EIGHT
If it is to be left to the Adjutant General to decide what the Army is to be permitted to read then we might as well join the Nazis and stop fighting them.
AS ACCOLADES FOR the Armed Services Editions poured in during the summer of 1944, the Council on Books in Wartime waged a battle of its own—against censorship. While the council used certain criteria to guide its selection (avoiding books that might give comfort to the enemy, for example, or that professed discriminatory attitudes), it aimed to publish a range of titles from a variety of perspectives. This open-mindedness ran afoul of the government on occasion. In 1943, the council had come under fire for publishing an ASE of Louis Adamic’s The Native’s Return. The problem was that the first edition of this book, published years earlier, contained passages deemed sympathetic to Communism. When Michigan congressman George A. Dondero, a Republican, heard that the council was supplying this book to servicemen, he denounced the choice and questioned the council’s motives in sending a book critical of democracy to American soldiers at war. As it turned out, the problematic passages had been removed in a later edition of The Native’s Return, and it was this edition that had been reprinted as an ASE. Opposition to the title ceased when the record was set straight.
The censorship fight waged in 1944 was spurred by congressional revision of the Soldier Voting Act. After the original law largely failed in making absentee ballots available to servicemen in the 1942 election (only twenty-eight thousand servicemen—out of millions—voted in 1942), Congress committed itself to drafting a new bill to facilitate wartime voting by those serving in the armed forces, as well as all others whose war work required their absence from home (for example, Red Cross volunteers). Instead of having each state set individual and possibly conflicting rules for casting a ballot, the federal law sought to provide a single method by which to cast a vote. As a joint letter to Congress from Navy Secretary Frank Knox and War Secretary Henry Stimson said, “the Services are unable to effectively administer the diverse procedures of 48 States as to 11,000,000 servicemen all over the world in primary, special and general elections.”
Throughout late 1943, Congress debated the language for the new voting bill. As this legislation began to take shape, Ohio senator Robert A. Taft, the brother of Charles P. Taft and a political powerhouse, asserted that some safeguard was needed to prevent the Democratic-led government from rigging the election by distributing pro-Democratic literature to the millions of people in the services. Taft adamantly opposed a fourth term for Roosevelt, and he distrusted the Democratic Party, believing it would disseminate political propaganda to the servicemen unless expressly prohibited from doing so. Taft proposed an amendment to the 1944 Soldier Voting Bill, known as Title V. This provision placed restrictions on amusements distributed to the servicemen, including books, so long as they were provided by the government and made some reference to politics. Just as Charles Taft nearly derailed the 1943 VBC with his threats to discontinue funding, his brother’s amendment to the Soldier Voting Bill would stymie the council’s selection of ASEs and challenge the very freedoms at stake in the war. It is a remarkable coincidence that the greatest menace to the book programs of World War II happened to be a pair of brothers.
The Soldier Voting Bill underwent revisions during the winter of 1944 and returned to the Senate and House of Representatives in March 1944 for a vote. Without any discussion of Taft’s amendment, the Senate approved the bill. Acknowledging that it was not the most effective legislation, senators agreed that it generally improved the likelihood that those who were in the services would have an opportunity to vote. On March 15, the House took up the bill, and a heated partisan debate followed.
It was common knowledge that the vast majority of Americans in the services planned to vote for Roosevelt in the upcoming election. A February 1944 poll of servicepeople in the South Pacific revealed that 69 percent of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines would vote for a fourth term for Roosevelt, and 77 percent preferred to return to the United States under “the present form of government.” Thus, there was a political incentive for Republicans to complicate the procedures for overseas voting, while Democrats strove to simplify it. By the time the bill entered the House for debate in March 1944, it no longer seemed to be about voting, but about both parties manipulating the ballot.
