Submarines sink 15 new Jap ships
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Superfortress raid reported by Tokyo
By the United Press
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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.
Perkins: Murray, Hillman are told at their press conference
CIO president resumes statement about PAC and then tells of the ‘very bad news’
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
WASHINGTON – CIO President Philip Murray and Sidney Hillman, the labor leaders generally credited with mobilizing the margin of votes that won Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth election, were holding a press conference when news of the President’s death came.
They were completing an explanation of expansion and intensification of the CIO Political Action Committee work.
Several men entered Mr. Murray’s office. Among them were youthful “Jim” Carey, CIO secretary-treasurer, and C B. “Beany” Baldwin, former aide to Henry A. Wallace and now CIO-PAC manager. They whispered to Mr. Murray.
Fails to change expression
Nothing in the CIO president’s usually serious face indicated he had just heard of an event which must have affected him deeply.
He resumed his explanation of the CIO-PAC announcement.
Then he said, “Some very bad news has just come to me, some very bad news. It is that the President is dead.”
The press conference quickly broke up. Reporters asked Mr. Hillman for a comment.
Withholds comment
“No, no,” he pleaded. “Not now, please.”
His grief was obvious.
The main item of the CIO-PAC expansion program, as adopted by the CIO Executive Board, provides for establishment of Political Action Committees by each state and city industrial council. Thus, the organization is pointed toward activity in municipal and state, as well as congressional and presidential, contests.
Eisenhower orders 30-day G.I. mourning
All flags in France at half-staff
PARIS (UP) – Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered a 30-day mourning period for U.S. troops throughout the European Theater today in memory of President Roosevelt.
Gen. Eisenhower flashed back the order to Supreme Headquarters from the front, where he was conferring with his generals on the final phases of the Battle of Germany.
The battle was drawing to the end long ago envisioned by President Roosevelt. And it was under the direction of the man he picked to be supreme commander on the Western Front.
News spreads rapidly
Word of the death of the President spread rapidly through Supreme Headquarters and Paris, leaving sadness and grief in its wake.
Gen. Charles de Gaulle, Provisional President of France, cabled President Truman that the French government learned of Mr. Roosevelt’s death with “great emotion and deep sadness.”
He ordered flags lowered to half-staff throughout France.
In the cabarets, at the Red Cross Rainbow Corner and along the boulevards swarming with khaki the reaction was heartfelt.
Band silenced
At fashionable Ciro’s, the band was silenced and the leader read a brief announcement of Mr. Roosevelt’s death. All Allied troops left immediately.
A tank brigade sergeant on furlough tried to get through to his commanding officer to arrange to return to the front.
“I voted for him four times for President,” he said. “Since I can’t vote for him a fifth time, the least I can do is to go back up there and fight for him.”
At the Scube Hotel, headquarters of war correspondents assigned to Supreme Headquarters, a klaxon sounded three blasts – the signal reserved for major announcements. Then an officer read a United Press flash reporting the death.
‘He was a real guy’
Dumbfounded, sad-eyed American soldiers clustered about the radio in the Rainbow Corner’s big reception hall seeking further details.
Cpl. Joseph Koval of Boonton, New Jersey, was closest to the radio when the first flash was broadcast.
He leaped from his chair and screamed, “Good God, the President’s dead!”
“He was a real guy,” Sgt. Larry Buzin of Elizabeth, New Jersey, said. “We never had a guy like him.”
Phones jammed
WASHINGTON – The announcement of President Roosevelt’s death flooded the Washington Telephone Company with the greatest “sudden peak” load of calls in recent years. Both local and long-distance circuits were swamped.
Latin America decrees mourning
Government building flags at half-mast
By the United Press
The death of President Roosevelt was mourned through Latin America today.
Official periods of mourning were decreed, business and schools closed in cities and flags on government buildings were flown at half-mast.
In Brazil, President Getulio Vargas ordered three days of official mourning beginning today.
National mourning was decreed in Argentina by President Edelmiro Farrell and a funeral service was planned in the Buenos Aires cathedral.
