President Roosevelt speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, Armistice Day 1935

Today is Veterans Day and I am curious to see if anyone mentions it to me over the course of the day. Eighty years ago today Franklin Roosevelt spoke at Arlington National Cemetery. It was a tense time in international relations. Hitler was consolidating his power in Europe and Mussolini’s Army was making its way through Ethiopia. The president’s speech was restrained but hopeful nonetheless that peace could still flourish. It was an interesting moment in many ways. For one thing Armistice Day was not yet a national holiday. FDR’s New York had established November 11 as a legal holiday only the year before, joining nearly thirty other states that had done so previously. Since the Armistice itself presidents had issued proclamations asking the nation to observe the anniversary.

The American Legion had invited Roosevelt to speak a few weeks previously. FDR’s estranged cousin Ted had been one of the founders of the Legion. The Legion was also a supporter of the Bonus Army, who made it clear to President Roosevelt that they were not giving in on their demands for payment of the long-ago-promised stipend. Roosevelt tied to emphasize the positive in his Armistice Day speech, announcing a trade agreement between the United States and Canada that had just been negotiated, as if to show how international cooperation could still work if applied. He emphasized America’s need for preparedness as well, which was a not-so-subtle dig at Wilson’s response to the outbreak of fighting twenty years earlier. He would do the best he could to avoid the same fate during his own administration, through Lend-Lease and other measures, but with mixed results.

One of the most poignant things in the photograph above are the support rails that were presumably built especially for the president’s use. Because of the polio he could only stand for brief periods of time. Usually in photos where Roosevelt is standing there are men standing on either side of him to provide support. Obviously that was not possible for such a solemn occasion as this, and so the rails were there just in case. After this event Roosevelt traveled to Hyde Park for a period and then on to Warm Springs, Georgia where he would spend Thanksgiving.

(image/Library of Congress, permalink: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/hec2013015509/)

Henry L. Roosevelt was assistant navy secretary from March 1933 until his death in February 1936. After Roosevelt’s death his aid John W. Thomason arranged his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.

I have been going a little deeper down the John W. Thomason rabbit hole in recent weeks. This morning I finished The World of Col. John W. Thomason USMC by Martha Anne Turner and found it in depth and informative. The book is largely a sympathetic account of Thomason’s life. One interesting sub-theme is the book’s underlying whiff of Lost Causism. The biography was published in 1984 and contains some passages one would not see today. These things are fascinating in and of themselves beyond the subject matter. That’s not what brings me to Thomason here however.

One thing I did not know until reading the book is that he was a long-serving aid to Assistant Navy Secretary Henry L. Roosevelt. Henry L. was the fourth Roosevelt to hold that office, after Theodore, Franklin, and Ted. There was even a fifth if one counts Corinne’s son, Theodore Douglas Robinson. Henry L. was appointed by his cousin FDR in March 1933. It was an interesting moment in history. Military men like Henry L. Roosevelt, John Thomason and others had come up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, fought in the Great War and then toiled away in anonymity in the interwar years. Like seemingly all the Roosevelts Henry had an enormous capacity for work. Thankfully in Thomason he had an adjutant who was up for the task.

There is an interesting scene in the book where the two men are meeting with President Roosevelt. Going by his letters home, one gathers that Thomason did not think much of FDR as president. The Democratic Party was a big tent in the 1930s, with urban Northeasterners like Franklin Roosevelt aligned with conservative Dixicrats such as his own vice president, Cactus Jack Garner. Thomason fit into the later category, though as a military man he kept his opinions to himself. It is interesting to note, however, the high regard Thomason had for Franklin Delano Roosevelt as assistant navy secretary during the Wilson Administration. It is an aspect of FDR’s career that we often give short shrift. He was an integral part of the Preparedness Movement and did much to keep the Navy afloat, especially in Wilson’s first term.

(image/University of Houston)

Cleveland (left), Roosevelt (center), and David R. Francis, 1903

The Roosevelts knew many important and influential people. One person we don’t associate with the Roosevelts, probably because we don’t associate him with much of anything, is Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was the only Democrat elected president (twice) between Buchanan in 1856 and Woodrow Wilson in 1912. He had been the mayor of Buffalo and was governor of New York when Theodore was in the state assembly. In 1883 Governor Cleveland vetoed young Roosevelt’s cigar bill on legal principle. Five ears later President Cleveland appointed Robert Roosevelt U.S. Minister to the Netherlands. This makes sense as the Roosevelts were old Knickerbockers.

On the other side of the family James Roosevelt, FDR’s father, was also a friend of Cleveland’s, which makes sense as they were both Democrats. James’s older son, the kindly but ineffectual James “Rosy” Roosevelt, held some mid-level posts in Vienna and London during the Cleveland years. James Sr. was elated when Cleveland gained the Executive Mansion because  he wanted help in building a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific through Nicaragua. Of course a Nicaraguan waterway did not come to pass; a few decades later Theodore built the isthmian canal through Panama that opened a few days prior to the start of the Great War. James Roosevelt did not live to see that. He died in 1900.

Grover Cleveland once had some advice for James Roosevelt’s much younger son, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When Franklin was five his father took him to meet the outgoing president. Cleveland looked down and gravely said, “My little man, I am making a strange wish for you. It is that you may never be president of the United States.”

(image/Library of Congress)