The Pittsburgh Press (April 13, 1945)
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT DIES
Truman takes up fight for Roosevelt’s ideals
All world saddened by President’s death – funeral tomorrow
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
WASHINGTON – Franklin D. Roosevelt, for 12 unprecedented years President of the United States, died yesterday – a casualty in history’s greatest war. Last night, at 7:08 p.m. ET, Harry S. Truman became the nation’s 32nd President.
Mr. Roosevelt died suddenly in “The Little White House” at Warm Springs, Georgia, as armies he helped to muster drove momentarily closer to final victory over Nazi Germany.
This morning, President Truman took over the White House responsibility, reaffirmed his pledge to prosecute the war with full vigor, and promised to strive for the high ideals of his predecessor.
Congress, chiefs of the fighting forces and foreign policy leaders quickly closed ranks behind Mr. Truman’s pledge of quick victory and firm peace as a memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
To address Congress Monday
Mr. Truman moved quickly into action. Within a few hours of taking over, he had gone to Capitol Hill and arranged to make a formal declaration of his objectives before a joint Congressional session at 1 p.m. Monday. The address will be broadcast. He also may speak by radio to the Armed Forces Tuesday night.
Worn out at 63, Mr. Roosevelt died as other forces fighting in freedom’s name foretold the doom of militarist Japan.
He died on the eve of what he had hoped would be the inauguration of an era of peace in a world at long last free from want and fear.
Mr. Roosevelt died at 4:35 p.m. of “a massive cerebral hemorrhage.” Mr. Truman took the oath from Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone less than three hours later.
San Francisco parley to go on
The new Chief Executive’s first statement was:
It will be my effort to carry on as I believe the President would have done, and to that end I have asked the Cabinet to stay on with me.
Mr. Truman’s second act as President was to instruct Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr. to go ahead “as planned” with what perhaps was Mr. Roosevelt’s dearest project – the United Nations Conference at San Francisco April 25 to chart a road to peace on earth.
Mr. Roosevelt’s body will be brought here tomorrow. Mrs. Roosevelt went to Warm Springs by plane last night.
Funeral services – in the East Room of the White House at 4 p.m. tomorrow – will be simple, and restricted to Government heads, the family and friends. The President will be buried on his beloved ancestral estate at Hyde Park Sunday at 10 a.m.
Members of the Roosevelt family began gathering today at the White House. Daughter Anna Boettiger was already there. Three daughters-in-law, Mrs. Elliott Roosevelt, the former movie star Faye Emerson; Mrs. James Roosevelt and Mrs. John Roosevelt arrived this morning.
Brig. Gen. Elliott Roosevelt was en route by plane from England. Col. James Roosevelt was on the way from the Pacific but it was doubtful whether he would arrive in time for the funeral. Two other sons, John and Franklin Jr., are overseas and will not be able to attend.
Presidential Adviser Harry Hopkins left Rochester, Minnesota, by Army plane for Washington.
The funeral train will arrive at the Union Station here at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
White House Secretary Jonathan Daniels said the body will not lie in state. He added that the President did not want flowers.
Bishop Angus Dunn, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Rev. Howard S. Wilkinson of St. Thomas’ Church in Washington, and the Rev. John C. McGee of St. John’s Church, Washington, will officiate at the White House services.
Rev. W. George Anthony of St. James Church, Hyde Park, will officiate at burial.
Entire world shocked
The President’s death before realization of the victory he worked so hard to assure shocked the world and stunned this capital. It occurred on a pleasant spring day in a charming little room overlooking a green and lovely Georgia valley.
He died in his quarters at the Warm Springs Foundation which he called his “Second Home.” He called it that because in Warm Springs’ healing waters, he had often found surcease from infantile paralysis, the affliction which he had borne without murmur since 1924.
He had gone there in a vain effort to throw off the weariness which seamed his face and sagged his shoulders after perhaps the most momentous event of his international career – the Big Three meeting at Yalta.
The news of Mr. Roosevelt’s death was flashed to Washington from Warm Springs shortly after 4:35 p.m. The President’s old friend, White House Secretary Stephen T. Early, broke the news to Mrs. Roosevelt. She took it with shoulders squared and head high. She said: “I am more sorry for the people of the country and the world than I am for us.”
Then she cabled a brief message to each of the President’s four sons, all of whom are fighting in this greatest of wars.