Embassy flags lowered
The Cuban cabinet ordered three days of mourning beginning today.
Peru’s President Manuel Prado and Foreign Minister Manuel Gallagher cabled condolences to President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Edward Stettinius.
Banks and stores closed at Managua, Nicaragua, when the large flag on the U.S. Embassy building was lowered to half-mast, confirming reports of the death. The government declared eight days of mourning.
Play religious music
Radio stations in Chile went silent or played solemn religious music last night following news of the death.
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, nightclubs and public entertainment closed for the weekend in respect to the memory of President Roosevelt.
Dutch Guiana flags were lowered in Paramaribo to half-mast today.
In Caracas, Venezuela, the semi-official newspaper El Tiempo declared in an extra edition last night that “the greatest champion of democracy is dead.”
Truman friends in two groups
War pals, party workers are cronies
WASHINGTON (UP) – The “Men Closest to the President” at the start of the Truman administration fall into two principal categories – cronies of World War I and old-line Democratic Party workers.
If the new President decides to make many changes in the White House official family – and he may not because of the war – the men whom he picks to help him guide the nation’s destiny probably will come from among those two groups.
Politically, President Truman is 100 percent a Democratic Party man.
War buddies are closest
Personally, he has many friends but those of whom he speaks with the greatest affection are the men with whom he served im the last war.
One of them, Col. Harry Vaughn, is probably the closest friend of them all. Col. Vaughn, who also is a veteran of the present war, has been military aide to Mr. Truman since he became Vice President last January.
Mr. Truman keeps up an active correspondence with many of the others. One of his proudest possessions is a dog-eared black notebook in which he keeps the names and addresses of those friends. He says that it lists every surviving member of the field artillery battery which he commanded “and I can tell you a story about every one of them by just glancing through and picking out the names.”
Hannegan is pal
His devotion to the Democratic Party stems from his introduction to politics as a young member of the Pendergast machine in Kansas City more than 20 years ago.
Probably his closest friend within the party is Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, who engineered his nomination to the vice presidency at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last July.
Although the presidency carries with it leadership of the party, Mr. Truman can be expected to leave the purely political matters in the hands of men like Bob Hannegan and Sam Wear, Democratic State Chairman of Missouri.
Within the party, his closest friends include New Dealers and old-line conservatives alike. The conservatives are in a majority.
Monahan: Rosaline Russell in role of author
Jack Carson her husband in film version of Roughly Speaking
By Kaspar Monahan
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Pacific Fleet plans memorial services
GUAM (UP) – The officers and men of the U.S. Pacific Fleet will pay a wartime tribute to their late Commander-in-Chief.
Memorial services will be held on all ships and stations, where war conditions permit, on the day of the President’s funeral. Colors will fly at half-mast for 30 days. But mourning badges will not be worn nor salutes fired because of the war.
Othman: The White House
By Fred Othman
WASHINGTON – As word of President Roosevelt’s death spread through Washington, hundreds of people gathered bareheaded on Pennsylvania Avenue to stare silently through the dusk at the tulip-bordered White House across the street.
Seven big limousines were parked helter-skelter under the portico, where the paint was scabrous, because the President had ruled no redecorating would be done during the war.
Sad-faced Secret Service agents and uniformed police patrolled the grounds, whio;le a constant stream of disbelieving newspapers reports, photographers, and newsreel men besieged the executive offices.
The cameramen gathered on the freshly-green lawns waiting to photograph Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, who hurried to the White House to sweat in Vice President Harry S. Truman as the Chief Executive.
Inside the office, a drawn-faced Steve Early – close friend and longtime presidential secretary – told the press of Mr. Truman’s immediate plans. With deep circles under his eyes, and his loud-splashed tie askew. Early told how Mr. Truman hoped “to carry on.”
Press room a madhouse
Mr. Early was so distraught that he talked as though he were dictating to his secretary, saying “period” and “comma” as he went along.
The White House press room, meantime, was a madhouse. A dozen phones rang at once, while others were busy as reporters dictated descriptions of the White House and its occupants.