Discussion of the bill in the House deteriorated into a mudslinging contest. Democrats accused Republicans of intentionally making voting difficult. Republicans attacked Democrats for insisting that absentee voters use a “bobtailed ballot” (instead of listing the names of each candidate running for office as ballots on the home front did, the bobtailed ballot required voters to write in the names of each candidate for whom they were voting next to each office at stake in the election: President, Vice President, Senate, etc.). Republicans reasoned that, after twelve years in office, anyone could name the Democratic candidate for president, and the bobtailed ballot would thus favor Roosevelt. Representatives on both sides of the aisle criticized the bill for how complicated it had become. Democratic representative Daniel Hoch said: “In order to get a ballot a soldier must take three distinct oaths. He must literally swear his life away. Then, after all this swearing, if the ballot reaches home in time and is satisfactory to the Governor of his State it will be counted.” “If I were a soldier,” Hoch said, “I think that in disgust I would give it up and would not vote.” Republican representative Leland Ford spoke next: “Of all the hodgepodge, mixed-up measures that have ever come before this body for final determination, this so-called soldier-vote bill is the ultimate.” The bill, he said, was “clear as mud.”
Despite the spirited debate, the House voted the bill into law. Although he did not veto the act, President Roosevelt criticized it, calling it “wholly inadequate” and “confusing.” In the end, if those in the services wanted to vote, they would have to use a bobtailed ballot, and each state was required to provide a list of candidates to the secretaries of war and the Navy for distribution abroad.
Lost in all the bickering, largely ignored, was Senator Taft’s amendment to the bill—Title V. This provision prohibited the government from delivering any “magazine . . . newspaper, motion-picture, film, or other literature or material . . . paid in whole or in part with Government funds . . . containing political argument or political propaganda of any kind designed or calculated to affect the result of any [federal] election.” It sounded simple, but what counted as propaganda? Any work of nonfiction with a political sway? If the act was violated, a person could be criminally charged and convicted. Punishment included a fine of up to $1,000, one year of imprisonment, or both.
The War Department immediately notified the council that the ASEs would be affected by the law. Title V “uses the broadest terms (‘literature or material’) which include every medium of information and entertainment,” the department warned. And the clause “‘political argument or political propaganda of any kind designed or calculated to affect the result’ of a Federal election, is similarly broad in sweep,” it added. In light of the penalty for violating the law, the War Department advised that “reasonable doubt as to whether material . . . is ‘designed or calculated to affect the result of any election’ should be resolved in favor of prohibition.” If a book so much as touched on a political theme, the council was urged not to print it. Naturally, members of the council wished to avoid serving jail time, but they also refused to be bullied into complying with legislation that restricted servicemen’s freedom to read.
Philip Van Doren Stern tried to get around the restriction by asking publishers to grant the council blanket permission to delete any sentences or paragraphs that referenced politics from proposed ASEs to avoid violating Title V. He drafted a letter stating that the “law is quite clear,” and the council would have to adapt to Title V. “This is not a matter of choice, but of necessity,” Stern said. This letter was circulated to a handful of publishers and the War and Navy Departments before being mailed to the council’s entire membership. Stern’s proposal was immediately quashed. “I hope you didn’t send the letter out as it is,” Richard Simon, of Simon & Schuster, replied. Not only was the tone “much too apologetic and frightened,” but “that law is not clear.” The “words ‘political propaganda of any kind designed or calculated to affect the result of any election for the Federal offices mentioned above’ make just about as unclear and loose a phrase as I can think of,” Simon said. Echoing Simon’s disapproval were the Army and Navy, both of which opposed editing books in order to make them acceptable under the law. The Navy noted that any deletions would “almost certainly result in coloring the intent of the author,” and, perhaps more importantly, “such procedure will undoubtedly result in the charge that the War and Navy Departments . . . are presenting ‘half truths’ to the armed forces,” which would be “a most undesirable, if not dangerous, moral effect since there is involved one of the principles for which we are fighting.” Better to omit a book than to edit it.
That same spring, a troubling series of incidents caused council members to wonder whether the government was as solicitous about preserving freedom as it professed. The first surrounded the publication of Lillian Smith’s book, Strange Fruit. While many critics and reviewers praised the book’s bold and poignant handling of a story that touched on important social and cultural issues, it was soon banned in both Boston and Detroit for its obscenity. Boston did not take this ban lightly. Abraham Isenstadt, a Massachusetts bookseller who ignored the ban and sold Strange Fruit at his store, was arrested, charged, and convicted of violating state law by “selling literature containing ‘indecent, impure language, manifestly tending to corrupt morals of youth.’” On appeal, his conviction was affirmed. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts explained that the book’s “four scenes of sexual intercourse,” two of which featured “strongly erotic connotations,” tended to “promote lascivious thoughts and to arouse lustful desire in the minds of” those who read it.
