The Patriarch (51 page)

Kennedy was caught unawares by what he perceived as the turn against him. He had been a friend of the Jews in London, had done what he could to find safe havens for them somewhere in the British Empire, had, in fact, been so outspoken on the issue that the State Department had warned him to cease and desist. And now, suddenly, he was accounted as the enemy, though the decision not to pressure the British to open immigration to Palestine had been made by Roosevelt and Hull, not by him. His problem was that, instead of dissimulating, as Roosevelt had, he had made it clear that, as far as the American government was concerned, Palestine was a British issue. Unlike Roosevelt, he had not expressed his sympathy with or commitment to the Zionist project of resettling German Jews in Palestine. On the contrary, he considered the issue closed and settled. His remarks on the hopelessness of the Zionist cause, had, in fact, so distressed Harold Laski that he got in touch with Louis Brandeis, who directed him to “convey some of the information about Kennedy to the ‘skipper’ [Roosevelt].”
⁴²

Kennedy continued to speak his mind, seemingly unaware of the consequences. In conversation with Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, he had remarked that while American Jews would be outraged at the new plan for Palestine, their protest would never be loud enough to get Roosevelt to intercede. And this was true. When word of what he had said was cabled to the Zionist leaders in the United States, as he had to have known it would, all hell broke lose. Ben Cohen, fearing that Kennedy was being set up as a scapegoat, cabled to warn him. Kennedy replied that he was shocked that “American Zionists are repeating these unfair stories. It is rather a peculiar slant for the Zionists to take at this late day after my work for their cause. However I am getting used to this type of experience.”
⁴³

Solomon Goldman, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, cabled his apology from Washington the next day: “Feel it duty say American Zionists have always regarded you devoted friend. Recall with appreciation warm reception accorded me during visit London. Rumors between continents unavoidable but be assured we feel indebted for earnestness with which you have furthered interests American Jews and cause of people whose fate must be of deepest concern to you.”
⁴⁴

Thanking Goldman for his note, Kennedy could still not resist complaining about his unjust treatment. “I can’t tell you how pleased I was to receive your cable. I was really frightfully upset by the one I got from Ben, because, while realizing he sent it in the most friendly spirit, it seemed to me that it was another of those unfortunate things that happened to me no matter how much work I did on the Jewish problem. . . . Therefore your wire was a very pleasant relief. If you see Ben tell him I quite understand the reason for his sending it and that I am appreciative of his interest, but that I was very much upset to think that was the result of all my efforts.”
⁴⁵

The British White Paper on Palestine was published on May 17 and was even worse than the pessimists among the Zionist leadership had anticipated. The British announced that they intended to establish an independent Palestine within ten years with a majority of Arabs. To safeguard against further violence and to preserve the present Arab majority, they were restricting Jewish immigration for the next five years to ten thousand a year, plus, “as a contribution towards the solution of the Jewish refugee problem,” an additional twenty-five thousand, “special consideration being given to refugee children and dependents.”
⁴⁶

WASHINGTON SILENT ON THE WHITE PAPER
, read the
New York Times
front-page story on May 18. Roosevelt had nothing to say, and neither did the State Department, which claimed it had not received the full White Paper text. Over the next few days, when that excuse was no longer possible, Hull declined to comment on the White Paper, claiming that decisions on Palestine were Britain’s to make. Roosevelt held his silence.

From Paris, Chaim Weizmann wrote Solomon Goldman on May 30 to find out what precisely was going on in Washington. He had learned from the head of the League of Nations Mandates Commission that the Americans, instead of protesting the British action on Palestine, were “‘behaving very nicely to them.’ The British have been saying that all along and were somewhat amused at our reliance on America. . . . Again I feel a great deal will turn on the attitude of the President. But what the real attitude of your Government is—that is a point which needs elucidation. I shall try to see Bullitt here and perhaps he would explain something; I have not much faith in Kennedy.”
⁴⁷

