LETTER: Typed letter signed, to Anna Louise Strong, re FDR's international policies.
Roosevelt to Strong
On Communism
Roosevelt, Eleanor. Typed letter signed, “Eleanor Roosevelt,” to Anna Louise Strong, January 20, 1940; one leaf of White House stationery, recto only. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Strong and Roosevelt met in 1936, after Roosevelt invited Strong, “the first lady of U.S. radicalism,” to have lunch with her at the White House. Strong was an American journalist and activist who supported Communist movements in the Soviet Union and China. In the 1920s, Strong was a foreign correspondent in Russia for the American Friends Service Committee and a Moscow correspondent for the International News Service; in the early 1930s, Strong helped to found the Moscow News, the first English-language newspaper in the city. She is also the author of dozens of books of reportage, fiction, and non-fiction books on religion and social work. Strong and Roosevelt “were fascinated by each other, and a cordial friendship and lasting correspondence developed between the First Lady and one of America’s most notorious heretics” (Eleanor Roosevelt, by Cook, Vol. 2, pp. 342-343).
It is clear that Roosevelt respected Strong’s knowledge of Communism and the Soviet Union; Strong regularly sent Roosevelt reports of what she encountered in Soviet Russia and in China. Roosevelt might have sent this letter to Strong during one of her brief stays in the United States, in between foreign trips.
In this letter, Roosevelt mentions a Russian attack on Finland; shares her views on American Communists and Earl Browder, the General Secretary of the American Communist Party; and clarifies a point that FDR made in a Jackson Day speech about Alexander Hamilton.
On the Russia attack:
The Russian attack on Finland effectively marked the start of the Winter War, which lasted from November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940, and also caused Russia to be expelled by the League of Nations on December 14, 1939. Roosevelt felt Russia’s move was unwarranted:
Everything else seems to me immaterial just now except the fact that Russia, with 180,000,000 people, attacked a small country like Finland and which makes me feel that the leaders have in some way lost their first ideals.
On American Communists and Browder:
In 1940, Earl Browder made two trips to the Soviet Union using a false United States passport. He was tried and convicted of passport fraud on January 22, 1940, and sentenced to prison for fourteen months. Roosevelt comments on American communists in general and Browder in particular:
I have never questioned but what there were perfectly honest people here who believed in communism, who had no connection with Russia, and who were willing to live under the laws of this country However, I think that Mr. Browder hasn’t lived up to the laws of this country and, therefore, I am no longer interested in him.
On FDR’s speech:
FDR’s Address at the Jackson Day Dinner speech was delivered on January 8, 1940; he mentions Alexander Hamilton two times. Strong did not appreciate FDR’s reference to Hamilton and Roosevelt does not understand why she would be upset about it:
I don’t see why you should have been disturbed by the President’s reference to Hamilton in his Jackson Day speech. What the President said was that he was the man to do a particular job needed at that time and he certainly was. He built up the finances of this country at a time when that was important. He did not say that Hamilton did the same kind of work which Jefferson did. His idea was simply that every man who does the job which is important has a value to the country.
In his first reference to Hamilton, FDR says that people speculate what “great men” like Hamilton, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson would say or do about current problems in America, and that “The purpose of all these comments is either to induce the party leaders of today blindly to follow the words of leaders of yesterday; or to justify public a
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