Roosevelt, Franklin D., & Winston Churchill | Atlantic Conference broadside, signed by both wartime leaders

Roosevelt, Franklin D., & Winston Churchill

Lithographed broadside signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt ("Franklin D Roosevelt") as thirty-second President, and Winston Churchill ("Winston S. Churchill") as Prime Minister. [np, nd, but August 1941]

Lithographic card (171 x 223 mm) pictorially printed in orange and black, with a galleon at sea printed in gray, label to verso of Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd; minor toning. Matted, framed, and glazed; not examined out of frame.

A scarce broadside signed by two great wartime leaders

In 1941, President Roosevelt forwarded a message to Churchill via Wendell Wilkie, who had been Roosevelt's political opponent in the presidential election of 1940. The message read: "Wendell Wilkie will give you this — He is truly helping to keep politics out over here. I think this verse applies to you people as it does to us: Sail on, Oh Ship of State! / Sail on, Oh Union strong and great. / Humanity with all its fears / With all the hope of future years / Is hanging breathless on thy fate."

Churchill reproduced the lines of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's verse quoted in Roosevelt's message as a decorative keepsake for distribution to the attendees of the first wartime conference between the two leaders. Held at sea in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, during August of 1941, the conference resulted in the issuance of the Atlantic Charter. A few of the copies were signed by the two leaders, including the present, which was given to General Henry "Hap" Arnold.  

PROVENANCE

Estate of General H. H. "Hap" Arnold (Bonhams New York, 11 June 2008, lot 2361)