(See Cover)
By the close of 1941 Franklin Delano Roosevelt had become a war President, the leader of the nation in a deadly war of survival. But that fact alone did not make him the Man of 1941. For there were others who had a great claim to that distinction.
The nation Franklin Roosevelt led had yet to demonstrate to history that it had the stature, moral as well as physical, to stand up and trade blows with the Axis—not for three weeks or six months but year after year, giving odds if need be and fighting the enemy to a standstill. Such a demonstration has been given by the people whom the son of a Chinese peasant led—Chiang Kaishek.
His people had been beaten and battered from one end of China to the other. Their cities had been bombed, their soldiers gassed, their women raped. From Valley Forge through Valley Forge he has fought and gone on fighting. The aid that the democracies promised him was never enough. But he kept on. In earlier years he fought a retiring battle. But in 1941 he fought the Japanese to a standstill. That was an achievement neither British nor Americans have yet accomplished. If he does not measure up to the standard of Man of the Year, it is because other men have greater claims.
Nor has Franklin Roosevelt yet led his people in such a gallant, courageous fight as Winston Churchill has led the British.
Washington last week had a sample of that extraordinary man, who, like some astonishing Shakespearean character, full of great speeches and thundering images, appears only when the going gets hard. In 1940 he was hailing the merging of American and British interests: "Let it roll. Let it roll on in full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days." By the end of 1941 he watched it rolling. U.S.-British cooperation, that had seemed a dim hope after Dunkirk had become a living reality.
But Winston Churchill had no great moment in 1941 to measure up to the history-arresting instant in 1940 when he spoke for his people in their finest hour: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. . . ." Churchill was still awakening men to the meaning of the war, and no one had done a better job. He was a man of the year, of the decade, and, if his cause won, of all time. But as Man of 1941 he had one great weakness. Twice his soldiers had conquered Cyrenaica—they had to, because they lost it betweentimes. In Greece and Crete his armies had met disaster. After more than two years of war under his leadership, Britain was still losing campaigns.
As Chiang Kai-shek is still the only leader who has successfully fought the Japs to a standstill, the only leader who has yet to face a major German drive without a military disaster is Joseph Stalin. After six months of war, Stalin's armies have thrown back Hitler's armies from within 25 miles of his capital. Against better equipment and the greatest war machine the world has yet seen, they have fought, and yielded ground, have taken and inflicted stupendous losses, and gone on fighting. The credit for that achievement, for taking untold punishment, may belong far more to that unsung hero, the common Russian soldier, long-suffering and long-courageous.