IN VICTORY'S LIGHT

Evening Star, Issue 25462, 18 April 1945, Page 5

IN VICTORY'S LIGHT

ROOSEVELT'S ENVIABLE DEATH GREATEST CHAMPION OF FREEDOM .MR CHURCHILL PAYS TRIBUTE (Rec. noon.) (RUGBY, April 17. A tribute to the late President Roosevelt was paid in the House' of Commons to-day by Mr Churchill, who moved to pray the King that in conimunicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government he would also graciously be pleased to express on the part of the House the sense of loss which the British Commonwealth and the Empire and the cause of the Allied nations had suffered, as well as their profound sympathy with Mrs Roosevelt, the late President's family, and with the Government and the people of the United States. ■' .* , Mr Churchill said that since the wai began he and the President had exchanged over 1,700 messages. "The majority dealt with those more difficult points which had come to be discussed between the heads of the Go. vernments only after final solutions had not been reached at other places. | To this correspondence must be added our nine meetings, comprising in all about 120 days' close personal contact. I felt the utmost confidence in his up- ' right, inspiring character and outlook, and my personal regard and affection are beyond my power to express today. His lovo of his own country, his respect for its constitutions, his power of gauging the tides and the currents of its mobile public opinion, all these were evidenced, but, added to them, were tho 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 forever. . . "Mr Roosevelt's physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel he bore up against it in all the many years of his tumultuous life. Not "one man in 10,000,000, stricken crippled as he was. would have attempted to plunge into a life of exercise and hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in 10,000,000 would have tried. Not one in a generation would have succeeded. He not only entered this sphere, and not only acted vehemently in it, but he became indisputahly 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 to-day flows out in all fullness. ROOSEVELT'S PRESCIENCE. "There is no doubt Mr Roosevelt foresaw the great danger closing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience than most well-informed people on the other side of the Atlantic, and he urged with.all his power military preparation before peace-time activities could be brought to expansion. There were never moments of doubt, as the quarrel opened, regarding the side on which 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 a great anxiety because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or, as survivors, cast down under the German yoke," said Mr Churchill. " 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 oeople. He and they felt the blitz of 1940 and 1941. when Hitler set himself to rub out our cities and our country, as much as any of us did, perhaps more indeed. There was also at that time, in spite of Field-Marshal Wavell's.victories —all the more indeed because of the reinforcements which were sentfrom this country to him—apprehension widespread in the United States that we should be invaded by Germany after the fullest preparations for invasion in 1941. ' MOST UNSELFISH ACT OF HISTORY.

" About that time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and most unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power and, for all purposes of the war effort, to make us. as it were, a much more numerous community.

" In the autumn I met him for 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 for both our peoples and other, peoples of the world. . "All this time, in deep, dark, deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing their act of treachery and greed. When next we met at Washington the Japanese had declared war. and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over land and sea through many difficulties and disappointments, but always with a broadening measure of success. AILING HEALTH AT YALTA. "At Yalta I noticed Mr Roosevelt x-us ailing. His captivating smile and his gay, charming manner had not deserted him, but his face had a transparency and an air of purification, and often there was a (far-away look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him at Alexandria I must confess I had an undefinable sense of fear that his health and strength were on the ebb. Nbthiiuz 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 days of peace the foundations of 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.

" With her left hand she was leading the advance of our conquering Allied armies into the heart of Germany; with her right hand, at the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking the power of Japan. And all the time her ships, munitions, and food supplies of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale all her allies, great and small, in the course of the struggle. All this was in that

cause of human freedom and social justice to which so much of his life had been given. ~.,,. , , c " He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling numerous inter-related parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with a firm step and a sure conviction to carry on the task to its appointed end. EPITAPH. " For us it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who evei" brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old."