Boston’s book ban became a topic of national discussion because it seemed incompatible with the ongoing war being fought to preserve freedom. In fighting the war of ideas, Americans were told that they should read any book they desired in order to exercise their freedom and protest Hitler’s destruction of books. But not this book, in this city. Yet restrictions on books did not start and end in Boston. Shortly after Boston’s ban of the book, the federal government became involved in policing, and even expanding, the restrictions on Strange Fruit. Beginning in May 1944, the U.S. Post Office Department barred shipment of Strange Fruit and notified the publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock, that if it continued to distribute the book by mail, those responsible could risk prosecution under a federal statute prohibiting the mailing of lewd books. Reynal & Hitchcock defied the Post Office’s restrictions, and said it was willing to accept that risk. The postmaster, however, next broadened his position, announcing that any publication that contained an advertisement for Strange Fruit could not be mailed. Leading newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Herald Tribune and the Saturday Review of Literature, were individually warned by the postmaster to stop running advertisements. Norman Cousins, the editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, publicly rebuked the postmaster’s actions, stating that he had every intention of continuing to sell advertising space to promote Strange Fruit. “Censorship is no trivial matter . . . So far as Americans are concerned it involves their very traditions. Who in the post-office is charged with the responsibility for seeing that these traditions are not easily and ignorantly brushed aside?” “We not only protest your order; we refuse to follow it without due process of law,” Cousins defiantly added.
As the debacle over the ban on Strange Fruit unfolded, the council’s executive committee held an emergency meeting at the Morgan Library in Manhattan to draft a resolution emphasizing the importance of free literature in wartime, and renouncing the “increasing tendency on the part of the government to encroach that freedom.” Between Title V’s ban on ASEs containing even a passing reference to national politics or United States political history, and the Post Office’s stance on mailing Strange Fruit, the council recorded “its anxiety over these manifestations of intolerance on the part of its government.” The council accused the Post Office Department of resorting to “star chamber action in denying the use of the mails to works which deal honestly and courageously with basic problems of our democracy.”
“Censorship of matters other than those affecting security in wartime cannot be left to the arbitrary will of individuals, even if legally authorized, without grave jeopardy to democratic freedom of the press,” the council said. Once passed, this resolution was mailed to President Roosevelt, the postmaster general, the secretaries of war and the Navy, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the president of the Senate.
Next, the council drafted a press release listing books it was forced to reject for publication as ASEs due to Title V: Catherine Drinker Bowen’s best-selling biography of Chief Justice Holmes, Yankee from Olympus; Charles Beard’s acclaimed history of American politics, The Republic; Senator James Mead’s anecdotal account of servicemen’s lives overseas, Tell the Folks Back Home; Mari Sandoz’s novel about a family in Nebraska, Slogum House; and E. B. White’s compilation of articles previously published in magazines, One Man’s Meat. The press release explained that, under normal circumstances, eighty-five thousand copies of these books would have been published as ASEs; however, because of the recent legislation, the council could no longer provide the servicemen with these or any other titles that might offend the law.
Many authors expressed their appreciation for the council’s decision to challenge the law. Banned author Mari Sandoz thanked the council for its “vigorous efforts on behalf of the [banned] books.” Sandoz said that she believed the entire act was an alarming piece of political handiwork, for it did not provide an effective mechanism to streamline absentee voting, and the book provision seemed only to clarify the true nature of the act. “Even temporary infringement of liberty establishes dangerous precedents,” she said. Title V reminded Sandoz of a conference she had attended in 1938, where she met Dr. Friedrich Schönemann, of the University of Berlin. At the time, she did not believe Dr. Schönemann when he said that “the Nazis would not need to establish a government ban on books subversive to their ideals in America. We [Americans] would do it for them.” Now, to her horror, he seemed to be right.
The council decided it was duty bound to wage a fight for the repeal of Title V. From a monetary perspective, it did not matter to the council if one book was disqualified for ASE publication, since another would take its place. Yet the council could not tolerate the censorship of the servicemen’s reading materials, or the precedent set by the legislation. As Archibald Ogden, executive director of the council, grumbled: “It looks as though from now until November, we can publish nothing but ‘Elsie Dinsmore’ and ‘The Bobbsey Twins.’”
