PRESIDENT MOURNED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 91, 18 April 1945, Page 4

PRESIDENT MOURNED

SERVICE IN LONDON

TRIBUTE BY COMMONS

Rec. 11 a.m

RUGBY, April 17,

The King and Queen headed the congregation of between 2000 and 3000 which crowded St. Paul's Cathedral today in mourning for President Roosevelt. The heads of States present included Queen Wilhelmina, King Haakon, King George of the Hellenes, King Peter of Yugoslavia, and the President of Poland, who were joined by Princess Juliana, the Crown Prince of Norway, the Princess Royal, and the Duchess of Kent. The British Empire was represented by the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr. P. Fraser, the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. F. M. Forde, the High Commissioners for the Dominions and Southern Rhodesia, and the representatives of India. The congregation also included the Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, members of the War Cabinet, the Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the Fighting Services. The American Ambassador, Mr. John G. Winant, read the lesson, and at the end of the service the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was sung. It was followed'by the ."Last Post" and "Reveille," and a peal of muffled bells tolled as the congregation left the Cathedral. MOTION IN COMMONS. A tribute to President Roosevelt was paid in the House of Commons today by Mr. Winston Churchill, who moved to pray the King that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government he would also be graciously pleased to express on the part of the House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations had sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family, and with the Government and people of the United States. INSPIRED CONFIDENCE. Mr. Churchill said that since the war began he and' the President had exchanged over 1700 messages. "The majority dealt with those more difficult points which come to be discussed between the heads of Governments only after final solutions have not been reached at other places," he said. "To this correspondence must be ' added our nine meetings, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact. "I felt the utmost confidence in his upright,- inspiring character and outlook, and a personal regard and affection beyond my power to express today. His love of his own country, his respect for its Constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public "opinion, all this was evidenced, but, added to this, were the bearings of that generous heart, which was always stirred to anger and action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is a bitter loss indeed for humanity that these heartbeats are still for ever. REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT. "President Roosevelt's physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it in all the many years of his tumultuous life. . "Not one man in ten million stricken and crippled as he was, would hay eattempted to plunge into a life of exercise and hard and ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten million would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded. "Not only in entering this sphere, not only acting vehemently in it, he became indisputably master of the scene. In this extraordinary triumph of the spirit over the flesh and of will power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife, whose high ideals marched with, his own and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons today flows out in all its fullness. FORESAW WORLD'S PERIL. "There is no doubt that the^President foresaw the great danger^losing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience than the most wellinformed people on the other side of the Atlantic, and he urged, with all his power, military preparation before peacetime activities, could be brought to expansion. There was never a moment's doubt, as the quarrel opened, on which side his sympathies lay. The fall of France, and what seemed to most people outside these islands, the impending destruction of Great Britain were, to him, agony. "Although he never lost faith, there was also great anxiety because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or our survivors cast down under the German yoke. REGARD FOR BRITAIN. ''The bearing of the British nation in that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and the members of his War Mission with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of from 1940 to 1941 when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, perhaps more indeed. .There was also, at that time, in spite of General Wavell's victories—all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him—apprehension wides£read in the United States that we should be invaded by Germany after in e i94l lest preparations for invasion INVENTION OF LEND-LEASE. "About that time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called- lend-lease, which will stand lortn as the most unselfish, unsordid ?5v nC ThpCiffOf f any c°untry j n all history. The effect of this was to greatly increase the British fighting power and for all purposes of the war effort to make us, as it were, a much more numerous community. . "Irl the autumn I met the President tor the first time during the war in Newfoundland, and together we drew up the declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter, and which will, I trust, long remain a guide tor both our peoples and the other peoples of the world. "AH this time, in deep, dark, and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washington, the Japanese had declared war, and both our countries were in arms.' shoulder to shoulder. VICTORIOUS ADVANCE. "Since then we have advanced over land and sea, through many difficulties and disappointments, but always with a broadening measure of success. "At Yalta, I noticed the President was ailing. His captivating smile his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him, but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a far-away look in his eyes. When I took my leave of mm at Alexandria, I must confess I had an undefinable sense of fear that his health and strength were on the ebb. "Nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the very end he faced his tasks unflinchingly. As the saying goes, he died in harness, and we may* well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors, and airmen who, side by side with ourselves, are carrying out their tasks to the end in all parts of the world. "What an enviable death was his. He had brought his country through the worst of its perils. Victory had cast its shining beam upon him. He had broadened and stabilised, in the days of peace, the foundations of the American life and Union. In war he had raised the strength of mind and the glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. WAR OF TWO HEMISPHERES. "With her left hand she was leading the advance of our conquering Allied armies into the heart of Germany, with her right, at the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking the power of Japan, and all the time ships of munitions, food, and supplies of every kind were aiding, on a gigantic scale, all her allies, great and small, in the course of the struggle "But.all this had been no more than worldly power and grandeur,-had not that cause of human freedom' and social justice to which so much of hislife had been given added lustre to all this power.and pomp of!warlike might