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The sense of personal loss, the impulse to render homage were universal. From the St. Lawrence to the Amazon, across Europe and the Middle East, to the Orient and the Antipodes, the leaders had known Franklin Roosevelt at firsthand. In Ottawa William Lyon Mackenzie King expressed Canada's feeling: it is "as if one of our very own had passed away." South Africa's great Jan Christian Smuts ("We two Dutchmen got along splendidly," he had said of his first meeting with Franklin Roosevelt, at the Cairo Conference in November 1943) paid a simple, heartfelt tribute: "His passing leaves us very poor indeed. .. . ." People's Man. Not Lincoln as a legend, nor Wilson, beyond his brief hour of triumph, had been known so well to the plain people of the earth. They felt they had lost a friend, the American who to them was all that they wanted America to be, and they feared the times to come without him.
Britons were shocked and gloomy. The usually imperturbable BBC had a moment of emotion: "most tragic night of the war. . . ." Famed Cartoonist David Low, who is seldom kind, spoke for Britain with a true and tender pen (see cut). Londoners bowed their heads in daffodil-blooming parks as military bands played The Star-Spangled Banner.
For the most part, their spoken words lost meaning in newsprint. None quoted last week came closer to the common English heart than the words of a British private during the Presidential campaign last year: "Wot do I know about it? All I know is this: there's bloody little future 'ere. . . .But blokes what come through ought to 'ave the right to decent 'omes, decent wages and money enough to put by to take care of our babies. I've seen F.D.R.
on the cinema screen and I likes him." Of President Truman most Britons knew nothing. "But he must have something in him," some of them said, "or he wouldn't have satisfied Roosevelt."
Frenchmen grieved and worried. A Parisian flower-vendor propped a black headline, Roosevelt est mort, against his cart of bouquets — "for the death of a savior," he said. A bank clerk cried: "La voix de l'Amérique est diminuée de moitié — America's voice is reduced by half!" Hundreds signed the Embassy register. Hundreds sent cards of regret to Americans whom they had never known. Frenchmen came up to Americans in the streets, shook hands, and said: "We have lost our best friend. . . . What will happen to us now?"
Italians wept: "We have lost our sincerest friend!"
History's Man. Yugoslavs had just finished a day of dancing and singing in Belgrade's squares to celebrate their new pact with Russia. The news from America smothered every jollity. Marshal Tito's Government decreed a four-day closing of theaters, cinemas, concerts. It banned music and dancing in restaurants. Hour after hour people called at the U.S. Embassy to voice their sorrow: "We have lost our best friend."