In late May 1944, the council began a campaign to pressure Congress to repeal the law. A letter was sent to editors of every major newspaper and magazine in the United States, which explained the council’s ASE program and the effects of the Soldier Voting Act. The council asked that newspapers and magazines, which surely valued the freedom of the press, publish articles that would alert the public to the government’s infringement of the servicemen’s basic freedoms.
The degree of cooperation from the media was extraordinary. Throughout June and July 1944, critical articles were published lamenting the plight of the council as it strove to print a variety of books while the government worked to censor its selections. “Censorship for political reasons is a Fascist device which has no place in the United States,” avowed the Syracuse Post-Standard. It is “ridiculous to set the armed forces as a class apart from civilians in control of reading material.” An article published in Columbia, South Carolina, explained that, “since every voter except those who blindly follow a party line makes his decision on the basis of political, economic, and social thinking, this can only be interpreted by the Army and Navy authorities to mean a ban from service men’s libraries, reading rooms, and moving picture shows, of everything that inspires, however indirectly, social, economic, and political thought.” It was difficult to believe that American libraries and reading rooms were being subjected to a “Goebbels’s purge” because of a federal law, the article concluded. Virginia’s Lynchburg Daily Advance lamented that, under the act, “almost any book except cook books, fairy tales, or text books on such subjects as astronomy and mathematics would be banned.” “If it is to be left to the Adjutant General to decide what the Army is to be permitted to read then we might as well join the Nazis and stop fighting them.” An article in the San Antonio News said: “One would think that the men who fight the Nation’s battles would be quite able to decide for themselves what they would like to read,” and that “maybe they would rather skip voting this year than to have their reading-material censored.”
The Chicago Sun suggested the public not kid itself about the true nature of the act and Title V: it was a Republican move to deprive Roosevelt of a fourth term. “Congress in its wisdom has decreed that fighting men should be insulated from political ‘propaganda.’ The idea was to protect these innocent young men from nefarious attempts to sway them for a F - - - th T - - m.” After considering the books being banned under Title V, the Sun remarked that not one of them had “any remote bearing on the F - - - th T - - m,” and that if they did have any political content, it was “in the same sense that the Constitution or a history of the United States might have it.” The whole episode seemed patently absurd, and the Sun said that the council “does well to protest this silly ban in the strongest terms.”
One of the most exasperating repercussions of Title V was the fact that best-selling books with no apparent political agenda were swept up in the ban. That Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Yankee from Olympus, Charles Beard’s The Republic, and E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat were somehow going to sway the upcoming federal election was nonsensical. After the Rochester Times Union carefully inspected every page of Yankee from Olympus, it concluded that the only portion of the book that could have triggered the ban was a description of a conversation between the chief justice and President Roosevelt that was confined to a single page and did not go beyond an exchange of pleasantries. “If this is ‘political propaganda,’ then so’s your ‘World Almanac,’” the Times Union said. Similarly, a Michigan newspaper scoured Charles Beard’s The Republic, only to find no political partisanship; the book, however, did contain an “excellent discussion of how the fundamental principles of American government evolved from the Constitutional convention.” A favorite anomaly covered by the newspapers was the ban on E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat—a collection of whimsical essays about life in New England that originally appeared in the New Yorker and other periodicals; the very same essays were readily available to the fighting forces in the magazines they received. (White, himself, once admitted that he never understood why One Man’s Meat was banned, but he liked that it was. “It shows somebody read it,” he said.)
The council’s media campaign generated an avalanche of letters to the editors of newspapers and opinion pieces slamming the Soldier Voting Act and demanding its repeal. Democracy on the home front was thriving: people were speaking their minds and criticizing their government. The backlash concerning Title V also showed that the public understood that books were not mere stories; they contained vital information that helped soldiers understand why they were fighting and risking their lives. Books were intertwined with the values at stake in the war, and Americans would not tolerate any restriction on their reading materials.
