The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-04-13
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The death Thursday of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
brought a fateful crisis of wartime leadership to the cause of the
United Nations throughout the world.
The White House announced that the President died at noon
of cerebral hemorrhage. President Roosevelt was 63-years old
and had begun the first year of his record shatering fourth
term in office. Strained by the burden of war, his health had
declined in recent months, but he was not considered to be in
an alarming condition.
The stroke robbed the nation of its elected leader as the
climax of the greatest war approached. He is succeeded by
Vice President Harry S. Truman, former Missouri senator.
Senator Truman's nomination at the Chicago convention
last summe over former .Vice-President Henry Wallace was
the most Hateful decision IN American politics on the domestic
front in modern history.
President Roosevets White House career spanned history
making years of peace and war.
First Presdent to be elected to a third and fourth term, he
emerged from a national leadership with revolutionary mea-
sures to halt a depression stemming from the first world war,
to become the pivotal figure in the second conflict that engulfed
most of the world.
He was only a little cabinet" officer-Ass.stan Secretary
of the Navy-during the first world war, but after the United
States had entered the second one,s two decades later, he was the
outstanding personality in the grim, bitter struggle against the
axis powers, principally Germany, Italy and Japan.
The military strategy of more than a score of united nations
representing rs per cent of the earth's surface and so per cent
of its population was mapped in his White House office
He constantly shuffed and revised a prodigious war produc-
ton program, framed stupendous war budgets to be met by tax
es that hurt and, also at home, fought an initiation peril hardly
less dangerous to the nation than its enemies at arms.
He even drew up with United Nations colleagues, as the war
progressed, blueprints for the kind of peace good neighbors
would demand when victory came.
The vast program of domestic economic reform and ex-
eight years under the title of New Deal" and which was insep-
ably linked with the Presidents name, had been sidetracked by
the vast war effort. War production strained the nations ca
pacity, and the marpower shortage took the place OF the un-
employment problem.
Many months ago the President said that DIR. New Dear
had been put aside in favor of "Dr. Win-the-War." 1t was OBJ
served by the nations political commentators that MI, Roosevelt
had readily compromised on many Of the most important OF his
domestic programs during the war in order to win as much
unified support for his foreign measures as possible.
He sought to avoid the fatal error of President Woodrow
Wilson. who lost the support of Congress before the writing of
A.. uo-a;1e, naaoa raofu Thu Ganata raflcQd IL ratifV that
treaty. and years of international turmoil followed.
One of Mr.. Roosevelts compromises was the acceptance OF
Senator Truman as his running mate for the fourth term, a step
which had been urged by the old line party leaders. This put
side Vice President Wallace, a man of New Deal philosophy,
for a senator who was known as a "middle-of-the-roader,
who has come up through traditional political stages in the Dem
ocratc party.
Thus the leadership of the most powerful nation in the
world. during the greatest crisis of modern history, passes to a
man relatively unknown on the world stage. Whether he shall
measure to the greatness demanded BY the moment, or fall short
of it, will in large measure determine whether peace and pros
perity, or continued turmoil, shall be the fate of the American
people for years to come.