Jamie was having coffee with his father when they heard the news. His father commented that he knew Roosevelt was a sick man, probably a dying man, and could not understand what would make him want to stand for President again, almost certainly knowing he would not survive until the end of his term. “Will we ever know what drives politicians?” He asked.
Jamie thought darkly that the President’s physician had some questions to answer.
Although he personally admired and respected Roosevelt, and truly wished him a long and happy life, this cover up of an important issue was considered by him to be no better than lying outright to the American people in order to get them to vote for him.
He recalled something Baron von Altendorf had once said to him. ‘Politicians must be decisive and responsible, but most important, they should have integrity’. Jamie was disappointed with his President.
James and Magda were holidaying together in Paris. Officially he was working, having met with officials from Air France and the Belgium airline, Sabena, which was about to merge with Air France. However these had taken up very little of his time and he was now walking around Paris with his love, Magda.
These days they spent all the time together that they were able to. He was always gloriously happy when he was with her. The other side of the coin was that he suffered feelings of guilt, and was despondent when he was at home with his wife. James was continually faced with complaints from Fiona that she hardly saw him anymore and they only went out for dinner or lunch when it was a business occasion. And they never, ever, made love. James was conscience-stricken by his treatment of his wife but found himself incapable of change. His need for Magda dominated his actions. He could not help himself.
Now that he was earning decent money, he had allowed, even encouraged, Fiona to buy anything she wanted. Strangely enough she had become less materialistic, and apart from household and other necessities, she spent money only on things for their son, and occasionally herself or James.
The subject of divorce had been on James mind virtually from the time he had met Magda. The main problem was the child. James doted on him and could not bear to contemplate losing him in a custody battle. A further factor was the disapproving attitude of the bank’s directors to divorced directors and staff. Mistresses were tolerated but never divorce!
In the meantime he would enjoy this holiday and see what happened next year.
The British and German Foreign Ministers were in the middle of one of their regular meetings. A year earlier, Sir Anthony Eden had prevailed upon von Altendorf to release to him a copy of the pre-war ‘Hitler’ study on colonial empires. The British government had found cold comfort from its findings. One thing that Sir Anthony particularly found frustrating was the firm conclusion that the ‘British Empire was a major source of stability in the world’, yet the President of the United States was now pressuring Britain to start dismantling it, beginning with India.
“The United States has quite an empire of its own but they just won’t admit it. They really believe their own propaganda, that only European nations are imperialists”. Eden complained sourly.
Imperialistic behaviour by the United States dated back to at least the ‘Louisiana purchase’ in 1803 when the US paid France fifteen million dollars for over eight hundred thousand square miles of territory, including its inhabitants, west of the Mississippi River.
An ‘imperial acquisition’ can be defined as an aggressive encroachment of one people upon the territory of another.
Furthermore, the many infamous and unjust ‘Indian wars’ in America were nothing more than blatant imperialism and genocide of the worst kind.
Territory had been permanently acquired from Mexico, the Mexican cession lands, in the Mexican — American war of 1846/48. The huge territory of Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867.
Hawaii had been a sovereign independent kingdom until 1893 when plotting American and other residents had staged a coup d’état. Hawaii became officially a US territory only a few years later.
Also at the end of the nineteenth century, as a result of the one-sided Spanish — American war in 1898, the US gained considerable territory in the Caribbean and Far East. Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and some Pacific Ocean islands became American. In 1900 the Samoa Island group in the Pacific became American, and in 1903 the Central American country of Panama granted sovereign rights to the US for a coast to coast strip of land, ‘in perpetuity’. This was for the building of a canal.
The United States of America was still acquiring land in 1917 when it purchased a group of Caribbean islands from Denmark. These then became known as the US Virgin Islands.
One of the United States’ leading historians stated ‘From the time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation.’
This was now the country that professed such a distaste for empires and whose President was lecturing Great Britain on the right to self-determination for the oppressed.
India was the problem that Sir Anthony was currently wrestling with.
Nationalism had been slowly on the rise in the ‘Jewel in the crown’ since 1885 when educated middle class Indians had founded the Indian National Congress, (INC). After 1918, nationalism had intensified, one factor in this being that the then American president, Woodrow Wilson, had stimulated certain receptive minds with his ideas about people of any country having the right to govern themselves.
The British government had proposed and introduced various reforms with a view to a measured pace of advancement towards self-government, but with India remaining an integral part of the British Empire. These were denounced as stalling tactics by many of the more politically minded Indians, who wanted power for themselves.
In the early 1930s, a conference in London, attended by Mahatma Gandhi as the senior representative of the INC, broke down over the issue of religion. The Hindu Indian delegates could not agree on the matter of Muslim representation in an independent Indian government. A sure sign of future religious strife. A sign that was largely ignored.
In 1935 the Government of India Act was introduced. An elected wholly Indian Assembly would have a say in all aspects of government except defence and foreign affairs. Provincial assemblies would have control over local affairs. Unfortunately the INC were still not satisfied. Also, the Indian Princes, whose rule continued in some areas of India, refused to co-operate with provincial assemblies. This Act again completely ignored the problem of religious rivalry.
In 1937 The Muslim League now demanded a separate Muslim state, to be called Pakistan. On the other side, Gandhi and the INC were determined to preserve Indian unity, with themselves as the dominant partner. Hostility between the two religions was ever increasing.
The start of the European War in 1939 meant the issue of independence had been temporarily shelved. India provided valuable military assistance to Britain in exchange for an understanding that the country would be granted the same independent dominion status that Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand currently had, once the war ended.
In 1941 the war had been over for six months and normality was returning to Britain and Indian. The independence negotiations started again. As did the squabbling.