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On a long dusty highway a high-seated touring car is pounding along. It comes to an unseen line that has all of the resistance of a Holland Dyke. This line is the state boundary between New Jersey and New York.

With a grinding of brakes, the car comes to a stop. From places unsuspected, men appear carrying the badges of health officers.

"Where are you going?" they want to know.

"We are going to see Grandmother," the children in the car reply.

"Sorry," say these Health Officers to the lady riding in the front seat, "You cannot pass. No children are permitted to enter New Jersey!"

The lady's reply is indignant, "Why not? We have always come this way."

The answer is sudden, swift and dramatic. "Infantile paralysis, lady. No children allowed."

These granite walls, built swiftly but solidly between the states of the Eastern Seaboard, were as trenches in the great World War -- lines of defense, created in desperation and in terror by the citizens of communities as well as states, barring one from another, putting a complete halt on the visiting and the mingling of families in neighboring states, neighboring counties, and neighboring cities, to stop the steady, grim, but determined march of a new serpent twining his way, day by day, with a stealthy devastation that threw terror and horror before him.

II

"My husband, who had been complaining of feeling logy and tired for several days, decided it would do him good to go in for a dip in a land-locked lake called Lake Glen Severn. The children were delighted, and they started away. After their swim Franklin took a dip in the Bay of Fundy and ran home.

"When they came in, a good deal of mail had arrived and my husband sat around in his bathing suit, which was not completely dry, and looked at his mail. In a little while he began to complain that he felt chill and decided he would not eat supper with us, but would go to bed and get thoroughly warm. He wanted to avoid catching cold.

"In retrospect I realize he had had no rest since the war. Undoubtedly the hunting trip after the campaign had been extremely strenuous and no real rest. Plunging back into business had not given him any opportunity to relax and he had probably been going on his nerves.

"The next day my husband felt less well. He had quite a temperature and I sent for our faithful friend, Doctor Bennett. Doctor Bennett thought my husband had just an ordinary cold, and I decided that the best thing to do was to get everybody else off on this camping trip.

"The camping trip lasted three days, and by the time they were back it was very evident that my husband's legs were getting badly paralyzed.

"For a little while he showed no improvement. The days dragged on and the doctors kept saying he must have a nurse, but it was hard to get one, so I kept on taking care of him. His temperature at times was very high. It required a certain amount of skilled nursing, and I was thankful for every bit of training which Miss Spring had given me.

"Finally my husband's uncle, Mr. Frederic Delano, begged us to have the well-known infantile paralysis doctor. Doctor Lovett, come up from Newport. He examined my husband very carefully, and after consultation he told me it was infantile paralysis." -- From This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt, published by Harper & Bros.

This simple story that might have had a tragic ending marks the unconscious selection of our present leader in the fight against poliomyelitis. The tale of his courageous victory over the disease, an inspiration to us all, is known to everyone. The work under his leadership that sprang from this sad beginning will never end until the dread plague is conquered.

III

Years ago the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation was a combination of antiquated buildings and a dream -- the dream of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But with his indomitable courage and vision, this dream was not long in assuming reality. He surrounded himself with people who, financially or through the contribution of their energies, could help bring about an institution which would be the greatest single force in organizing and coordinating a national fight against infantile paralysis.

The years that followed have been full of plans, enthusiasm, and accomplishments. There was the construction of pools; the building of the Infirmary; the growth of the cottages around the campus and up the mountain side.

Along with the steady building at Warm Springs those associated with its growth have witnessed a tremendous development of medical work on infantile paralysis throughout the country and a rapid increase in the influence it has exerted.

In the early part of 1933, when the Board of Trustees voted that the work of the Foundation should be intensified, definite steps were taken to acquaint the public with the objectives which the Foundation had created, and the necessity of securing money with which to attain those objectives.

In 1934 the Birthday Ball for the President was decided upon as a happy solution of the problem of raising money.

In view of the magnitude of the task of conquering infantile paralysis the Trustees decided that the 1935 proceeds should go exclusively for the benefit of the cause as a whole.

