Stimson Sees Danger Of Invasion If British Navy Be Beaten Or Taken." The following day: "Churchill Calls For U.S. Weapons, Not Big U.S. Army In '41"; "Stimson Sees Crisis In 90 Days." On Sunday, the 19th, the headlines read: "Knudson Urges Full Aid To Britain"; "Willkie Sees Party Ruin In Isolation." And the next day Willkie left as a kind of unofficial envoy of Franklin Roosevelt to Churchill. In a little over ten months the blow would come at Pearl Harbor and the United States would be in the war. What followed in the next three years would be the story of America at war. All other issues the issues of taxation, of debt, of labor, of the struggle between the federal and the state powers, the powers of Congress and the President, the bureaucracy all became merely subsidiary questions to the question of the war.
The great theatrical success the New Deal was to be taken from the boards. The President himself would say he was slaying his popular hero. "It will be no longer Dr. New Deal," he said. "It will be Dr. WintheWar."1 It was to be an even more grandiose production the great drama of the salvation of the world.