It was nearly midnight in London. Sentry-boxed Downing Street lay quiet save for the tramp of guards. Inside No. 10 a taut secretary hurried to the Prime Minister's door, knocked impatiently, turned the glass knob. Winston Churchill stood beside his desk, reading a sheaf of reports. The secretary handed him a note. "Sir," he quavered, "President Roosevelt died a short time ago." The Prime Minister's face paled. He sat down, motionless for five full minutes. Then he lifted his head, with the heaviness of a man who is suddenly very lonely. He whispered: "Get me the Palace." He informed the King, then called Washington, then labored with sad heart far into the night over the words he would speak in memoriam. . . .
It was 2 a.m. in Moscow. At U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman's Spasso House a gay party was breaking up when the news came. The shocked Ambassador telephoned Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov, who sped the word on to Marshal Joseph Stalin and then drove over to Spasso House to voice his condolences. Behind the Kremlin's pink walls lights burned late and long, as Franklin Roosevelt's host at Yalta wrote messages to Franklin Roosevelt's widow and to his successor: "My sympathy in your great sorrow. . . . The Soviet people highly value . . . the leader in the cause of insuring the security of the whole world. .. ."
It was 6 a.m. in Chungking. Dawn poked through the chill Yangtze mist. Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, ever an early riser, was at breakfast when an aide brought him the news. He left his food untasted, withdrew for meditation. Hours later he sent his thoughts to Mrs. Roosevelt: "I am deeply grieved. . . . The profound sorrow of the Chinese people . . . the deep sense of gratitude they bear for him. . . . His name will be a beacon of light to humanity. . . ."
Leader's Man. These men spoke not only for their nations but for themselves. They had met Franklin Roosevelt face to face, had broken bread with him, heard his infectious laugh, studied with him the problems of war & peace. He had been their surest common link, the tolerant architect of their coalition. And something of what they felt was felt in like degree by leaders of the United Nations everywhere.
France's Charles de Gaulle felt it, though he and Franklin Roosevelt supposedly reacted on each other like flint and steel. Head bowed, the General signed his name in the register of bereavement at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Pope Pius XII felt it. He was at his desk in the Vatican when word came. Britain's King George felt it. He and Queen Elizabeth, remembering a past picnic at Hyde Park, had been looking forward to a visit soon from Franklin Roosevelt and to putting him up at Buckingham Palace. Now their Court Circular, for the first time in history, recorded the death of a foreign chief of state.