Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • October 1, 2014 (Parenthetically) Magnificent The new PBS documentary, “The Roosevelts: An Inti- mate History,” so thoroughly dominated viewing time that anybody who did not see at least some of it was not trying. Starting at 8 p.m. every night for a week, two- hour episodes were shown back to back so those who missed the first two hours could catch the second two. I watched every minute and I was immensely impressed at how new sources, and many older ones, contributed to a more complete understanding of three great American lives: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who was TR’s niece and her fifth cousin Franklin’s long-suffering wife. Geoffrey Ward, Ken Burns’ top writer, identifies with Franklin because Ward suffered from polio as a child. For all that, Ward is honest enough to describe Franklin as selfish, self-serving, and even deceitful, but pointed out that without FDR we would not have Social Secu- rity, the FDIC, a national minimum wage, and limits on child labor. Theodore Roosevelt came off as a bright if pathetic little rich boy who was not expected to live to adulthood, but developed a robust constitution through diet and exercise. He also survived an emotional blow that would have killed many a man. He adored both his wife and his mother, and both women died on the same day in New York City. TR took off for the West, punched cattle, punched a rude cowboy, captured rustlers, lost most of his money in the cattle business, and was so awed by what he saw that he is rightly remembered as the principal founder of the National Park System, the subject of a quieter, gen- tler Ken Burns documentary with a different writer. The documentary correctly notes that TR favored the idea that the British should continue to control India, the United States should dominate South America, and the Japanese should dominate Korea. (The series did not give the deed a name and men- tion that TR and William Howard Taft signed two secret agreements with Japan. The Taft-Katsura Agreement of 1905 handed a shakily independent Korea over to Japan in return for a free U.S. hand in the Philippines -- where the series shows viewers that thousands of Filipino free- dom fighters were being tortured and killed by U.S. troops. The Root-Takahira Agreement of 1908 recog- nized Japan’s right to develop Manchuria, a land of vast resources north of Korea. The Japanese lost their grip on Manchuria during the Chinese Revolution against the Manchu Dynasty. When they tried to take Manchuria back during the Great Depression because their world trade in silk and porcelain had collapsed when the stock markets failed, the result was the conflict with China that led to World War II. TR was the stepfather of the Japanese Empire. Franklin was destined to be the executioner of the Japanese Empire.) Franklin, the only child of a second marriage, was raised by Sara Delano, a doting mother who convinced him he could do anything he wanted. He did. The documentary noted that Sara’s father Warren made his money in “the China trade.” (Actually, Warren Delano made most of his money in the opium trade, and Geoffrey Ward wrote about it 20 years ago in the now- elusive “American Heritage.”) Franklin was home-tutored and was not popular at Groton or Harvard, where he was a mediocre athlete and rather too well-behaved for his peers. The series tell us that he married Eleanor on the rebound from a girl who turned him down. Eleanor’s father -- TR’s brother -- had been plagued by chronic depression, which seemed to run in the Roosevelt line, along with impressive courage when the chips were down. TR led the charge up San Juan Hill during the Span- ish-American War, all four of TR’s sons served in battle in World War I -- his youngest son Quentin was killed in aerial combat -- and Franklin’s sons saw active service in World War II. TR’s son Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was the oldest American ashore on Utah Beach on D-Day, walking with a cane due to his wounds from World War I, and died of a heart attack in a combat zone a month later. Eleanor’s father Elliott cheated on his wife and drank himself to death. Franklin thought about enlisting in World War I, but never did so, though he sailed into a combat zone as assistant secretary of the Navy, a post TR had held some years before. Franklin also cheated on Eleanor with her own social secretary, Lucy Mercer, which hurt Eleanor terribly and led to a rift in their mar- riage, but not to divorce. With outright honesty, the series admits that Franklin knew a war with Japan was about to break out in Decem- ber of 1941, but then hedges to assert that he expected the attack to fall on Singapore or the Dutch East Indies. (Pearl Harbor had been through two alerts in the weeks before the attack and people who lived in the islands knew about the air raid wardens, the slit trenches, and the other preparations. Admiral James Richardson had asked to have the Pacific Fleet taken back to San Diego because Richardson saw basing the fleet at Pearl Harbor was an outright provocation to Japan. Franklin sacked him.) Roosevelt, however, probably did not manipulate Japan into an attack. This was done behind his back. His best friend, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, had an assistant named Harry Dexter White who was later revealed as a Soviet agent by two U.S. communist inform- ers and later by the KGB. White, acting under a request from Soviet intelligence, contrived to send the Japanese a list of demands so outrageous that he expected they would attack rather than submit -- and they did. Roosevelt might have been able to deflect the Pacific War had he been in full possession of his faculties. But during the count- down to Pearl Harbor, “his junior wife” Missy LeHand suffered a crippling stroke and his mother died. He was emotionally exhausted. In the war that followed, many a Roosevelt showed genuine courage. Franklin also showed courage in running for a fourth term, when he and his doctors knew he was dying, and the series admits that Lucy Mercer, rather than Eleanor, was with him when he died at Warm Springs. Eleanor went on to remain a force in human rights and Democratic politics. The series is a superb biography of three important Americans. Knowledge of what was going on elsewhere might have led viewers to second-guess some of their decisions, but it was a great piece of work. Franklin Lakes Happy New Year! Children at the Chabad Jewish Center in Franklin Lakes made their own goat’s horn Shofar to be blown in the Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, which celebrates the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah begans at sundown on Wednesday, Sept. 24.