on June 14, 1940, the day German soldiers entered Paris, and with his mail running 2–1 in favor of the draft, FDR insisted that it was not yet time for conscription. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall also believed that a draft instituted too quickly could create more problems than it solved. According to Clark’s biographer, Marshall came close to losing his temper in an early meeting over Clark’s brashness in demanding support for a draft. To Marshall, a civilian, even one with Clark’s credentials, trying to instruct the chief of staff how to run the Army and properly prepare for war was out of place. Others have described Marshall’s reaction in even more dramatic terms. According to FDR biographer Kenneth S. Davis, after Clark told Marshall that he would be derelict in not pressing the president to accept conscription: “Marshall’s face reddened. It was only through a terrific effort of self-control that he managed to end the interview politely, abruptly, and coldly, very coldly, instead of in a hot flare of wrath.”24
While he gradually concluded that conscription was the only way to build the Armed Forces, Marshall was unwilling to speak out on the issue until he thought the time was right and would not do so unless he had Roosevelt’s approval. Realizing that the political consequences of a draft could undermine FDR’s re-election bid, Marshall felt that the Army was not yet prepared for a draft. He wanted an orderly increase in manpower and needed more time to create such a system, because, as he explained, “The training of young men in large training camps on the basis of compulsory training is something that we cannot manage at the present time. We do not have the trained officers and the instructors to spare.”25
Having decided to support the Clark initiative, Marshall wanted to see the bill introduced as an initiative led by civilians while he stood quietly in the wings. He reasoned that if he was to lend public support to the bill before it was formally proposed, the public could regard it as his legislation, creating a potential backlash in Congress that could disrupt future mobilization efforts. Years later, he recalled, “I was much criticized because I didn’t take the lead in the selective service legislation. I very pointedly did not take the lead. I wanted it to come from others . . . Then I could take the floor and do all the urging that was required.”26
With FDR’s blessing, Marshall privately sent key staff members to help draft the legislation, which at this point looked as if it lacked the proper support. The Democratic Senate majority leader, James Byrnes, told Clark that there was not “a Chinaman’s chance” that compulsory military training would pass in Congress.27
Roosevelt and War Secretary Woodring were increasingly at odds, especially regarding aid to Britain. On June 17, Roosevelt ordered his treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr., to send the British a dozen B-17 bombers. Rather than comply, Woodring fired off a memo to Roosevelt, stating that he strongly opposed the proposed action. The president had no choice but to request Woodring’s resignation, which he did by letter. On leaving the government, Woodring immediately became an active member of the America First Committee, an organization devoted to preventing the United States’ entry into the war. Over time, Woodring had become a liability to Roosevelt, and now it was clear he would become an active force working against him.28
The War Department, led by acting secretary Louis A. Johnson, chose to abstain from supporting the draft as the debate heated up in June. As late as June 25, Johnson was urging Roosevelt to approve a plan that would encourage enlistments rather than rely on conscription. Under what was known as the Civilian Volunteer Effort (CVE), local patriotic service clubs such as the Kiwanis and Lions, as well as chambers of commerce and other organizations, would become active and aggressive in recruiting men for the Army.29
On June 19, with Woodring out of the way, Roosevelt asked Henry Stimson to be his new secretary of war. The selection of Stimson had been engineered by Grenville Clark, who saw Stimson as Roosevelt’s best choice. Having previously served as governor general of the Philippines, secretary of state under President Herbert Hoover, and secretary of war under President William Howard Taft, Stimson was well qualified for the job. Roosevelt urged Stimson, a Republican, to accept the position, thinking he would become a stabilizing force in whom both the public and the Army would have confidence.
Pointing out that he was approaching his 73rd birthday, Stimson asked for time to consult with a few friends. He also wanted to make sure the president understood that he favored compulsory military service. In Washington, Stimson was a known quantity who had nothing but contempt for the isolationists, who he felt were playing into the hands of the Axis powers.30
Stimson had given two major speeches—the first at Yale University, the second broadcast on NBC Radio—about the need for compulsory military training. In the latter speech, entitled “America’s Interest in Britain’s Fleet,” Stimson underscored his belief that the United States could not afford to let Britain follow France into defeat—not for sentimental or cultural reasons but because America would be the next to fall.
At the same time Roosevelt asked Stimson to join his cabinet, he asked Frank Knox, owner of the Chicago Daily News, to become his secretary of the Navy, replacing Charles Edison, the son of inventor Thomas Edison, who had resigned earlier in the year to run for governor of New Jersey. Knox was also a Republican and had previously run as the vice presidential candidate on Alf Landon’s ticket, against Roosevelt, in 1936. Knox had served with Teddy Roosevelt’s now-legendary Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War and had performed as an artillery officer in 1917. Clark felt that Knox was the perfect complement to Stimson.
Stimson’s acceptance was conditional on two important points: that he retain the power to appoint his own subordinates in the War Department and that Knox accept FDR’s nomination as secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt agreed to the first condition, and Knox took the job, so the stage was set for a rare era of bipartisanship on the issue of conscription. Both Stimson and Knox had been members of the Clark committee, and both had been brought to Roosevelt’s attention by Clark, who saw them as key supporters of the draft and Republicans who would create the bipartisan alliance the nation needed to prepare for war. Historian and Marshall biographer David L. Roll termed this development “Clark’s plan,” adding that it enabled FDR to “pull off a shrewd political masterstroke—the appointment to his cabinet of two of the most prominent Republican foreign policy voices in the nation.”31
On June 20, before the appointments of Stimson and Knox were made public, Senator Edward R. Burke, an anti–New Deal Democrat from Nebraska, and Representative James Wolcott Wadsworth, a Republican from New York, introduced Clark’s bill for peacetime selective service in their respective houses of Congress. Formally titled the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Public Law 76–783, 54 Stat. 885), it became known as the Burke-Wadsworth bill. Neither man had much to lose if the bill failed—Burke had already lost renomination in the Nebraska primary elections, and Wadsworth was from a Republican district considered safe regardless of his position on conscription.
This odd marriage had been brokered by Clark, who moved quickly to get the bill into the public arena. Publicist Perley Boone sent advance copies to major newspapers, and the moment the bill was introduced, the wire services sent it to thousands more. The White House deliberately withheld visible support for the bill, not wanting to be linked directly to a potential defeat in Congress, which Roosevelt felt would please Hitler, dishearten the British, and damage his own chances in an election year.
The major arguments for conscription were that the Army as constituted had not adequately prepared the United States against the possibility of invasion and that in the years since the enactment of the National Defense Act of 1920, the Army had been forced to work below the levels the legislation permitted. The isolationist counter-argument was that a volunteer army would suffice and that a draft would drag the United States into war.
On June 21, Roosevelt announced the appointments of Stimson and Knox. MASTERSTROKE BY ROOSEVELT STUNS THE GOP was the headline in the Atlanta Constitution. Roosevelt had not only moved,
