World's Man

It was nearly midnight in London. Sentry-boxed Downing Street lay quiet save for the tramp of guards. Inside No. 10 a taut secretary hurried to the Prime Minister's door, knocked impatiently, turned the glass knob. Winston Churchill stood beside his desk, reading a sheaf of reports. The secretary handed him a note. "Sir," he quavered, "President Roosevelt died a short time ago." The Prime Minister's face paled. He sat down, motionless for five full minutes. Then he lifted his head, with the heaviness of a man who is suddenly very lonely. He whispered: "Get me the Palace." He informed the King, then called Washington, then labored with sad heart far into the night over the words he would speak in memoriam. . . .

It was 2 a.m. in Moscow. At U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman's Spasso House a gay party was breaking up when the news came. The shocked Ambassador telephoned Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov, who sped the word on to Marshal Joseph Stalin and then drove over to Spasso House to voice his condolences. Behind the Kremlin's pink walls lights burned late and long, as Franklin Roosevelt's host at Yalta wrote messages to Franklin Roosevelt's widow and to his successor: "My sympathy in your great sorrow. . . . The Soviet people highly value . . . the leader in the cause of insuring the security of the whole world. .. ."

It was 6 a.m. in Chungking. Dawn poked through the chill Yangtze mist. Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, ever an early riser, was at breakfast when an aide brought him the news. He left his food untasted, withdrew for meditation. Hours later he sent his thoughts to Mrs. Roosevelt: "I am deeply grieved. . . . The profound sorrow of the Chinese people . . . the deep sense of gratitude they bear for him. . . . His name will be a beacon of light to humanity. . . ."

Leader's Man. These men spoke not only for their nations but for themselves. They had met Franklin Roosevelt face to face, had broken bread with him, heard his infectious laugh, studied with him the problems of war & peace. He had been their surest common link, the tolerant architect of their coalition. And something of what they felt was felt in like degree by leaders of the United Nations everywhere.

France's Charles de Gaulle felt it, though he and Franklin Roosevelt supposedly reacted on each other like flint and steel. Head bowed, the General signed his name in the register of bereavement at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Pope Pius XII felt it. He was at his desk in the Vatican when word came. Britain's King George felt it. He and Queen Elizabeth, remembering a past picnic at Hyde Park, had been looking forward to a visit soon from Franklin Roosevelt and to putting him up at Buckingham Palace. Now their Court Circular, for the first time in history, recorded the death of a foreign chief of state.

The sense of personal loss, the impulse to render homage were universal. From the St. Lawrence to the Amazon, across Europe and the Middle East, to the Orient and the Antipodes, the leaders had known Franklin Roosevelt at firsthand. In Ottawa William Lyon Mackenzie King expressed Canada's feeling: it is "as if one of our very own had passed away." South Africa's great Jan Christian Smuts ("We two Dutchmen got along splendidly," he had said of his first meeting with Franklin Roosevelt, at the Cairo Conference in November 1943) paid a simple, heartfelt tribute: "His passing leaves us very poor indeed. .. . ." People's Man. Not Lincoln as a legend, nor Wilson, beyond his brief hour of triumph, had been known so well to the plain people of the earth. They felt they had lost a friend, the American who to them was all that they wanted America to be, and they feared the times to come without him.

Britons were shocked and gloomy. The usually imperturbable BBC had a moment of emotion: "most tragic night of the war. . . ." Famed Cartoonist David Low, who is seldom kind, spoke for Britain with a true and tender pen (see cut). Londoners bowed their heads in daffodil-blooming parks as military bands played The Star-Spangled Banner.

For the most part, their spoken words lost meaning in newsprint. None quoted last week came closer to the common English heart than the words of a British private during the Presidential campaign last year: "Wot do I know about it? All I know is this: there's bloody little future 'ere. . . .But blokes what come through ought to 'ave the right to decent 'omes, decent wages and money enough to put by to take care of our babies. I've seen F.D.R.

on the cinema screen and I likes him." Of President Truman most Britons knew nothing. "But he must have something in him," some of them said, "or he wouldn't have satisfied Roosevelt."

Frenchmen grieved and worried. A Parisian flower-vendor propped a black headline, Roosevelt est mort, against his cart of bouquets -- "for the death of a savior," he said. A bank clerk cried: "La voix de l'Amerique est diminuee de moitie -- America's voice is reduced by half!" Hundreds signed the Embassy register. Hundreds sent cards of regret to Americans whom they had never known. Frenchmen came up to Americans in the streets, shook hands, and said: "We have lost our best friend. . . . What will happen to us now?"

Italians wept: "We have lost our sincerest friend!"

History's Man. Yugoslavs had just finished a day of dancing and singing in Belgrade's squares to celebrate their new pact with Russia. The news from America smothered every jollity. Marshal Tito's Government decreed a four-day closing of theaters, cinemas, concerts. It banned music and dancing in restaurants. Hour after hour people called at the U.S. Embassy to voice their sorrow: "We have lost our best friend."

Russians were stunned -- although they knew from the Yalta newsreels that Franklin Roosevelt had become a tired and aging man. They honored him as no foreigner had been honored before -- with black-bordered flags above the Kremlin, with memorial broadcasts and exhibits. Varvara Kruichkov, the war-widowed chambermaid who had dusted the President's apartment at Yalta, remembered his friendly "Spasibo -- Thank you," and paid the tribute of all the proletariat: "He was a great man." In Moscow's streets people said to Americans: "Kak Zhalko! --What a pity!" And they asked: "Who is this Truman?"

Thus the story ran around the earth. Palestinians prayed each in his separate fashion, in church, synagogue and mosque," for the man who had gone. Indians saw "a bleak sad future" -- they voiced their fore boding to passing G.I.s: "Sahib very bad news. Your President is dead ... a hard working man for war, a friend of poor. . . ."

Chinese clustered swiftly as the wet and shiny newspapers were pasted on Chung king's walls. Solemnly they spelled out the black news. Teachers told their pupils, and some cried openly over Lo Tsung-t'ung (President Roosevelt), the man who symbolized America's good will and her good help. A puzzled ricksha man asked: "But who killed him? Who killed him?" A peasant sadly shook his head: "Szu-te t'ai tsao liao!--It was too soon that he died." One Chinese driver turned to an American on an Army jeep, mustered all the English he possessed and said: "I am sorry for you."

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