The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-01-08

great plane DullQerS O1 the U. D.
 ITO people who believed that the size of the plant meant nothing unless a genuine national unity powered the turning wheels, another type of American was Man of the Year-Wendell Willkie, because, as titular head of the opposition party, he refused to play party politics with defense and played major part in the unification of American sentiment.
 But no private individual summed up the hope that the U. s. stood for Nor could any private citizen stand against Franklin Roosevelt as Man of 1941 for one simple reason as leader of the U. s. at war he had become leader of the democracies against Hitler.
 "The use of the strength of the U. s. had become the Key to the future of the war and Frarklin Roosevelt was the Key to the forces of the U. s. He held the balance of power for the war. Stalin, Churchill, Chiang- -Kai-shek, whatever their individual stature, had their future dependent on the help that the U. s. and Franklin Roosevelt-alone could give.
 Tn 1921 Franklin Roosevelt ob- tained the Lerd-Lease Act which gave the U. s. the beginnings of that preeminence,' TIME explains. When he signed the declaration of war, that preeminence was inescap- able. Between times, in the long nightmare of the "undeclared war ill the exhausting debate about con- voys, he had guided the U. s. to the strategic spot where it's weight could become the deciding factor in the world struggle which he, but not all of his people, yet believed was real
 Tn his own right and on his own record, President Roosevelt stood out as a figure of the year and of the age. His smiling courage in the face of panic, his resourcefulness in meeting unprecedented threats to the nations economy and mo- rale, his sanguine will place him there.
 "The intensity of his feeling for what America can be and there fore will be-a feeling that aWak- ened the country to master it's creeping paralysis-these qualities prepared the nation for Its strug- gle in the depth of depressiVl. On far greater scale, for far great CT cause, against worldwide sense of hopelessness, those same quali- ties were called into play when the Japanese descended from the skies on Pearl Harbor.
 "The U. s. has had five war presidents in it's history, and for Lincoln, the greatest of them, the war was civil war. In the wars with foreign foes, Madison, Polk, Mc- Kinley Wilson faced no such task as Roosevelt faces.
 "Never before has the U. s. at the beginning of foreign war found itself on the defensive, in diplomacy, on land at sea-" Time explains. Never before had U. S. president faced so great task in unifying the country that had made him president, of healing the cleavages within it, of summoning up the spirit that would make the factories produce on a scale equal to the needs of the worlds worst war.
 Tn 1892 U s. citizens who had been beaten by the hopelessness of the depression were electrified by the words and actions of the man who said that the wheels could turn, that the good life could flourish, that all groups in the U. s. could work together in cause bigger than any one of them.
 But the hopelessness they had felt then was nothing compared to the hopelessnes sthat was felt by millions over the world in the year 1941. The relief and release that U. s. citizens felt in 1892 when the president broke the paralysis that had gripped them was nothing compared to the lifting of heads all over the world when the power and might of the U. s. was thrown into the war.
 Once Roosevelt told the people Of the U. s.: 'Th'S generation has a rendezvous with destiny Now Shere could be no m,staking the fact. He was the Man of l941 be- cause the country he leads stands for the hope of the world"
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 President Harry McI can Sr will