She told them their father did his job to the end as he would want them to do. She said bless you all and all our love and signed herself, “Mother.”
Served 12 years
Mr. Roosevelt, the first wartime President to die in office, had served 12 years, one month and eight days of the unprecedented four terms to which he had been elected. Mr. Truman had served as Vice President since a few moments after noon last January 20.
The oath was administered to Mr. Truman in the Cabinet room of the White House.
Mr. Truman picked up a Bible resting on the end of the big conference table, held it with one hand, and placed his right hand on top while Justice Stone pronounced the oath from memory.
No Vice President
There will be no successor as Vice President to Mr. Truman. In the event of his death, a statute provides that he would be succeeded by the Secretary of State, in this instance Mr. Stettinius.
Shortly after announcement of Mr. Roosevelt’s death, the Cabinet converged on the rambling white building where the Roosevelts have lived so long. Congressional leaders too began hurrying to the White House gate.
Mrs. Roosevelt departs
Shortly after 7 p.m., Mrs. Roosevelt – tall, erect, and all in black – left the White House for the airport and Warm Springs.
Her daughter, Mrs. Boettinger, escorted her to a black limousine.
Mrs. Roosevelt’s face was drawn, and gray. The party lingered a few minutes as daughter Anna, incongruously wearing a bright red suit, leaned against the open door and exchanged a last conversation with her mother. As the cavalcade started off, Mrs. Roosevelt looked out at a sprinkling of saddened servants and reporters and slightly bowed her head.
Mr. Truman left the White House shortly after he was sworn in with the announced intention of “going home – to bed.”
Truman assumes U.S. highest post
Conferences with Army and Navy leaders were high on the new President’s list today.
Mr. Truman walked briskly into the White House at 9 a.m. and quickly called for the leaders of the nation’s war effort to meet with him at 11.
For 55 minutes he talked with Secretary of War Stimson, Secretary of Navy Forrestal, Adm. William D. Leahy, Gen. George C. Marshall and Adm. Ernest J. King.
They left the conference grim-lipped and silent.
A mellow day
It was a mellow day in Washington, soft with the April sunshine. Outside the White House there was little to indicate that the helm of the nation had changed hands at a critical moment in the world’s history.
But inside, in the cool oval room where Franklin D. Roosevelt had guided American destiny, sat a new President and Commander-in-Chief.
Within three hours of his first working day as President, Mr. Truman had shattered his first precedent.
After conferring with military and diplomatic chiefs, he drove to Capitol Hill for a luncheon conference with the leaders of Congress.
Mr. Truman stepped from a black limousine under the watchful eyes of Secret Service men and walked into the White House with a springy step.
Fulton calls
The first caller of his administration was Hugh Fulton, counsel for the Senate War Investigating Committee when Mr. Truman was its chairman. Mr. Fulton, who came to the White House with the President and spent more than an hour with him, is expected to be one of Mr. Truman’s closest advisers.
One of Mr. Truman’s first official acts was the signing of a formal proclamation announcing to the world that President Roosevelt had died and that the former Vice President had been installed as his successor.
Sleep in old apartment
Last night, the Trumans slept in their five-room Connecticut Avenue apartment in Northwest Washington. There they will remain a little while before moving to the White House. But everything last night was beginning to change.
The Secret Service guard which had been somewhat of a formality – and a bit of an innovation, too – was imposed on Mr. Truman in earnest. The modest man from Missouri was discovering himself one of the world’s great public figures with responsibilities to match.
New managing director
The richest nation in the world was adjusting itself to a new managing director. In the sharpest sense of the phrase, Mr. Truman was on the spot, confronted with as difficult a job as this nation ever entrusted to any man.
Mr. Truman will be 61 on May 8.
Twice elected to the Senate after a career in Missouri politics, Mr. Truman became Vice President last January 20. Then in the sequence of a heartbeat yesterday, he became the head of the greatest going concern on earth.
Trumans to attend funeral
President Truman and his family, quiet, gray-haired Mrs. Truman and slim, blond daughter Mary Margaret, will travel north on the Roosevelt funeral train. The Cabinet and the Army and Navy brass, great figures of Congressional and judicial life may go, too.