Goldman responded to Weizmann that he and his Zionist colleagues in the United States had “every reason to believe that the President has the finest understanding of, and the deepest sympathy with, our movement.” Roosevelt had, in fact, been in conversations with Louis Brandeis on a new plan for Palestine. “He stated in so many words . . . that two to three hundred thousand Arabs can and must be moved from Palestine to Iraq. He estimated that we should need a sum of $300,000,000 to achieve such a wholesale transfer of Arabs. He thought that the Jews might be in a position to raise $100,000,000, that the British and French might extend a loan of $100,000,000, and that the United States an equal sum. He seemed to indicate that as soon as he was somewhat relieved from the pressure of other affairs, he might try to tackle the job. . . . I understand that on two occasions he used the trans-Atlantic telephone and spoke directly to Chamberlain.”

Though Goldman reported enthusiastically on this “Iraq plan,” he and Brandeis had to have recognized how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to implement. Given the economic and political realities of 1939, it was the height of folly to believe that the British, the French, or the Americans would extend $100 million loans with no possible hope of repayment to resettle Arabs in Iraq. And even should the money be raised, how was Roosevelt or anyone else going to determine which Arabs had “entered Palestine since 1917” and should be resettled? And what were the chances that the British or the local Arab leaders would allow such a transfer to proceed?

Still, the mere mention of an unworkable plan with no timetable for execution and only the vaguest commitment from the president that he “might tackle the job” when he was “relieved from the pressure of other affairs” was, for Goldman, “evidence of his interest in Zionism.” Even Hull, who had done everything he could to absent himself and his government from intervening on Palestine, was still regarded by Goldman as “unquestionably a friend of ours.” Goldman admitted that there were working for Hull in the State Department a number of “secretaries and under-secretaries and under-under-secretaries [who] have not escaped the virus anti-Semiticus.” He did not place the American ambassador in this category, though he reported to Weizmann that “Kennedy has given us much concern.”
⁴⁸

—

O
n May 8, the London newspapers reported that Kennedy “had fallen out of favor with President Roosevelt” and was going to be replaced by Myron Taylor, former president of U.S. Steel and currently the American representative to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. On July 12, Drew Pearson and Robert Allen stated that Kennedy’s replacement would be either Joe Davies, the current ambassador to Belgium, or Harry Woodring, the secretary of war.
⁴⁹

British journalist Claud Cockburn, in his antiappeasement newsletter,
The Week,
claimed, on the contrary, that though Kennedy should have been fired for being a Cliveden set sycophant, Roosevelt had decided for mysterious reasons to keep him on. Roosevelt, Cockburn wrote, had given his ambassador “a very severe dressing down” in December. Since then, Kennedy’s “activities [had] become more remarkable than ever. He has for instance gone to the length of informing members of the British Government that they ‘need not worry’ about anything that Mr. Roosevelt may say, for the reason that (1) ‘It will be my friends that are in the White House in 1940.’ (2) ‘Roosevelt is run by the Jews and all the anti-fascist sentiment in the United States is really created by the Jews, who control the press.’”
⁵⁰

Harold Ickes gave Cockburn’s article to the president. The
New Republic,
in an editorial titled “Whose Ambassador Is Mr. Kennedy?,” repeated his accusations verbatim, then concluded that although “we do not know whether these charges are true,” if they were “even 10 percent true, Mr. Kennedy should come home.”
⁵¹

There was nothing Kennedy could do to rebut the rumors. Issuing formal denials would only have kept them current. When Boake Carter asked if he knew the basis for the reports that he was going to be recalled, he replied that he did not. Still, he could not deny that resignation had not crossed his mind. “Confidentially, I had hoped to get back after the end of July and possibly spend some part of a vacation at Cape Cod. Look over the situation and find out whether, from the point of view of the United States, I could safely discuss with the President my resignation. This, of course, pre-supposes a quiet condition here and a belief that Hitler would consider attending a round table conference. If this is not possible, of course, I see no prospect of returning to private life, because I would never forgive myself if I got out and something happened that would seemingly require my presence in London. While the situation does not seem acute, there is enough unrest and uncertainty at the moment to indicate that my job is still here.”
⁵²

