The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

62 DECEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL my fellow internees by repairing to the station buffet and eating a breakfast of several eggs.” It was hours before the rest of the intern- ees could eat to their fill in friendly Lisbon. On June 1, for the hundreds aboard the Swedish-flagged liner S.S. Drottningholm , chartered to ferry diplomats and others across the Atlantic, there was nomore welcome sight than Lady Liberty and New York’s skyline. In the minds of Minister Pell, Mrs. Gunther, Chargé Morris, First Secretary Kennan and numerous others, it was a bittersweet ending to ordeals begun five months before. b Eighty years later, Dec. 11, 1941, marks a day when the world descended with head-spinning rapidity into total global war. Wrote Secretary Hull: “The voices of diplomacy were now sub- merged by the roar of the canon.” War forced upon the State Department and Foreign Service challenges never before experienced and scarcely imagined. They ranged from waging economic warfare, while preserving alliances and hemispheric solidarity, to supporting governments in exile and shaping public opinion while planning for postwar peace. State vied for influence in a time of war, not always with success. Competing agencies proliferated; personnel shortages persisted; and FDR, sometimes known as the Juggler, frequently kept his own counsel. Nonetheless, for the Foreign Service, staff and families, ahead lay ordeals of separations, perilous journeys and risky assignments. Total global war would continue to test the mettle of State and the Foreign Service until the guns of war fell silent on Sept. 2, 1945. n On Dec. 11, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the declaration of war against Germany, which leads the United States into World War II in Europe. On his left is Senator Tom Connally, who holds a watch to mark the exact time of the declaration. The S.S. Drottningholm in Gothenburg Harbor, Sweden, circa 1943. The spring before, in 1942, her first westbound voyage during WWII had carried U.S. diplomats Leland Morris and George Kennan, and many others, from Lisbon to New York City. FARMSECURITYADMINISTRATION/OFFICEOFWAR INFORMATION WIKIMEDIA