The Apprenticeship of FDR
ROBERTSON, PRISCILLA
The Apprenticeship of FDR The End of Innocence. By Jonathan Daniels. Lippincott. 351 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Priscilla Robertson Author, "Lewis Farm: a New England Saga," "Revolutions of 1848: a...
...An interesting part of Mr...
...The result is a rich-textured social history of Washington during an era of reform and war which had many points of comparison with that later epoch when Roosevelt had the leading role...
...Young Daniels has traced this process through the eight years from 1912 to 1920 in almost day-today detail, relying on his father's unpublished diary as well as the Roosevelt papers...
...The book seems to imply that these qualities were inherited by the next Democratic administration...
...The leading instrument here was old Josephus Daniels, who taught Roosevelt to appreciate the kind of popular democracy that came down from Bryan...
...His internal reforms, bucking the entrenched interests of the officers, included abolishing the liquor allowance, ordering land-bound admirals to sea duty, opening Annapolis to enlisted men, and starting training classes in the Navy itself...
...In trusting the people and their instinctive surge toward progress, Roosevelt the visionary was actually less naive than those realists...
...Yet, he never makes clear whose innocence was involved or when it ended...
...Then, in the business world, he had to fight for adequate naval oil reserves (those which in less honest hands were later to be squandered at Teapot Dome) and beat down identical bidding by steel and munitions makers...
...yet, it must be confessed that it is almost impossible to trace the seeds of Roosevelt's future stature in the details of daily life which Mr...
...Daniels presents...
...In all these problems, Roosevelt served as second in command ?occasionally a restive one, and at one period so eager to run ahead of his superior that Daniels was deeply hurt and considered dismissing him...
...The descriptions of social engagements, weather, illness, neighbors, houses and personal contacts make an extremely interesting picture of an unfamiliar social milieu, and the page-to-page interest of the book lies more in these details than in any startling revelation of growth of character...
...To support Wilson's policy, first on neutrality and later for freedom of the seas against a reluctant Britain, Daniels, though a pacifist at heart, had to develop a strong Navy...
...But his true greatness was not naive...
...That, of course, is the first fault of a man or a nation in a democracy...
...This is the theme of the book...
...At the beginning of the book, Roosevelt shows up as a brash young aristocrat, "one so self-confident that it did not seem necessary for him to be troubled by fidelity to anybody or anything but himself...
...And in Roosevelt's case escape from it is the evidence of democracy's miraculous power...
...It was William Jennings Bryan who brought Daniels to Washington...
...The author assures us that FDR did develop, but anyone who, without hindsight, confronted the contemporary evidence as it is accumulated here would be hard put to it to find any reason why Franklin Roosevelt was especially promising or notably growing...
...Reviewed by Priscilla Robertson Author, "Lewis Farm: a New England Saga," "Revolutions of 1848: a Social History" Jonathan Daniels has given the title The Age of Innocence to his affectionate study of the relationship between his father and Franklin Roosevelt...
...Daniels's analysis is his statement that the place of the aristocrats has been taken today by self-styled "realists...
...And Mr...
...In particular, he taught him how to deal with organized labor as well as, in FDR's words, "to keep my feet on the ground when I was about to skyrocket...
...Yet, before the end of this period the two men regained a mutual confidence whose permanency was evidenced by FDR's appointment of Daniels as his Ambassador to Mexico...
...it showed itself most when he embodied the ancient American vision of moral progress...
...Josephus Daniels, of course, was Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of the Navy...
...Insofar as Franklin Roosevelt showed himself "an innocent abroad at Yalta," he was naive like the Wilsonians...
...he in turn brought the young FDR in as Assistant Secretary and more or less whipped him into the shape of a democratic statesman...
...Daniels looks forward with his father's characteristic optimism to a perennial rebirth of American democratic gusto...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 25
