THE MISSION THAT COULD HAVE MATTERED
BY EDWIN COONEY

As one observes with foreboding the conflict in the Middle East, it’s only natural to wonder sometimes if this current “sorry pass” might have been averted with a little diplomatic ingenuity. It’s probable that historians (one of which I am not!) will disagree with me, but I believe that it nearly was.

It is Saturday night, February 10th, 1945. Winston Churchill, the cherubic “English bulldog” with his dramatic elocution and ever-present cigar, is hosting a dinner at Vorontsov Palace in the Russian Crimea Peninsula for his two world leader colleagues, Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Everyone knows that World War II will soon be over in Europe and they believe that it will probably take another year and a half to defeat Japan.

Big decisions have been made during the last seven days by the “Big Three” powers. They include such weighty matters as: a reluctant Russia’s membership in the United Nations; the granting of world power status to China and France; the governance of a defeated Germany; the disposition of property and geography in China (although minus the consent of the Chinese government); the issue of free elections in Poland (which President Roosevelt knows full well is not enforceable although he hopes for Stalin’s good faith); and, finally, participation in the war against Japan by the Soviet Union.

All these issues have been debated and concluded. Some of these decisions are secret. Some of these decisions, when made public, will be seen as weak and even deceitful by many. But they have been made and each leader believes that although the price has been very high, he has attained the best outcome he could possibly hope for.

Mr. Churchill has ordered a large rib roast and asked his chef to prepare some Russian delicacies. The champagne, vodka, and other libations are flowing and the toasts are coming thick and fast. FDR is seated in one of his light mobile wheelchairs which fits easily into his automobile. He’s holding a drink and puffing on a cigarette through his long ivory cigarette holder as Joseph Stalin, the short, stubby-fingered mustachioed little man whose power and capacity for cruelty is easily and often masked by his quiet speaking style and demeanor, is bent over the president’s wheelchair. He is inviting FDR to spend a little more time on the Crimea. Roosevelt replies that he’d like to, but he has three kings waiting to see him.

The three kings are King Farouk of Egypt, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. It’s about the Palestinian question FDR tells Stalin. Then he tells the Russian dictator: “I am a Zionist,” and he then asks Stalin if he’s a Zionist. Stalin replies that he is one in principle, but that there are difficulties.

On January thirtieth, only eleven days before this dinner, FDR had celebrated his sixty-third birthday. Although he is the youngest of the Big Three in age, he is the oldest in body. Advanced arteriosclerosis has left his polio-ravaged body exhausted. Although he is neither psychotic nor neurotic, he is irritable at times, non-attentive now and then, and occasionally —although not too often—can be observed staring off into space. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill’s physician, has already told the Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius that the President is obviously suffering from arteriosclerosis of the brain and that he gives him only a few more months to live. Even Stalin has been moved enough to comment that had he known how ill FDR was, he would have agreed to meet somewhere in the Mediterranean. His condition is even obvious to one of the maids assigned to service his bed room at Livadia Palace, the American headquarters at the Crimean conference. At one point she bursts into tears and sobs out: “That sweet, sweet man -- he’s so ill!”

In short, FDR would like to go straight home from the conference of the Big Three, but this most democratic of men must first converse with three royals. The plight of the Jews is on his mind. Some would hope it was on his conscience believing as they do that he was far too slow to recognize the wanton slaughter of Jews by the Nazis throughout the war. Some bitterly resent the fact that he let an old colleague, Breckenridge Long from the Wilson administration, get away with blocking Jewish immigration at a time when their very existence was in mortal peril.

Thus it was that as his plane left Russian soil on the day following the Big Three’s final clinking of glasses, its wheels touched down in Cairo, Egypt, rather than in Washington, D.C. His destination was the U.S.S. Quincy which was anchored on the Indian Ocean side of the Suez Canal. There, on Tuesday, the 13th and Wednesday, the 14th, he would confer with the three monarchs.

Neither Secretary of State Stettinius nor the president’s old and trusted friend Harry “the Hop” Hopkins had any idea what FDR hoped to achieve by meeting this triumvirate of mid-east royalty. Perhaps FDR himself wasn’t sure either. But meet them he did.

His meetings with Farouk and Selassie were anticlimactic at best. Staple cotton and American tourism were the only subjects he discussed with the twenty-five-year-old Farouk whose portliness was very apparent from behind sunglasses and within an admiral’s uniform.

The president’s meeting later that Tuesday with Haile Selassie, the five foot three “Lion of Judah,” was even of less substance. FDR began the conversation by comparing his dark blue Navy Cape with the monarch’s off-white one. Next he thanked Salassie for donating land and buildings for the American Legation in his capital of Addis Ababa. Finally, he expressed the hope for continuing Ethiopian domestic improvements as well as for smooth Ethiopian American diplomatic relations.

His meeting with Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia was more substantial. As exhausted as he was, FDR had enough energy to put on his famous charm. Prior to Ibn Saud’s arrival aboard the Quincy, FDR had given his daughter Anna a choice of remaining in her state room during Saud’s visit or shopping in Cairo. He explained to Anna that as a Moslem King, Saud forbade the presence of women when conducting business. He also told her that his religion required of him that if he saw an attractive young lady while conducting business, he must confiscate her. Anna chose to go shopping in Cairo.