On symbol-laden Fourth of July, the War Department made an announcement that, due to the Soldier’s Voting Act, it was forced to withdraw several textbooks used in Army education courses. These textbooks, which had been used in teaching history and economics to soldiers for years, had fallen into disrepute because they made at least a passing comment on politics or government. A few days later, Time magazine reported that the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes was forced to censor its news stories in order to avoid offending Title V. For example, when the Rome edition of Stars and Stripes published a story about the Republican candidate for president, Thomas E. Dewey, it was forced to omit Dewey’s criticisms of the Roosevelt administration. Another report said that the Mediterranean edition of Stars and Stripes was forbidden to print Associated Press articles on politics. The U.S. Air Force Institute was compelled to stop offering four of its correspondence courses because certain textbooks fell under the ban. Time commented that these books were “likely to be saved from Congressional book-burning only by the waste-paper salvage campaign.” It seemed incomprehensible that such actions were being taken in order to comply with American legislation. The Saturday Review of Literature diagnosed Congress with a bad case of “censoritis”; the only known cure was repeal of Title V.
On July 3 and 5, 1944, the council met with the Writers’ War Board to strategize their next move. The two organizations agreed that they would personally contact Senator Robert Taft, Title V’s sponsor, to pressure him to support amending or repealing the law. A special committee of council members joined members of the Writers’ War Board, the Authors’ League, and the writers’ organization PEN to draft a formal letter to Senator Taft. The missive began by mentioning the recent publicity that Title V had received, noting that “all of it [was] sympathetic to our point of view.” Striking a conciliatory tone, the letter insisted that no one believed it was Taft’s intent to prevent the distribution of books that fell under a literal interpretation of the bill. Yet best-selling books containing no political propaganda were subject to the ban. The council warned that it would use the press and radio, at home and overseas, to inform the public and servicemen about Title V, and its “implication that the men overseas cannot be trusted with the same reading matter available at home.” The alternative: Taft could meet with the council to come up with a solution.
Lieutenant Colonel Trautman soon informed the council that, after a recent meeting with five Army generals, a decision had been made that the bill would be interpreted even more strictly than before, causing additional books to fall within the scope of the ban. The Army’s position effectively was to double down its support for the council’s attack on the bill. A draft of the council’s meeting minutes reveals that Philip Van Doren Stern “reported that the Army had told him unofficially that they will continue to interpret the bill literally in the hopes that it will force a repeal or revision” of Title V. Stern’s remark was omitted from the final version of the council’s minutes.
Senator Taft, a scion of Ohio’s powerful Taft family, a son of a president himself, and a perennial contender for the White House, was not prone to avoiding battles. Within days of receiving the council’s letter demanding amendment of Title V, the senator sent an unapologetic response, insisting that the council did not seem to understand the act. After noting that any book could be privately purchased and sent to those in the services, Taft emphasized that it was only books purchased with government funds that were affected. Taft smugly noted that “no one can question the wisdom of the provision which prohibits the expenditure of government money to print and distribute books containing political argument and political propaganda just before the 1944 election.” Taft faulted the Army for reading the act much too strictly and added he did not see how The Republic or Yankee from Olympus contained political argument or propaganda. Yet the senator did agree to travel to New York to discuss the legislation and possible revisions to it.
On July 20, Senator Taft met with several members of the council, Lieutenant Colonel Trautman and several other Army representatives, Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review of Literature, and Carl Carmer of the Writers’ War Board. The group met at the Rockefeller Lunch Club in Manhattan, where Taft spoke for roughly fifteen minutes, explaining that it was not the intention of Congress, nor was it his purpose, to limit the supply of printed matter to those fighting the war. He expressed willingness to sponsor amendments to the act that would ameliorate the problems that had arisen. In response, the council and its supporters offered the senator three options: repeal, removal of the criminal punishment clause (making violation of the law practically meaningless), or amendment of the law to prohibit only those books that, when considered in their entirety, were obvious political propaganda.
A representative from the Army spoke next on how Title V had hampered the Army’s massive program of information and education. To avoid violating the law, the Army had adopted the motto “Leave it out when in doubt.” Educational courses were dismantled, and individual books were removed from library shelves. “We believe that the best soldier is an informed soldier,” an Army spokesperson said. “We believe that we can fight a better war and end it sooner with men who know what is happening in the world.” But the recent limitations on books and educational courses had thwarted the Army’s objectives.
Despite his tenaciousness, Senator Taft was in a sensitive political position. He did not want to be seen as supporting censorship of servicemen’s reading materials. Nor did he want to be called out for backtracking on his own legislation. Thus, after meeting with the council, Taft issued a statement, reiterating his long-standing belief that “the general principle of prohibiting government funds for political propaganda is admitted by all, but the provisions of the act are somewhat too strict and make administration by the Army too difficult.” He openly criticized the Army’s interpretation of the law, but conceded that he would sponsor amendments to the act in order to increase its flexibility.
