Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, as thirty-second President

Two typed letters signed ("Franklin D. Roosevelt"), each 1 page (10 1/8 x 7 1/2 in.; 255 x 190 mm) on White House letterhead, Washington, D.C., 21 October 1941 and 2 October 1942, to Major General Frank R. McCoy; formerly folded, formerly matted leaving edges slightly lighter than main body of each sheet, tiny stain in upper margin of second letter. Maroon half-morocco clamshell box.

Forbes Collection (sale, Christie's NY, 27 March 2002, lot 164)

formerly folded, formerly matted leaving edges slightly lighter than main body of each sheet, tiny stain in upper margin of second letter.
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Stirring foreign policy statements before and after Pearl Harbor, two lengthy wartime letters.

These two letters were sent to the President of the Foreign Policy Association in New York, Frank Ross McCoy (1874-1954) to be read at meetings of that body. McCoy, who achieved that post in 1939, was to be during the coming war, President of the Military Commission which tried and convicted German saboteurs who landed in the United States.

In the first letter, Roosevelt defines American foreign policy amidst the European conflict: "When mighty forces of aggression are at large, when they have ruthlessly overrun a continent, when we know that they seek ultimately to destroy our freedom, our rights, our well-being, everything for which this Government stands, our foreign policy cannot remain passive. There are a few persons in this country who seek to lull us into a false sense of security, to tell us that we are not threatened, that all we need to do to avoid the storm is to sit idly by — and to submit supinely if necessary. The same deadly virus has been spread by Hitler's agents and his Quislings and dupes in every country which he has overrun. It has helped him immeasurably.

"The American people are not easily fooled; they are hard-headed realists and they fear no one. A free people with a free press makes up its own mind ... We reach grave decisions slowly, but when they are made they are backed by the determination of one hundred and thirty million free Americans and they are inexorable. ... The real end, the inescapable end, is the destruction of the Hitler menace."

In the second letter, with the attack on Pearl Harbor behind him, and demonstrating the same resolve and consistency of purpose, the president writes: "Last year ... I said that, although we were not actively at war, ours was as great a responsibility for destroying the totalitarian menace to everything for which we stand as that of the peoples who were fighting against it ... The crucial test came only a few weeks later when the foes of human freedom struck at us and plunged our country into war. During the months which have elapsed, my faith in my countrymen and their faith in themselves have been more than vindicated. Before the Axis powers treacherously attacked us, they sought strenuously to intimidate us into inaction ... Far from being intimidated, our nation has risen in a superb unity of purpose and sacrificial spirit of devotion that will never abate until victory is ours — final, unmistakable, and complete. ... With victory secured, our foreign policy must be focused upon finding the most effective means of enriching our lives as free men — spiritually, morally, and materially - through all the manifold ways in which international relationships contribute to this end."