CROWDED CAREER

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25177, 14 April 1945, Page 9

CROWDED CAREER

EARLY LIFE RECALLED ENTRY INTO POLITICS LONG TERM AS PRESIDENT President Roosevelt came of an old Knickerbocker family, which was by no means typically American. His father, James Roosevelt, owned the estate of Hyde Park, near Poughkeepsie. New York State, and the only child of a second marriage was born there in an old colonial mansion on January 30, 1882. He was a good athlete when young, hut his passion was the sea and boatsailing, When the Spanish-American War broke out, he ran away and tried to join the Navy, but an attack of measles sent him home again. This was the first of three occasions in which illness changed the course of his career. The second was in 1918, when double pneumonia, caught in France, prevented him from leaving politics for the Navy, and the third was the onset of infantile paralysis in 1921, which crippled him for life. With Woodrow Wilson From Harvard, he went to the Columbia University law school, married his cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1905, and joined one of the most aristocratic New York law firms. In spite of influences which should have made him a Republican in politics, like his relative, Theodore Roosevelt, he early showed Liberal tendencies of a progressive kind which inclined him toward the Democrat Party. In 1910 3 without aid from the party machine, he won a hitherto Republican seat in the New York State Senate. He proved to be an independent and insurgent senator, arid worki- • uccessfully for the return of Woodrow Wilson to the United States Senate under the then existing system of election by State senates. Wilson, in return, on being elected President in 1913, appointed him Assistant Secretary to the Navy under Josephus Daniels. In this congenial post, lie did extremely useful work for some years, until America's entry into the First World War in 1917 compelled the expansion of the* Navy, a course he had : advocated unsuccessfully some time before. He visited Europe in 1918 in time to supervise the winding-up of American naval affairs there after the armistice, and next year attended Wilson at the Peace Conference. Tn 1920 he was chosen as Democrat candidate for the Vice-Presidency. After helping Wilson with his campaign for re-election on a platform of the League of Nations, he shared in the defeat. Stricken With Paralysis The turning-point of Mr Roosevelt's life came in 1921, when he was 39. He was seized by infantile paralysis. Having rapidly lost ihe use of both legs, he refused to consider spending the rest of his life as an invalid at Hyde Park, but found ways of continuing his law practice. Three years later he benefited by treatment at Warm Springs, Georgia, and sank half his fortune in developing it as a spa. Association with Alfred E. Smith brought him back into politics, and when Mr Smith was nominated Democrat candidate for the Presidency lie succeeded him as Governor of New York State. There, in four years, he carried out a miniature "New Deal." When he was chosen as Democrat candidate for President in 19.T2, America was in the throes of the great economic depression. President Herbert Hoover and the Republicans had proved incapable of finding remedies and the whole country was looking desperately for leadership. Mr Roosevelt led his party to victory for the first time since the days of President Cleveland. He already had a programme of measures for dealing with the innumerable bank failures, unemployment, distress on farms and a host of other problems. He assembled around him a "brains trust" of economists and other experts from outside the political field and set to work on radical lines that had little contact with orthodox methods of public finance. In 1936 he was re-elected by the largest majority on record, in the midst of a prolonged battle with the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of much *>f his legislation. This struggle tended when two Judges resigned and two diplomatically changed front. The Eise o 1 Hitler When this contest was over it became possible to dose down some of the earlier depression relief agencies, but the "New Deal" continued in a long series of measures, establishing the bargaining rights of trade unions, controlling the operations of companies and financial houses and introducing social insurance, which was many years overdue. It was a coincidence that both Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler, two men poles apart, came to power in the spring of 1933, largely as the result of economic depression. Mr Roosevelt watched the rise of fascism and national socialism with uneasiness. He joined in sanctions against Italy over Abyssinia and in 1938 twice appealed to Hitler in rain on behalf of the menaced Czech people. The Third Term Eiected for a third term in 1940, he found that, with Britain standing almost alone and the Germans over-running Western Europe, America must give ( "all aid to the Allies short of war." This developed presently into the role of "the arsenal of democracy." The Neutralitv Act of 1935, which imposed "cash and carry." had been repealed, and early in 1941 Congress passed the Lease ami Lend Bill, a child of the President's brain, which "took the dollar , sign out of"' the supply of munitions a 'id other war needs to the Allies. America's fu'rther steps toward war— . the trading of destroyers for bases, the J Atlantic Charter, the occupation of Ice- * land, the arming of merchant-men and ; the "shoot at sight" order —are now a < familiar story. When the" Pearl Harbour bombard- j Kent plunged his country into war, Mr I Roosevelt kept a firm hand on the helm i 8s Commander-in-Chief as well as Presi- ( dent. Like Mr Churchill, he travelled to 1 conferences, at Casablanca, Cairo, i leher&n and finally this year at Yalta. 1

> Through most of his career Mr Rooso- " velt was helped by two remarkable women, his wife, whose position in . American life is of her own making, as New Zealanders who saw her in this country can realise, and his mother, whose characteristics he inherited and who died in 1941 at the ripe age of 86. He leaves four sons, all in the armed forces, and a dozen grandchildren. The eldest son, Colonel James Roosevelt, has visited New Zealand. : 1