The Political Philosophy of F. D. Roosevelt: A Challange to Scholarship

Extract

The flood of Roosevelt books sweeps on, bursting the dikes of literary convention. There is nothing to compare with it in all our intellectual history. Frances Perkins, Mike Reilly, Jay Franklin, Louis Adamic, Merriman Smith, Elliott Roosevelt, Henrietta Nesbitt, Robert E. Sherwood (vice Harry Hopkins), and Admiral Mclntire are some of the celebrated members of the inner and outer Roosevelt circle unable to resist the pleas of their consciences or agents to “write a book, just a little book” about the old master. Morgenthau, Byrnes, Farley, Hull, Garner, Ickes, and Stimson have likewise succumbed; the only authentic attraction of most of their Confessions is the author's version of “Life with Roosevelt.” Charles A. Beard, George Morgenstern, John T. Flynn, and others have filed their dissenting opinions. And still the high-water mark is not in sight. The day must surely come, if our forests hold out, when Roosevelt will have a, bibliography as long and detailed as Lincoln's, probably even longer, since the sources will be so much more plentiful and nearer to the surface. Fifty years from now our libraries will be choked with one, two, four, six, and twelve volume “definitive” biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and with countless bright little books bearing transcribed Lincoln titles—The Hidden Roosevelt, The Real Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Man of Letters, The Personal Finances of Franklin D. Roosevelt, They Knew Roosevelt, and The Women in Roosevelt's Life—all contributed by home-grown Roosevelt scholars. We may even have a Franklin D. Roosevelt Quarterly.