The new President is a quiet, easy-going, smiling fellow. He can get tough, though. This politically sensitive Capital would put him down as somewhat more conservative than Mr. Roosevelt but inclined toward the underdog. He’s not so left-of-center, if at all.
The men who know him here are confident today that President Truman begins his administration hoping to approach most problems the way he believes Mr. Roosevelt would have approached them.
Changes probable
Above all there is agreement that the new President is a humble man, profoundly impressed by the bigness of his new job and the necessity for surrounding himself with the most competent advisers obtainable.
Almost inevitably there will be White House changes and perhaps in time some Cabinet shifts. The late President’s closest advisers – outside the membership of the Roosevelt family – were Harry L. Hopkins and Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, associates of his New York gubernatorial days. Their era of great influence probably is coming toward a close.
Hurrying to Washington is James F. Byrnes, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and until a few days ago director of the Office of War Mobilization. Mr. Byrnes resigned less devoted to Mr. Roosevelt than he had been. He was among those bitterly disappointed at the Democratic National Convention last summer. Mr. Byrnes, Sen. Alben W. Barkley (D-Kentucky) and some others thought they had the nod from Mr. Roosevelt to seek the vice-presidential nomination in an open field.
Wallace hardest hurt
Hardest hurt of all was Henry A. Wallace, then Vice President and now Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Roosevelt flashed the red light against Byrnes, Barkley and the rest. He left even Wallace stranded and let the word be passed that Harry S. Truman was the man.
With Mr. Roosevelt died the force that held together the opposing segments of the New Deal-Democratic Party. Political Washington foresees that about next Monday there will begin a contest between Wallace, the spokesman of the left wing, and the leaders of more conservative party elements for the new President’s support. If the White House swings away from the policies of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the battle between Mr. Truman and Mr. Wallace is on.
It will come more on domestic issues than foreign affairs. Mr. Truman has not been profoundly informed on international questions, as he would explain even if he were not asked.
Under him the State Department will have a freer hand than under Mr. Roosevelt who was more often than not his own Secretary of State. But Mr. Truman will do everything he can in the field of world collaboration for peace.
Close ties to Congress
And the new president will look to Congress for advice more quickly than Mr. Roosevelt did. He is legislatively minded with a flair for friendship among legislators. This promises for a time, at least, enormously better relations between the White House and Capitol Hill.
Homely and colloquial in conversation, Mr. Truman expresses himself about as your neighbor might. One of his most recent informal remarks on post-war problems went like this:
There’s nothing I can do about it because I’m a political eunuch (he rated the influence of the vice presidency pretty low). But I’d do anything in the world I could to prevent another war.
The new President is expected to translate that pledge into action by maintaining the closest possible association with the Senate – all the Senate – as the San Francisco conferees negotiate toward agreement. The man from Missouri knows his Senate inside out.
Likes a drink
There should be nothing stiff or formal about his conferences with his former colleagues. If anyone is to be shocked by it, they may as well know now that the President of the United States likes a drink before lunch – a good stiff one. And if the company is good, he’ll take two – a bird can’t fly on one wing.
There’ll be many a pre-luncheon conference at the White House in the next four years which should avoid many a bruising battle on the floor of House or Senate.
Changes to be slow
With Mr. Truman, any changes will be slow. His inclination is expected to be to listen more to Democratic conservatives than Mr. Roosevelt ever would do. But he knows and likes many of the left wingers, too. Even Hopkins, one of the most controversial Roosevelt administration figures, may be expected to be around for some time.
Mr. Hopkins has been the late President’s confidante in great matters of state. He has known the secrets that Mr. Stettinius on occasion has blushed for not knowing. Possessing the knowledge that he does, Hopkins may be indispensable to Mr. Truman for a time. They are alike in some ways. It could be that a partnership would develop, but if so, it would be on Mr. Truman’s terms.
What of Cabinet?
There are Washingtonians who feel the new President is not favorably inclined toward all of Mr. Roosevelt’s Cabinet personnel. But the professional military and naval command of the war is believed to be on the job for the duration. Adm. William D. Leahy should make as excellent a chief of staff for President Truman as for President Roosevelt.
Col. Harry Vaughn will become a powerful White House figure now. He was a World War I buddy of Mr. Truman’s and presently is his military aide. Hugh Fulton was counsel of the “Truman Committee” which plowed up so many of the war effort’s errors and made the new President a sufficient national figure to be chosen last summer to be Mr. Roosevelt’s running mate. Mr. Fulton will be appearing around the White House any time now.