Ibn Saud--who was so physically heavy as well as weakened by arthritis that he had to be lifted aboard the Quincy in a whale boat to the salute of American artillery—was a medieval monarch. He brought along such officials as his privy counselor, leader of the palace prayers, his astrologer and fortune teller, his chamberlain, his purse bearer, his food taster, his ceremonial coffee taster and assistant coffee taster, nine slaves, porters, and scullions—to name only a few.

Diplomatic compliments and oil were first on the agenda. Next came “the Palestinian question”. The president knew that Ibn Saud wasn’t happy about the settlement of Jews in Palestine. He took along a map to demonstrate to the Saudi Arabian King just how small the territory that was being set aside for a Jewish homeland really was. Additionally, he tried to convince King Saud how industrious Jews were and what good neighbors they would make by appealing to the king’s domestic concerns. Wouldn’t the king like to see his deserts bloom? The king responded that he was a warrior—nothing more and nothing less. He had conquered the ten other tribes of Arabia and had some of their ranking members with him. No one was sure whether they were guests or hostages.

To FDR’s surprise, the king was ready for him. Sure, the Jews were transforming desert into farmland, but if the English and French gave Arabs as much money as they gave Jews, “Arabs would do the same.” He complained bitterly to FDR that Palestinian Jews were forming militias, not to fight the Germans but to fight Arabs. When the president appealed to him as a farmer (FDR. always thought of himself as something of a farmer), the king responded that the world needed deserts as much as it did farms and besides—once again--he was a warrior. In short, all of the president’s charm and powers of persuasion couldn’t budge him.

The king said that if the Jews confined themselves to the area FDR had pointed to, perhaps war could be prevented—although he gave no assurances. FDR told the king that he liked Arabs and wouldn’t encourage the Jews to go beyond the current boundaries of Palestine.

As with King Farouk and Emperor Haile Salassie, there were gifts of planes and automobiles—along with mementos of FDR’s recent fourth inauguration. For Ibn Saud, however, there was a special gift. The king admired the lightweight wheelchair the president was using. FDR ordered his spare aluminum wheelchair to be brought and presented to His Majesty. The bulky arthritic old warrior liked it for its maneuverability—it would be most useful to him and the president would have three additional wheelchairs delivered for the king’s pleasure. In parting, FDR told the king that he had learned more about the true situation in the Middle East from the king in five minutes than he had known in an entire lifetime. This assertion stunned Harry “the Hop” because, after all, Roosevelt had only been told what everyone else already knew—that Arabs didn’t want Jews settling in Palestine.

So, that was it and Anna avoided confiscation. As for King Farouk, he would reign for nearly eight more years before being overthrown and executed by his colonels in 1953. Haile Selassie would come to the United States numerous times, but most memorably during President Kennedy’s 1963 funeral when his dignity and manner stood out among international leaders as they paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue.

February 1945, was, of course, near the end for the president. Gone was the righteous leader of the past. He could now sit and listen to the opposition and grant that their position had some merit. Yet, he was still the most powerful individual leader on earth. He, more than anyone else at the meeting of the “Big Three” perhaps, saw the importance of the Palestinian question—if peace were to really and truly last. Stalin was indifferent to it, and as for Churchill, it was strictly a British problem. He couldn’t imagine why Roosevelt even wanted to bother with it.

Perhaps, had the president lived, or at least if he had passed on to Vice President Truman the ideas he might have possessed regarding a more diplomatic way to establish a Jewish homeland, things might have been different. Suppose, for example, the newly established Jewish state had been sufficiently pressured to exist for a period under direct United Nations mandate with Jerusalem also under United Nations mandate as an international city. Perhaps, just perhaps, Arabs might have kept their powder dry. Perhaps, just perhaps, if FDR had made the Palestinian question a part of the Crimean Conference Agenda, Stalin might have joined with Roosevelt in agreeing to withhold armaments from both sides in the foreseen conflict. After all, both the United States and the Soviet Union would be targets for financial pocket-picking by all sides in future international conflicts!

FDR’s instincts for the peace and prosperity of humanity were still present even though his energy for political gamesmanship had waned. As a young man he had been almost as enthusiastic as his distant cousin Teddy Roosevelt for glory on the battlefield. But polio and the needs of the poor and the hungry had made their mark on his soul.

Thus, even as his own life was ending, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that the pain of past outrages would ultimately only be soothed by the blessings of those things which nourish both body and soul. He had traveled beyond the conference at Yalta to confer with three kings. Two of them, Farouk and Selassie, he must have sensed were ineffectual. To the most powerful and potentially most dangerous, he appealed as a farmer.

Sadly however, Ibn Saud was a warrior and, what is more, he insisted on being thought of as a warrior. FDR’s mission might have mattered if he could only have convinced the old king that the peace and security of all that he cared for could most assuredly be protected by the most outstanding warriors of them all—farmers, soldiers in the eternal war against hunger!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

Originally posted October 18, 2006