Evening star., 1945-04-14

has taken from this Nation great Pres
ident and a great war leader-perhaps
the ablest wartime Commander in Chief
in our history. No President since
Washington-With the possible excep-
ton of Theodore Roosevelt-has so we'll
understood the basic strategical needs
and interests of this Nation. No Presi-
dent before him has led the Nation in
war with such competence, indeed such
brilliance, as Franklin Roosevelt.
During his term of Office there arose
the most terrible danger to the cause
of freedom, TO the concept of individual
human rights and dignity. which the
free peoples of the world have had to
face since the Dark Ages. The basic
principle upon which this republic was
founded, that the state exists to serve
and to protect the individual in the
exercise of his inalienable rights, was
directly assailed by powerful forces
which were dedicated to the view that
the individual exists only to be the
slave of the state
From the beginning, President Roose-
velt saw the real nature Of this threat,
recognized 1t as threat not only to
Britain and France and China, but to
ourselves and to freedom everywhere,
and opposed it with all his energies.
The venomous attacks upon him by our
German and Japanese enemies show
clearly that they recognized in him the
arch foe of their evil designs More
than anv other human being. Franklin
Roosevelt has brought the defeat and
downfall of those designs.
So
When Hitler launched his legions
across the Polish frontier and began
his attempted conquest of Europe,
President Roosevelt saw farther than
the ruins of Warsaw He knew that
in very truth our frontiers were on the
Rhine: That is, he knew that the
security of the North Atlantic Ocean
was essential to the security Of the
United States, and he knew that if
Britain and France and the Low Coun-
tries went down, the Atlantic ap-
rroaches TO our eastern seaboard would
be in the hands of our enemies. There
fore, he secured the revision of the
neutrality laws so that he could supply
Britain and France. and at the same
time he pressed for a greatly acceler-
ated naval building program: The So
called two-ocean navy.
In these measures and in the policy
which they implied, the country was
far from united behind the President.
During the spring of 1910 dissension
increased. but the fall of France in the
summer of that year shocked most of
us into some understanding of our real
danger. The President acted swiftly
to take advantage of this change in
public sentiment. Having on his own
responsibility sent all the available small
arms and field artillery in the country
to arm the British people against pos
slble invasion, he sponsored and drove
through Congress the Selective Service
Act-the first peacetime conscription
law in our history. That measure gave
us months Of advantage when war came
to us
Still keeping a watchful eve on the
Atlantic sea lanes, where German u
boats we're cutting sharply into our
shipments to Great Britain. the Presi-
dent engineered the famous DESTROYER
deal by which so American destroyers
were transferred to the British Navy in
return for a number of Atlantic bases
which would give us far better security
should disaster come to Britain. Anxious
also about political dissension at home,
the President took the remarkably fore
sighted and courageous step of appoint
ing two leading Republicans-Henry L.
Stimson and Frank Knox-to be, re-
spectively, Secretaries of War and of
the Navy, appointments which the
country had no subsequent reason to
regret.
Early In l941 the Lease-Lend Act in
creased our power to aid Britain and
other nations fighting Germany. Again
there was bitter opposition from those
who could not see the reality of the
dangers. Again the President prevailed.
There followed increases in our naval
protection to the North Atlantic sea
lanes. with American bases in Green