Roosevelt was an aristocrat. But he fought the people's battles. It used to be said that one day America would have a Royal Family and its name would be Roosevelt. Yet it was Roosevelt who coined that immortal phrase. "The Forgotten Man." So his countrymen did not need any introduction when he stood for President. Franklin was descended on his father's side from New York's original 17th-century Dutch colonists. His mother was of the noble French house of De Lannoy, eminent fighters for the Protestant cause in the religious wars of the 1500's.
He went to one of America's few private schools, and then to the Law School at Harvard, He lived in the house and on the estate where he was born, In that age of shifting values he felt himself secure. But this inherited assurance was reinforced by experience, At the age of 40 Roosevelt was attacked by infantile paralysis, There are several stories of how it happened: He caught a chill stamping out a forest fire; he fell overboard while fishing in the Bay of Lundy; he was seized with cramp while swimming. Anyhow, the paralysis seemed to cut short both career and life. It immobilized him from the waist down. His indomitable courage and terrific force of character battled with the thing, checked, and repulsed it. He recovered the use of his limbs, and won back from wheeled-chair to crutches, from crutches to sticks. It was eloquent of something more than his strength of body and purpose. In the paralysis he drove out of his body men sensed a parallel with the paralysis that was creeping over the world. From his victory over the great evil that threatened himself, the President emerged confident of his ability to defeat the evils that threatened other men.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.