World Pleased

Foreign News

Editors and statesmen of every capital in the world last week responded to news of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's landslide re-election (TIME. Nov. 9) with an international ovation for the winner. In Berlin the President was hailed as an exponent of the fuehrerprinzip ("leadership principle") of Der Fuehrer Adolf Hitler. In Moscow a high Soviet official cried: ''We are extremely gratified!" Rome climbed on the band wagon with eulogistic comparisons of President Roosevelt to Dictator Mussolini and Fascist editors recalled his refusal to join the League of Nations in Sanctions against Italy. Geneva newspapers said that not since Woodrow Wilson has any U. S. President been so nearly in sympathy with the League. In Paris, the Cabinet of Premier Leon Blum, who has tried to give his country a modified form of New Deal (TIME, June 15 et seq.), joined the Chamber of Deputies in rejoicing.

Without a single dissenting vote the French Chamber passed a resolution congratulating Mr. Roosevelt.* The Speaker of the Chamber, Radical Socialist Edouard Herriot, voiced his "personal satisfaction."Socialist Premier Blum cried: "I am most happy at the triumph of President Roosevelt, for whom I have the greatest admiration!" As a respected editorial voice speaking for the moderate Left, roughly comparable in France to the U. S. Democratic Party, famed Jules Sauerwein of Le Paris-Soir exhulted: "Henceforth democracy has its Chief! After his brilliant triumph President Roosevelt has become the statesman on whom all eyes will be turned from every part of the world and on whom every hope is to be pinned if the great liberal and democratic civilization of the Occident is one day threatened, either by Bolshevism or by autocracy.

"We believe that Mr. Roosevelt as a man with entire good faith, with a mixture of force and suppleness, with the authority and kindliness displayed by his actions and his speeches, won the sincerest popularity.

''But even considering all these reasons, it is impossible to suppress the thought that there is something in this phenomenon that transcends purely American affairs that Liberty and the Peace of the World are now to be defended by a voice powerful above all others.

"It would be pure narrowness to expect this feeling to appear in the form of accords or agreements of any specific kind. The freer President Roosevelt is from the quarrels and doctrines of other nations the greater his authority will be on the day when he sounds an alarm or attempts to call a halt.''

In many Frenchmen, hope that if France is attacked Mr. Roosevelt will lead the U. S. to the rescue was strengthened by the knowledge that the President & Mrs. Roosevelt both speak fluent French, his mother habitually travels on the French Line (always asking for the same cabin steward) and the new U. S. Ambassador to France, genial William Christian Bullitt, is regarded as the most pro-French U. S. envoy in Paris since the late Myron Herrick.* The political life of the Blum Cabinet has rested in recent weeks partly upon the success of M. Blum in persuading Parliament that Mr. Roosevelt is friendly to the French New Deal and has ordered Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau to cushion and facilitate the devaluation of the franc (TIME, Oct. 5). Both Paris and Rome had the impression that Alf Landon would have tried to threaten them into resumption of payments on the French and Italian War debts to the U. S.

In their accustomed role of mentors, London editors mostly wrote as though their words were intended not so much for the British reader as for possible good which they might do when cabled overseas and read by President Roosevelt and his fellow citizens. Said the Times: "That Roosevelt appreciates his new strength and that he means to use it for the good not merely of his own country but of the world is the conviction of everyone who has followed his previous performance. It is a matter of supreme importance at the moment, when English-speaking nations are becoming more isolated as the champions of Democracy in a world 'blown about by all the winds of doctrine.'

"No dictator, whether Fascist or Communist, can challenge the solid basis of his backing. None can afford so securely as Roosevelt to take the course, he believes to be right without regard for any need of a spellbound popularity."

Whatever this might mean to U. S. citizens, it was recognized by British reader: as a dignified intimation to the President that he can ignore U. S. isolationists and stretch firm hands across the Atlantic to support Britain should she be again challenged by Mussolini or threatened by Hitler or the agents of Stalin. The Manchester Guardian advised the President that he will be compelled to face the issue of amending the Constitution and reducing the Supreme Court's powers. "lf," cried the Guardian, "the first American President with the overwhelming support both of the people and of Congress behind him does not tackle this problem, who will?"

