HISTORICAL NOTES: Nuff Said

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Ickes saw himself as a modest man. He was genuinely hurt when he was portrayed, at a Gridiron Club dinner, as a strutting, vain Donald Duck. Said he: "Of course this was really offensive . . . No man is a judge of himself, but I have completely fooled myself if I give the impression to anyone that I am conceited and possess a feeling of superiority over other men." Yet Ickes could describe his part in a political radio debate in these words: "He [Ickes' opponent] expected the head-down, arm-flailing rush, trying to beat him into a corner or to knock him out. Instead, I danced around him, fighting with my head instead of with my fists, with the result that I never came near enough so that he could deliver a blow to the body, although I kept tapping him on both head and body."

Directing the Cyclone. Of the fact that Ickes was useful to F.D.R. and the New Deal, there is no doubt. Items:

¶ When Presidential Secretary Steve Early kneed a New York Negro policeman in the groin a week before the 1940 elections, Ickes was set to work re-wooing the Negro vote. Harry Hopkins, said Ickes, called and "wanted me to get hold of Marian Anderson to have her attend a meeting and sing or issue a statement." Marian sang.

¶ When Vice President John Nance Garner ("that political billy goat from Texas") sought the Democratic nomination for President in 1940, it was Ickes, at F.D.R.'s suggestion, who tried—without success—to arrange for newspaper cartoonists to draw Garner "throwing a bottle of 'red eye' into the ring."

¶ When Wendell Willkie was given the 1940 Republican nomination, it was Ickes who called upon the Department of Justice for confirmation of the report that "Willkie was originally spelled in some unmistakable German way."

¶Ickes worked tirelessly, stirring up enthusiasm for a third-term nomination for F.D.R. This effort, however, came to an unhappy end—for Ickes. When he arrived in Chicago for the convention, he found Harry Hopkins set up in the Blackstone Hotel, acting as convention manager for the absent President. Wrote Ickes of Hopkins: "Here he was sitting at the throttle and directing the movement that I had started and had kept hammering away at until it swept through the country like a cyclone."

The Basilisk Eye. Among the other odds and ends of Ickes' diary is the story of his efforts to encourage F.D.R. to intercede directly with the Vatican for the appointment of Bishop Bernard J. Sheil as Archbishop of Chicago. Said Ickes: "I do not think that the Vatican would have dared to turn him down if he had made strong representations.'' Ickes also relates rather gleefully how the President "developed the groundwork for a campaign against Willkie. He is going to try to tie Willkie in with the idea of the 'corporate state,' which was Mussolini's original idea." Concluded Ickes with relish: "It seems to me inevitable that in this campaign we will fight out the issue of democracy versus fascism."