Startled stenographers in the White House executive wing did not, themselves, learn of the President’s death until many minutes after it had been flashed by the news services to newspapers and radio stations.
Slowly it sank in. The hints of tears began to show in the eyes of men and women alike.
A United Press reporter, the fist to reach the White House as the news was being telephoned to press offices, asked the women in Press Secretary Jonathan Daniels’ office for details.
“We don’t know what has happened,” one of them sobbed. “We just don’t know what has happened.”
A dozen telephones rang steadily as the inquiries poured in.
Policeman gives press a jolt
Movie cameramen climbed up on the shining surface of the great, round mahogany table in the main lobby, lit their portable klieg lights, and photographed the only thing to photograph – the hoard of perspiring reporters jammed around the door to the cabinet room.
The radio networks set up their microphones. The moviemen strewed their machinery through the public rooms.
“Gentlemen, please,” cried a White House usher as a maze of cable and storage batteries were strewn across the black-and-white checked marble floors.
The secretary called out representatives of the three press associations to witness the swearing in of the new President. The other reporters, by now numbering perhaps 200, jammed chest-to-back in the corridors, straining to see. But they couldn’t see anything.
The cabinet members paced out slowly into the halls, perspiring in the intense heat.
The uniformed policeman on the door gave the press something of a mental jolt when he said: “The President has gone to the Main House with Mrs. Truman.”
White House is the climax –
Fate’s strange quirks dot Truman career
Success attributed to staunch loyalty
KANSAS CITY, Missouri – Fate has slipped strange quirks into the political career of Harry S. Truman but it played the climactic card last night when he was sworn in as President of the United States.
Mr. Truman’s success and his rapid rise in the world of politics is attributed to his loyalty to superiors. First it was faithful support of Tom Pendergast, long-time political boss of Missouri and that loyalty, continued when Pendergast’s machine was broken and the leader sent to prison.
In Washington, Mr. Truman was one of President Roosevelt’s strongest supporters. He was staunchly behind Roosevelt policies throughout his stay in the Senate.
Now he is thrust into the job of supplying the leadership to make those plans a reality. Instead of a loyal follower, he now is the leader.
Remains ‘Harry’
An affable little man who didn’t even want to be Vice President and who demands that he remain “Harry” to folks who know him – that’s the 32nd President of the United States.
When Harry S. Truman left his seat in the Senate to become Vice President, he made it plain to newspapermen that he didn’t want his new job to “make any difference.” And those who know him say that still goes, even though he is now President of the United States.
The story of Harry Truman is one that could have taken place only in this country. His path from a Missouri farm to the White House led him through various commonplace jobs and then into politics.
Boss said, ‘No’
Ten years ago last spring, Mr. Truman, just finishing a term as a judge of the Jackson County Court, went to Pendergast, whose political star then was at its zenith, and asked to be put on the Democratic ticket as a candidate for county collector.
“No,” Pendergast answered quickly and definitely. “No.”
The loyal Truman was puzzled. It wasn’t the reply he had expected and he knew not what to say. But the “boss” made it easy. “You’re going to run for United States Senator,” he said, just as he might then have told a lesser adherent he might run for road overseer.
Mr. Truman was elected, then was reelected six years later when the “boss” had fallen, and then last January, against his expressed desire, he became Vice President of the United States.
Worked hard in Senate
Most persons who read the newspapers know the story there is to tell of Sen. Truman and the intervening decade. It begins with his employment in Washington of an acute, alert mind, and intense, painstaking industry – perhaps his outstanding asset to make himself a recognized factor in the Senate and thereby useful to his constituents. Added to that equipment has been his characteristic loyalty to persons or groups with claims on his services.
Returning from World War I as major of an artillery unit he had helped organize and which he took overseas, he allied himself with the Democratic party here. That was in the early 1920s.
Becomes county judge
Leaders saw in Mr. Truman a “bright young man” who knew his way about in the labyrinth of county politics and set store by him. They gave him a place on the county ticket in 1922 and he was elected judge of the county court. He was defeated for reelection, but tried again in 1926 and was elected presiding judge, a place he held until he went to the Senate.