Before Congress took any action, the situation only became worse for Senator Taft. A group of well-respected journalists who covered the July 20 meeting had overheard Taft state that 75 percent of the servicemen would vote for Roosevelt if given a chance, and that he was opposed to soldier voting because those serving overseas “were out of touch with the country, lacking knowledge of issues and candidates, and would quite naturally vote for their Commander-in-Chief.” The journalists who heard these comments published them. As word spread, Taft’s colleagues began to distance themselves from him. For example, Illinois senator Scott Lucas said: “Senator Taft apparently does not yet realize that this is a global war and that our men fighting and flying all over the world may have a better idea than we at home as to what the true issues for America will be in the 1944 election.”
The Army continued to publicize the asinine consequences of Title V. On August 9, news broke that even more censorship was in store for the soldiers when the War Department announced that servicemen were barred from viewing the movie Wilson, a biography of the late president, and the film Heavenly Days, a comedy about a couple who visit Washington, D.C., starring the popular radio duo Fibber McGee and Molly (a film so anodyne, it has been long forgotten). The War Department also confirmed the rumor that all British newspapers were banned from circulation to American troops because these papers would undoubtedly take sides in the election. Two days later, the Army hammered the final nail into Title V’s coffin when it announced that it was forced to prohibit the sale and distribution of the Official Guide to the Army Air Force because it contained a picture of President Roosevelt labeled commander in chief. This was an Army that knew how to win wars at home. Congress had little choice but to act immediately.
By August 15, Senator Theodore Green of the Committee on Privileges and Elections submitted a report stating that amendment of Title V was vital because members of the armed services needed access to a variety of reading materials to sustain morale and offset enemy propaganda. According to Green, the law’s intent was “not to shut off from members of the Army and Navy the news and information accessible generally to civilians in the United States.” In a reference to Senator Taft’s fondness for blaming the Army for too strictly interpreting the law, Senator Green said that “the cure for the situation is certainly not to have the services loosely interpret the law”; rather, Congress had an obligation to correct the law itself. Senator Green recommended that Congress eliminate Title V’s prohibition on materials containing a reference to politics and amend the law to permit distribution of books, magazines, and newspapers that were generally available on the home front. Under the amended law, the only acceptable limitation on the distribution of reading materials would be if “difficulties of transportation or other exigencies of war” prevented books from making their way to the various fronts. It wasn’t just an amendment, it was a full retreat.
With uncharacteristic speed, the proposed amendment to the Soldier Voting Act was passed unanimously by the Senate on August 15, 1944. The following day, the House approved the amendment and sent the final bill to the White House for the president’s signature. By August 24, 1944, the council proudly announced that three of the books that had been previously banned under Title V would be published in ASE format: Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Yankee from Olympus; Charles A. Beard’s The Republic; and E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat. The council also printed Slogum House and Strange Fruit, Bostonians notwithstanding.
The council’s victory in the battle over Title V was one of its greatest achievements. By galvanizing the media to report the issue and inspiring Americans to exercise their freedom of speech to criticize a ludicrous law, the nation proved its democratic mettle. In the words of the council’s executive director, Archibald Ogden, “it is a refreshing example of democracy in action to bring a complete turn-about in both the Senate and the House within the space of less than two months.”
Perhaps the droves of soldiers who voted for Roosevelt in the 1944 election did so because he was the only candidate whose name they could recall and record on their bobtailed ballots. Perhaps the Title V fiasco left such a bitter aftertaste that many Americans were driven to side with Roosevelt rather than censorship-promoting Republicans. Or maybe the nation felt most confident with the man who had led them for twelve years, and the troops supported their commander. Whatever their reasons, in November 1944 voters elected Roosevelt to a fourth term as president by a relatively slim margin of approximately 3 million votes. An estimated 3.4 million votes were cast by absentee ballots under the mechanism provided by the Soldier Voting Act, and that may well have made the difference. When Harvard University issued its 1944 Alumni Bulletin, it drily reported: “Franklin D. Roosevelt, Grad. ’03–’04 . . . No change of address.”