n. The act, though faulty in many ways, became the foundation of a partial welfare state with which later administrations dared not tamper.F.D.R.'s education in foreign affairs had been at the hands of two Presidents he greatly admired. Theodore Roosevelt, his kinsman (a fifth cousin), taught him national-interest, balance-of-power geopolitics. Woodrow Wilson, whom he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, gave him the vision of a world beyond balances of power, an international order founded on the collective maintenance of the peace. F.D.R.'s internationalism used T.R.'s realism as the heart of Wilson's idealism. Cordell Hull of Tennessee served as secretary of state from 1933 to 1944, but Roosevelt's desire to engage in personal diplomacy left Hull in a reduced role. In 1933 the president's "bombshell message" to the London Economic Conference, saying that the United States would not participate in international currency stabilization, ended any immediate hope of achieving that objective. In the same year he extended diplomatic recognition to the USSR, still a relative outcast in world diplomacy. However, Roosevelt and Hull worked smoothly in behalf of reciprocal trade agreements and in making the United States the "good neighbor" of the Latin American. Surprisingly, it was not until the eruption of war in Europe that America fully recovered from the depression. Even in 1939 there were still some nine million unemployed in the United States. While Roosevelt's programs kept America afloat during the depression, it still took a major event, like a war, to completely void the effects of the Great DepressionAfter having been safely reelected once again, Roosevelt called for "lend-lease" aid to the anti-German allies. This aid, approved by Congress, greatly increased the flow of supplies to Britain. After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, lend-lease went to the Russians as well.Similar practical considerati...
