Roosevelt's Life & Times

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There followed those acts "short of war": cash & carry, Lend-Lease, the 50 destroyers and one million rifles to help Britain save herself after Dunkirk; the peacetime draft; the declaration of "emergency," the branding of Germany as an "international outlaw" in June 1941.

Whether Franklin Roosevelt consciously led the U.S. to war, or hoped to keep the U.S. out by a daring support of its periled friends, will be historians' debating ground for years to come. The strength of the opposition and the political daring of what he did, could be measured by the one-vote margin in the House, when the draft came up for extension four months before Pearl Harbor.

Crisis, Crisis. The imminence of war in 1940, and the crisis of it in 1944, unquestionably helped give Franklin Roosevelt Terms III and IV. Precedent, a longing for new faces, the obvious aging of the President and his Administration were all against it. But World War II was.also a time for greatness; most of the U.S. believed that the President measured up to the time.

A disjointed economy was kept from runaway inflation. Franklin Roosevelt set his production sights high, but they were met. There was bumbling, confusion, a spate of name-calling. But the war was fought and fought well. And with it, mainly by the good offices of its President, the U.S. took its rightful place of responsibility for the peace.

History had yet to judge whether his labors, and those of Stalin and Churchill, Would bring a just and durable peace. But Franklin Roosevelt brought nis Acme nation triumphantly through a great war and started it on the road toward peace.