THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT TOYED WITH the idea of a third term from the moment of his second inauguration. It was impossible that a man who took so much satisfaction from breaking so many comparatively unimportant precedents should fail to feel the urge to break this one.

WITH THE INVASION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND THE EUROPEAN WAR a certainty, Roosevelt was now ready to go to work to get himself elected.

The whole conservative wing of the Democratic party was angry, from Vice-President Garner down. It was angry about the radical labor power inside the party, about the attacks on business and about the Court fight and the purge. Nevertheless, the President had in his hands control of the party machinery.

ON JULY 17, 1940, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT WAS NOMINATED FOR the presidency for the third time. The prologue to this event was supplied by Europe.

WHAT OF THE MAN WHO HAD JUST BEEN MADE VICE-PRESIDENT OF the United States, second in line for the presidency held by a man whose health was a matter of question even to himself? About the only thing Henry had that qualified him for Vice-President and President was his health.

BOOK THREE

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...

IT IS NOW NECESSARY TO PAUSE FOR A MOMENT TO HAVE A LOOK AT the White House and its tenants. The result of this inspection cannot possibly be very agreeable to Americans. As men rise the steep ascent of public life the people instinctively expect from them a progressively more exacting code of public and private conduct. At the top, the White House is held to the highest standard of all. It must be so. The standards of conduct of the President and his family will inevitably shape the conduct of all the orders and levels of public office below them.

1.

WHAT SORT OF MAN WAS THIS WHO PERMITTED HIS FAMILY TO make the White House into a headquarters for their commercial operations? The picture as it was does not resemble even remotely the vision of the statesman who stood upon a moral plateau far above the time-serving lesser men in Congress.

I.

AS THE YEAR 1941 DAWNED, THE EXPERIMENTS OF ROOSEVELT HAD been under observation for eight years. There can be no dispute as to the commission he held from the people. He was not elected to substitute a new system of government and economy, to set up a socialist or fascist or communist system or any form of state-planned capitalism. His promise was to restore conditions under which the American system of free representative government and the free system of private enterprise could function at its highest efficiency.

THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THIS STORY OF AMERICA’S MARCH INTO WAR came on the morning of August 15, 1941. The headlines in the morning newspapers told that Roosevelt and Churchill had met at sea in Placentia Bay off the coast of Newfoundland—the President on the Augusta, the Prime Minister on the Prince of Wales, surrounded on deck by a numerous entourage of the highest ranking military and naval dignitaries of both countries and in the sea by an imposing fleet and with a sky full of protecting war planes.