Britons also recalled that in Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham they have been sent by President Roosevelt the most pro-British envoy since President Wilson's famed Walter Hines Page.

International Santa. The No. 1 foreign policy of President Roosevelt, that of the "Good Neighbor," has been interpreted by all Latin American regimes as weakening the restraint upon them of the Monroe Doctrine. In this respect there has never been in Latin America so popular an inhabitant of the White House as Mr. Roosevelt. This week hundreds of newsorgans could be found echoing Noticias Graficas of Buenos Aires: "No one speaks any longer of Yankee Imperialism. The power of the United States no longer causes fear. . . . Mr. Roosevelt's good neighbor policy has surrounded the United States with an extraordinary dignity."

Least inclined of all to ''shoot Santa Claus" were the Canadian Government of Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King who have been in mortal fear lest Alf Landon in the White House might crimp the Canadian-U.S. Trade Treaty. This treaty has proved one of the most potent forces in spurring Canadian recovery and the New York Times's Ottawa correspondent wired that its rupture would be "a dagger-thrust for the present Canadian Government."

In Japan, officials were reticent but beaming. So good a neighbor as President Roosevelt, they opined, is unlikely to interfere with the aspirations of Japan in China, whereas under President Hoover there was inaugurated the "Stimson Doctrine" which even now persists among the Great Powers and has blocked Japan from obtaining recognition for her puppet empire Manchukuo. Because they still hate Hoover & Stimson, Japanese particularly like Roosevelt & Hull.

In China, the national economy of the country was roughly shaken when the U. S. Treasury drove up the price of silver (TIME, Aug. 20, 1934) and for months the Chinese people acutely suffered from the deflation this produced in their country. Nevertheless last week the very Chinese statesmen who were wringing their hands and cursing Roosevelt not many months ago joined in expressing joy at the President's reelection. For one thing, Mr. Roosevelt played Santa Claus to China with the thumping U.S.-China cotton Ioan. Proceeds of this are being used by Premier Chiang Kai-shek for public works projects in China as novel and ambitious for that country as the PWA. For another thing, the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury still controls the price of silver, which is a matter of life & death to China.

Of all tributes to the President last week the most urbane was that of the London Morning Post, an extreme Conservative organ. It began by observing with satisfaction that the British Conservative Party has in fact introduced some measures more radical than most thus far sponsored by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Admitting the President to the generous Santa Claus fraternity of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, the Morning Post declared, "When all allowances are made, Roosevelt may justly claim to have introduced a new principle of responsibility for individual welfare into American government and to have won widespread acceptance of it."

"Was this a Democratic election?" asked the Berlin Tageblatt. ''Or was it the eruption of the Fuehrer idea within the democratic system?" Answered the London News Chronicle: "Neither Hitler nor Mussolini has ever dared to submit himself to a free vote with business and the press against him as Roosevelt has done. Neither would dare to do so today!"

At the League of Nations bar in Geneva, inventive Proprietor Carlo Beltramo, an Italian, celebrated the Roosevelt election by inventing the Forty-Eight States Roosevelt Cocktail. Ingredients: 10 "states" of white Dutch curac,ao; 10 "states" of English gin; 8 of grapefruit juice; 18 of French vermouth; one of angostura bitters, representing Maine; and a final "state" of absinthe, green as the forests of Vermont, dripped in on top of the finished cocktail. Urged Barman Beltramo, "Drink one and see the landslide."

* The mayor of the French town of Lannoy reminded Mr. Roosevelt by cable last week that "through your mother, Sara Delano" the President is "a descendant of a family that originated in Lannoy and which, around 1600, emigrated to the Netherlands." Offering congratulations, the Mayor of Lannoy declared: "It is not without pride that we have learned of your triumphant re-election!" * Too, Frenchmen know that in Berlin the President has an anti-Nazi envoy, Ambassador William Edward Dodd (TIME, Oct. 23, 1933).

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