I cannot feel myself a stranger here at the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.
It was, he conceded, “a strange Christmas eve,” with war “raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes.” Nevertheless, the PM concluded, using the English equivalent for Santa,
Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.
And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.
Not knowing whether to cheer or remain in reverent silence, the crowd registered a mélange of emotions. The presidential party withdrew indoors, and the thousands on the lawn and beyond moved toward Pennsylvania Avenue, some seeking, in the darkness, their safeguarded Christmas packages. Waiting trolley cars, their interior lights pale yellow, many drawn out of retirement to replace buses gone into military service, waited. Soon the lights on the tall evergreen cast shadows on White House grounds that had emptied.
As on the evening before, guests reassembled in the Red Room, the President and PM arriving late after conferring briefly with Secretary Knox, Admiral Pound, and Brigadier (General) Leslie Hollis to discuss emergency needs as the situation in Malaya and the Philippines continued to deteriorate. Roosevelt agreed to permit a British brigade embarked on the American transport Mount Vernon for Colombo, Ceylon, to proceed instead to Singapore. With Australia already endangered, Army Air Forces general George H. Brett, then in China, was ordered to proceed Down Under to take charge of aircraft and crews to be ferried there or were already lengthily en route via Africa and India. All the carrying capacity of available shipping was in use. Because heavy bombers could somehow, with refueling stops, fly to Australia, Brett was to establish a subcommand only nominally under MacArthur, with “action to be taken in view of situation in Philippines at that time [of arrival].” The radioed message was signed “Marshall,” but that meant Eisenhower.
Better news had come from Libya, where General Claude Auchinleck’s forces were advancing. An “Enigma” decrypt had already revealed that German panzers were withdrawing, and that afternoon Auchinleck had telegraphed, “Royal Dragoons occupied Benghazi this morning. The Army of the Nile sends you hearty greetings for Christmas.” (The euphoria would not last. Its supply lines overextended and the Germans resupplied by air, the Eighth Army would be driven back early in 1942.)
At Christmas 1940 the White House had throbbed with a noisy gathering of Roosevelt grandchildren. Now, given the lack of family and the preponderance of unusual guests, the President planned to forgo a family tradition going back to the childhoods of his five children, four of them (but for Anna, his only daughter) now away at war. He would not read aloud, very likely to Eleanor’s relief, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in which, annually, he had taken all the roles in different voices.
In the Red Room Crown Prince Olav, with Marthe, and the British guests—Churchill, Wilson, and Beaverbrook—shared predinner drinks with the Roosevelts, an hour marred by Eleanor’s reminding her husband that he had not telephoned holiday greetings to Missy LeHand, FDR’s secretary and confidant over two decades, with him even before Roosevelt’s paralysis. Marguerite LeHand had been invalided by a stroke in June 1940. He confessed that it
It was, he conceded, “a strange Christmas eve,” with war “raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes.” Nevertheless, the PM concluded, using the English equivalent for Santa,
Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.
And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.
Not knowing whether to cheer or remain in reverent silence, the crowd registered a mélange of emotions. The presidential party withdrew indoors, and the thousands on the lawn and beyond moved toward Pennsylvania Avenue, some seeking, in the darkness, their safeguarded Christmas packages. Waiting trolley cars, their interior lights pale yellow, many drawn out of retirement to replace buses gone into military service, waited. Soon the lights on the tall evergreen cast shadows on White House grounds that had emptied.
As on the evening before, guests reassembled in the Red Room, the President and PM arriving late after conferring briefly with Secretary Knox, Admiral Pound, and Brigadier (General) Leslie Hollis to discuss emergency needs as the situation in Malaya and the Philippines continued to deteriorate. Roosevelt agreed to permit a British brigade embarked on the American transport Mount Vernon for Colombo, Ceylon, to proceed instead to Singapore. With Australia already endangered, Army Air Forces general George H. Brett, then in China, was ordered to proceed Down Under to take charge of aircraft and crews to be ferried there or were already lengthily en route via Africa and India. All the carrying capacity of available shipping was in use. Because heavy bombers could somehow, with refueling stops, fly to Australia, Brett was to establish a subcommand only nominally under MacArthur, with “action to be taken in view of situation in Philippines at that time [of arrival].” The radioed message was signed “Marshall,” but that meant Eisenhower.
Better news had come from Libya, where General Claude Auchinleck’s forces were advancing. An “Enigma” decrypt had already revealed that German panzers were withdrawing, and that afternoon Auchinleck had telegraphed, “Royal Dragoons occupied Benghazi this morning. The Army of the Nile sends you hearty greetings for Christmas.” (The euphoria would not last. Its supply lines overextended and the Germans resupplied by air, the Eighth Army would be driven back early in 1942.)
At Christmas 1940 the White House had throbbed with a noisy gathering of Roosevelt grandchildren. Now, given the lack of family and the preponderance of unusual guests, the President planned to forgo a family tradition going back to the childhoods of his five children, four of them (but for Anna, his only daughter) now away at war. He would not read aloud, very likely to Eleanor’s relief, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in which, annually, he had taken all the roles in different voices.
In the Red Room Crown Prince Olav, with Marthe, and the British guests—Churchill, Wilson, and Beaverbrook—shared predinner drinks with the Roosevelts, an hour marred by Eleanor’s reminding her husband that he had not telephoned holiday greetings to Missy LeHand, FDR’s secretary and confidant over two decades, with him even before Roosevelt’s paralysis. Marguerite LeHand had been invalided by a stroke in June 1940. He confessed that it
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