Proletarec. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1906-19??, 1945-04-18
HIS COUNTRYMEN MUST CARRY
HIS BURDEN

Our great and beloved President has laid down his life for victory,
decency and peace.
His task was always the task of all of US. Henceforth, because he
is gone, it is, in incomparably greater degree, ours to serve, with mind
and heart and will, the noble ends for which he died.
We, his countrymen, will long sorely miss Franklin Delano Roose-
welt, and he will be sorely missed by the world. More men looked up
10 him than to any other living man. More confidence al placed III
Linn than in any other. More Inspiration came from him.
No other statesman in this epic period of crisis for mankind has
equaled him in the art of cooperation, and of leading others to it.
AS a strong, young man he was stricken with a disease which long
left him PROSTATE and all but helpless. He fought against the paralysis
resulting from that disease with the courage of a heroic heart; he never
surrendered to it, he surmomted it. In doing 81 he made far stronger
and richer a character already strong and rich.
He came to the White House at the lowest point of the most ter
rible economic catastrophe that had ever stricken his country. His in
spred courage and wisdom led us through.
He was the President of the forgotten man and of all men. His
New Deal, devoted to the building of economic democracy within the
statute books OF the nation more permanent boons for the common
man than all the laws from the Civil War to his first administration.
Blu. the world crisis, with fascism on the march around the globe
against all o which free America ad. Franklin Roosevelt stood, at last
crowded the unfinished task of domestic reform to the side. We cn
thank the farsghted wisdom and leadership of Franklin Roosevelt that
we were prepared when the inevitable blow fell upon us.
We can thank him-with MI. Churchill, surely, and Marshal Stain,
and many others, but above all we can thank Franklin Roosevelt-that
this, the most terrible war of all time, has been fought IS the most
Because it has been thus fought, Germany is at the verge of total de-
feat, and Japan ever more closely approaches the time, however distant
1t may yet be, when she must surrender Internationally.
Franklin Roosevelt could not live to see the end; not even the
taking of Berlin. But we can be sure that he died confident of the
coming victory in war.
What he could not know was that we shall win through for the
peace. He knew that the problems, the difficulties are vast; but he also
knew that the peoples will to win, this time, al organized and demo
cratic peace of cooperation was unprecedented, and that we had come
a long way toward it.
He, above all others, was the architect of the great milestones to
Yalta-and the San Francisco Conference which is to found the basic
organization of peace under which the agencies of security and Of
world economic and social progress are to be grouped.
Franklin Roosevelt had confidence of the result. He knew it would
not be perfect. He knew that the fight for peace must continue on.
through and far beyond the life of the youngest living American. Blu:
he had done his part in preparation incomparably wen-The Chicago
Sun.