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no one, including the President, had the slightest notion what was going to happen next. The next move would be, as usual, Hitler’s.
    “Caroline!” The resonant voice filled the room as Franklin rolled himself out from behind his desk. She was well used, by now, to the fact that the totally paralyzed legs were like two sticks beneath the extra-thick flannel of trousers calculated to disguise the heavy metal braces that he always wore whenever he knew he would have to be got to his feet in public. Tonight he was not wearing the braces. But then he had always been at home with Caroline since they had first met twenty years earlier when he had been the vigorous athletic assistant secretary of the Navy. She had found him charming if somewhat lightweight and altogether too conscious of the great name he—and Eleanor—together and separately bore. She was President Theodore Roosevelt’s niece; Franklin was merely that president’s fifth cousin. Eleanor and Caroline did enjoy one thing in common: Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt had married a cousin as had Caroline Sanford Sanford; only Eleanor’s marriage to Franklin had been a state affair while Caroline’s marriage of mild inconvenience to a dim cousin was the result of her unexpected pregnancy by a handsome married statesman, James Burden Day, now a senator, eager to replace Franklin in the White House next year unless, of course, the master politician were to run for a third term, something no president had ever done before. “Nor will I run,” he had assured Caroline her first evening in the White House, “unless there’s war.…” But, thus far, there was no shooting war, though she knew it was coming, and so she carefully answered his questions about the part of France where she lived and the mood of the people, which she described, accurately she thought, as “resigned.”
    In order to minimize the effect of his useless legs, the President never used a proper wheelchair. Instead he had taken a plain armlesschair to which rollers had been added as well as discreet side wheels which he could turn by hand to get himself about. Since he appeared supremely unconscious of his disability, others ceased to notice it. But there was a great deal of careful stage-managing so that the public would not notice. If he was to be photographed seated, a valet would lift his right leg and decorously cross it over his left. Trouser cuffs were pulled down to touch the tops of his shoes, hiding the ends of the braces. When he “walked,” he would start out of view of the public, his arm through that of an aide or one of his large sons. Then as he stepped into the limelight, head thrown back, the great smile glittering, he would swing first one leg forward, then back as he simultaneously swung the other forward so that he appeared to be walking in a somewhat swaying nautical manner.
    Eleanor had confided, “The worst times are at the end of a speech, particularly in the old days. Franklin must hold himself up with both hands on the lectern and still be able to use one of them to turn the pages of his speech, all the while trying to keep his balance on those braces, which are locked just before he starts his walk, which is a terrible effort. Then, when he finishes, we have to get him off the stage—that’s usually fifteen feet to be negotiated. In the old days when we all wore such huge skirts, the ladies would surround him—at least the tall ones like me—and we’d screen him from the audience while two men would then carry him into the wings. That was then, of course. But, even now, with all the Secret Service, it’s still not easy.” Eleanor’s matter-of-factness always charmed Caroline, who would have been tempted to dramatize the situation had she been an actor in so extraordinary a script. Nevertheless, there was sufficient drama in the fact that although there must be numerous photographs of the President caught off-guard in his rolling chair, none had ever appeared in