Hannegan is popular
Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert E. Hannegan is another man to watch. It was Mr. Hannegan who broke the news to Mr. Roosevelt last spring that he would avoid a lot of trouble if he would scuttle Vice President Wallace for the 1944 campaign. Mr. Hannegan managed the floor fight that nominated Mr. Truman. Furthermore, it was Mr. Hannegan who helped Mr. Roosevelt make up his mind that Mr. Truman was the man he wanted. Mr. Hannegan and Mr. Truman are fellow Missourians. If there is anything within the President’s gift that Mr. Hannegan wants – such as the postmaster generalship, for instance – like as not the chairman could have it.
The political firm of Truman, Hannegan & Co. is not the one with which the CIO-Communist-Left-wing elements of the late President Roosevelt’s party would prefer to do business. So far as is known, Sidney Hillman of the CIO’s Political Action Committee has not met Mr. Truman since the bruising day on which he was nominated for Vice President in Chicago.
Charges recalled
That nomination came amid charges that it was being obtained by unfair means.
“Shady city bossism,” shouted the CIO’s Richard T. Frankensteen from the convention floor, “has even less place in international affairs than in American life.”
Frankensteen was talking about Hannegan and the candidate – Mr. Truman. Perhaps he was alluding to the fact that the new President got his political start under the guidance of old Tom Pendergast, the Missouri boss who died the other day, a paroled felon.
His Pendergast beginnings have been thrown at Mr. Truman from every angle. He never denied them once. Instead, he defended the old man on any and all occasions. Long after Pendergast was disgraced, the new President was his champion. When Pendergast died, Mr. Truman sped to his funeral. and he made no secret of that. When the term of Maurice Milligan, U.S. attorney in Missouri, was expiring this year. Mr. Truman proposed that he be supplanted by another. It was Milligan who sent Old Tom to prison. The President of the United States does not forget his friends.
Record cited
Four lines in the Congressional Directory tell all that Mr. Truman cared to put there as a permanent record of his life and times. His associates attribute that partly, even largely, to modesty. Party it is attributed to the fact that Mr. Truman’s career was not distinguished until 1936.
He had a good World War I record and is proud of it. A little black book contains the names and addresses of most of the men with whom he served in France. He had country jobs from the Jackson County Pendergast machine and he once went broke as a haberdasher. He’d tell you that, himself.
On November 6, 1934, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. On November 5, 1940, he was elected again. Somewhere along there the man who couldn’t sell shirts and collars became a better than run-of-the-mill good senator. He wasn’t tops, but he was good.
Committee work recalled
As chairman of the Senate Committee to Investigate War Production, Mr. Truman undertook to prevent in this war some of the stupidities, inefficiencies and scandals of World War I, Newspaper reporters made it the “Truman Committee.” The Truman Committee made headlines. The Senator became a national figure and a political asset to his party. His committee did a good job along with the mistakes it made.
Mr. Truman was never a 100 percent New Dealer. But he usually went along. As a freshman in 1937, he was in the minority that tried to impose penalties on sit-down strikers. He voted to override Mr. Roosevelt’s Farm Loan Bill veto, but voted against killing the Roosevelt Supreme Court Reorganization Bill. He supported the administration’s Wage-Hour Bill.
He helped to shelve the Anti-Lynching Bull in 1938, but supported Mr. Roosevelt’s Government Reorganization Bill. He ducked votes here and there in his legislative career, as for instance a bill to bar political job-holders from political conventions. Even a Pendergast machine could not survive that kind of legislation.
In general, on domestic issues, Mr. Truman voted considerably more often for Mr. Roosevelt than against him and he almost always supported the Administration in foreign affairs through the difficult problems of neutrality and on the explosive peacetime question of conscription.
Had a premonition
Mr. Truman had a fearful premonition that he might succeed to the presidency. The thought dismayed him. It was not so much that he underrated himself, but he knew the shape and scope of the presidency and like many another man would not believe it could be approached except in anxious humility.
Out in Missouri a very old lady was thinking that way, too.
“We are praying,” she said, “that God will guide him–.”
The President of the United States will join Mrs. Martha Truman, his 92-year-old mother, in that prayer.