Simms: Other nations to feel loss of Roosevelt
Was best known of U.S. Presidents
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
WASHINGTON – The impact of President Roosevelt’s death on the governments and peoples of foreign lands will be scarcely less shocking than it was here at home. Abroad, he was known as no other American President ever was.
This is not only because he served more than three terms. It is because, long before World War II, he took his stand against Hitler and the Nazi-Fascist gang and called on America and the world to “quarantine” aggressor nations.
Throughout the Western Hemisphere, Mr. Roosevelt’s name stands for the Good Neighbor Policy. It is inextricably associated with the Atlantic Charter, today the beacon light of small nations everywhere. And his Four Freedoms have been translated into every tongue.
British favored him
In England, prior toa the last elections, I found the British government and the people alike overwhelmingly for Mr. Roosevelt. They had nothing against Gov. Thomas E. Dewey or the Republican Party. They were for Mr. Roosevelt, they told me, because they felt they knew him and liked him.
That was a typical bit of British understatement, however. For, to the British, Mr. Roosevelt was America. Somehow to them he was pretty much the whole war effort.
Hadn’t he aided Britain long before the shooting began at Pearl Harbor? Hadn’t he sent American weapons to England after Dunkirk? Hadn’t he traded 50 destroyers to Britain in exchange for some bases in the Atlantic?
Lend-Lease cited
To the British, Mr. Roosevelt was also Lend-Lease. He was the American Army, the American Navy and the American Air Force. They knew that to him, this war was not an American war, a British war, a Soviet war or a Chinese war, but a vast global conflict in which only two armies are at grips: The Allied army and the army of the enemies of mankind.
And they knew that Mr. Roosevelt had only one aim and that was to utilize all Allied men and ships and gun and tanks, planes, money, food and equipment wherever it would do the most good. Mr. Roosevelt made America “the arsenal of democracy” – another phrase with which his name will go down in the histories of foreign countries.
Wonder about changes
And what Mr. Roosevelt was to the British, he was to most other peoples the world over – except those of enemy countries. So, his sudden passing will not only be a tremendous shock to them but to their capitals as well. They will all be wondering what, if any, material changes will be made in his policies.
None of the Allies, of course, has any doubt that the United States will remain in the war to the very last. Or that it will continue to back the Dumbarton Oaks plan for international security after the war. One of President Truman’s first acts, after being sworn in, was to confirm that the San Francisco Conference would be held as scheduled, April 25.
But an American President, foreign capitals know, wields more power than any other one man on earth. And no two men are exactly like. They cannot help being anxious, therefore, to know whether the new man in the White House will put on the brakes a little, or go farther and faster along the road traveled by his predecessor.
Met with leaders
Moreover, in the international field there are bound to be many things – some perhaps of grave importance – about which the late President knew but which no other American does, at least not in such detail.
The first of our Presidents to make extensive journeys abroad in his official capacity, Mr. Roosevelt met again and again with Prime Minister Churchill, Marshal Stalin, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Gen. de Gaulle and other world figures.
Together they discussed affairs of state and reached understandings even involving the future peace. Because of the war, much of this necessarily was carried on in the greatest secrecy. It will be difficult for President Truman to pick up and carry on.