Another Clash With FDR
In May 1940, Taussig again locked horns with now-president Franklin D. Roosevelt, when Massachusetts Senator David I. Walsh invited Taussig to testify at Senate hearings on plans to expand the Navy. Taussig advocated the building of Iowa class battleships and Montana class battleships and offered testimony to the aggressive, imperialistic designs of the Empire of Japan that planned to annex China, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. He warned of the superiority of the Japanese Merchant fleet to that of the US, and the need to replenish US bases in the Pacific and prepare for defense of the Philippines, stating, "I cannot see how we can escape being forced into war based on the present trends of events." He also claimed that the Tanaka Memorial was genuine. Taussig's testimony set off a controversy that lasted in the press for weeks and infuriated FDR who wanted Taussig relieved of his command of Norfolk Navy Yard and the Fifth Naval District. However, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold R. Stark convinced Roosevelt to reconsider and Roosevelt took no action; however, Stark publicly stated that Taussig's views were contrary to the Navy Department's and on 23 April 1940, issued a reprimand that was placed in Taussig's file.
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“When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
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