In Missouri, three “judges” conduct the county business. They exercise no judicial functions. In some other states they would be called county commissioners.
Knowing Mr. Truman’s penchant for loyalty, it was not difficult to understand what followed. While he had been serving his first term in Washington the Kansas City machine strong house, which was actually a house of cards, top-heavy with power, toppled. Pendergast and scores of his minions were indicted on charges that Democratic district attorney Maurice M. Milligan made stick.
Some quit, not Truman
Some lesser and some greater beneficiaries of the machine and its boss washed their hands of both or turned their backs, but not Sen. Truman. When told in Washington that Pendergast had been indicted by a federal grand jury, his only comment was: "I’m sorry it happened, but I’m not going to desert a ship that is going down.”
It was his loyalty to President, Roosevelt and the New Dealers that gave him reelection in 1940. The crew that had sent him to the Senate in 1934 with a whopping majority was under a cloud. Vote frauds at its hands, exposed and vigorously prosecuted by the crusading district attorney, had sent ward-heelers and even machine leaders scurrying for cover. Many were in jails. There were suicides, disappearances, and Pendergast, himself, faced a penitentiary term.
Tough opposition
At that unpropitious period Sen. Truman’s term expired.
District Attorney Milligan ran against him im the primary. Gov. Lloyd C. Stark, who had put one of the early time fuses under the Pendergast machine, also entered the race against Truman. Both hard-fighting men traversed the state shouting “bossism” at Sen. Truman and citing the source of his support.
Mr. Truman made no reply, not even to deny continuing loyalty to the machine. He made his campaign as “The right arm of the President,” 100 percent loyalty to him and the New Deal. He never mentioned state affairs. but talked of national and international problems.
With his opposition split two ways, Mr. Truman squeezed through to a nomination, and swamped his Republican opponent in the general election.
Earned respect
Even in his first term, still tethered to the machine, Sen. Truman asserted personal characteristics that won places for him on important Senate committees, and earned the respect of his fellow senators and of the administration. His undeviating loyalty to the New Deal caught White House attention. His tireless energy led less willing Senators to load him with legislative matters that might not have fallen to him otherwise.
Fearless investigator
His fearless conduct as chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee – long known as the Truman Committee – proved clearly his high sense of responsibility in public office. His committee spared no one, not even high administration figures, if it thought their war leadership deserved public criticism.
Under his leadership the committee made government savings estimated at upwards of a billion dollars.
Its investigators pried into war plants, shipyards, and Army and Navy contracts, and the committee’s activities eventually led indirectly to the concentration of war production authority under one man, Donald M. Nelson.
Was good listener
And behind it all was the former Jackson County judge who promised, when he first went to the Senate, to “do a lot of listening and mighty little talking.” He has kept the promise personally, but his work through the years of preparation and war have spoken loudly for him.
He never has posed as a statesman. In his own words, expressed years ago, he “just works at whatever he has to do.”
Sen. Truman will be 61 years old May 8. He is a scion of two pioneer western Missouri families who came to Jackson County in 1842.
His mother, Mrs. Martha Truman, 92 years old, speaks glowingly even now of Harry’s willingness to work when he was a farm boy and of his ability to plow the straightest row to be found on any farm in Jackson County. There 1s another son, J. V. Truman, who farmed the Truman acres for many years and now is with the FHA, of whom the mother speaks with pride.
Mother preferred Senate
Before he was nominated for the vice presidency, Mr. Truman’s mother said she hoped her son would remain in the Senate.
After the nomination, Mother Truman said: “I liked him just as well before he got the nomination.”
High school, at Independence, was the limit of the Senator’s formal education but he went right on educating himself.
He once said:
I read everything in the Independence Library, including the encyclopedia, before I quit school. I’ve always been sorry I did not get a university education in the regular way. But I got it in the Army the hard way and it stuck.
In 1919, Truman married Miss Bessie Wallace of Independence. They have a daughter, Margaret, who has attended school in Washington while the family has lived in the capital.
Incidentally, the middle initial “S” in the nominee’s name stands for Shippe, which was the middle name of his grandfather.