The Germans were poised to move on Danzig; the Japanese had blockaded Tientsin, a British protectorate in China. The Chamberlain government was checkmated on two continents. As Kennedy told Walter Lippmann, who met with him during his trip to London in June, Hitler had “every reason to go to war and is able to win. The British fleet is valueless. The German submarines can cut off shipping in the Atlantic. Franco is surrounded . . . Poland has no munitions. Russia is useless. Rumania can’t fight. And the Japanese will attack in the East. . . . All Englishmen . . . in their hearts
know
this to be true, but a small group of brilliant people has created a public feeling which makes it impossible for the government to take a sensible course.”
⁵³

—

I
n late July, before leaving London for his summer holiday, the ambassador called on Chamberlain and Halifax. The prime minister, Kennedy cabled Hull, was “fairly optimistic about the outlook for the next 30 days.” Halifax was not. “He said he had no definite information, but in the next breath asked me how long it would take me to get back. I told him about 5 hours and he said he would keep my office informed and would call on me to come back if he saw the situation tightening.”
⁵⁴

Since he had arrived in London, Kennedy’s fears had multiplied one on another. “I am leaving tomorrow for a holiday,” he wrote Roosevelt on July 20, “and before I go, I would like to write you about what I regard as the makings of the worst economic conditions the world has ever seen. As you know, I have been constantly bearish for the last two or three years and I see nothing tonight that makes me change my opinion, but, on the contrary, I feel more pessimistic than ever.” Even should war be averted, the economic crisis in Europe would continue to worsen, prolonging the depression in America. Agricultural prices were falling, the precursor to general depression, the European nations remained deeply in debt, their economies steadily weakening, “the Japanese financial picture is a frightfully bad one . . . the Chinese financial picture is only kept alive with the help of the United States and Great Britain.” All that Kennedy could recommend was that the United States do what it could to conserve its “financial position at least for one more year.” There should be no new social expenditures and no legislation that would frighten the business community. He ended his letter by apologizing for “writing about something that is none of my business,” implying, of course, that it should be. By harping on Washington’s failure to push itself and the world out of depression, he was not very subtly auditioning to replace Morgenthau at the Treasury Department or, as an alternative, asking to be given more responsibilities in Europe.
⁵⁵

—

K
ennedy’s original plan had been to vacation in the United States that summer. But with the situation in Europe so unsettled, he had decided to return to the South of France. Arthur Krock, always on the alert to do his friend and patron a favor, dedicated his July 18, 1939, column to the topic “Why Ambassador Kennedy Is Not Coming Home.” Kennedy, Krock declared, wanted “to come home.” He was overworked, weary of being the object of a “propaganda campaign directed against him by the ‘young New Dealers,’” concerned that his five youngest children had been “too long separated from the way of life in their native country,” and burdened by the tremendous “expenses of his post” and the obligation “to disconnect himself from important sources of income.” He had, in fact, according to Krock, decided that at the conclusion of the king and queen’s triumphant visit to America, “which he had suggested and in great part planned,” he would resign his post. He had changed his mind only because Roosevelt, increasingly reliant on his reports from London, had urged him to stay in place. Kennedy had reluctantly “agreed to await the events of the Summer and early Fall before returning to his private affairs in the United States which, he feels, acutely call for personal attention.”
⁵⁶

Kennedy was pleased with Krock’s column, and pleased even more when the president, who disliked and intensely distrusted Krock, sent him a personal note. “I suppose you know of the latest ‘Krock’ in the
Times
about you, and I think you begin to agree with me that that particular gentleman, with his distorted ideas of how to be helpful, has done you more harm in the past few years than all of your enemies put together.” While Krock had insisted in his column that the rumors about “White House disfavor” and Kennedy “being dragged toward the doghouse” were false, by raising them again, he had, Roosevelt declared, done the ambassador a disservice. Roosevelt claimed he had “tried to correct the impression by telling several people the other day that I have complete confidence in you, that you have never mentioned leaving London, that you are doing a good job there, and that in these critical days I count on your carrying on.” He concluded by asking Kennedy to “drop me a line to tell me your inside thoughts about the present situation.” This, of course, was precisely what Kennedy wanted to hear.
⁵⁷