A Commission and a Medical Advisory Committee were appointed to help in the best possible allocation of funds. Besides the sorely needed help provided for localities, a national research fund was made available to the Commission. Famous scientific institutions in various parts of the country were given funds by the Commission to carry on research work.

The Commission reported that it was amazing how unified the fight for the discovery and control of the virus of infantile paralysis had become. Scattered scientists were much better able to keep track of the progress made elsewhere, and so direct their own work more effectively. And the feeling of unity inspired them to ever greater effort.

Vast strides forward have been made. New hopes have been born. Knowledge of care and prevention has been disseminated to the practising physicians throughout the land. Work is being carried out at a feverish pace. Yet last summer . . .

IV

Another Black August . . . Infantile paralysis epidemic strikes the Middle West, the Coast, the Eastern Seaboard. Swimming pools, motion picture theatres are closed. Business is at a standstill. Hospitals are crowded. Schools won't open. Police cars in the streets keep children in their homes. Doctors are all too few. Iron lungs must be shuttled about the country by airplane, by Zephyr train, by fast motor car. Three deaths today . . . eighteen more stricken . . . terror everywhere.

This is the picture of a modern city when epidemic comes as it did last August. Cities literally bar their doors and windows to hide from this dread plague. The populace rose up, but in vain, to fight against the unseen enemy that cripples, twists, and chokes the life out of little children.

The experience of last summer forcefully brought to the public mind the fact that, although science had made great strides forward, the fight against infantile paralysis was still in its primary stages. Thinking people realized the magnitude of the emergency. Leaders in business, welfare and national affairs girded themselves for the gigantic task ahead. They saw it was not a fight that any one community could carry on unaided, that there was a crying and immediate need for a vast national organization to carry on the fight, to rush its resources and fighting men to the scene of action when epidemic struck, to find out more about the disease through the tireless, heroic work of scientific men in laboratories throughout the land -- in short, to prepare.

And on September 23, 1937, from the White House came the President's announcement of The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

V

President Roosevelt's statement marked the declaration of war against infantile paralysis. On October 18 he sent out his orders for mobilization. He said that he had received from Basil O'Connor, the Treasurer of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, the following recommendations:

1. That all of the funds received next year by the Birthday Celebration Committee be given by the President to the new National Foundation, and that none of these funds go to Warm Springs.

2. That the name of the Committee to handle the celebration of his birthday in 1938 be "The Committee for the Celebration of the President's Birthday for Fighting Infantile Paralysis."

3. That the executive personnel of that Committee be:

Keith Morgan, Chairman; George E. Alien, Walter J. Cummings, Marshall Field, Fred J. Fisher, Edsel B. Ford, W. Averell Harriman, S. Clay Williams.

The President said that he endorsed these recommendations and felt that changing the seventy-thirty per cent plan of distribution, used in the previous three celebrations, to the one to be used in 1938, whereby all of the money is to be given to the new National Foundation, would be of great benefit to those communities unduly pressed by the accumulation of those afflicted.

VI

The practising physicians have been called the front line fighters, but they will be the first to say that without the aid of research very little advancement would have been made in the treatment of infantile paralysis. The great followers in the glorious path of Pasteur in laboratories, hospitals, and clinics have carried the light into unknown fields. They have searched far into mysterious lands that none have trod before them. As you read this, their lamps are burning far into the night as they search patiently for an answer to the problem which as yet has had no solution. From this source, and from this source alone, will come the cure and prevention of poliomyelitis. Let us view the long list of their work to date:

1. Discovery that the rhesus monkey was the only available animal to which poliomyelitis could be transmitted.

2. Study of characteristics of the disease that might be inheritable.

3. Facts about climatic conditions and localities.

4. Discovery of the port of entry (nerves in the nasal area).

5. Prevention by nasal spray of alum -- picric acid -- zinc sulphate (used in this summer's epidemic).

6. The new improved nasal spray.

7. Serums (as yet unproven).

8. Vaccination (experiments still going on).

9. Work with endocrene glands.

10. The iron lung.

11. The after-care with water.

12. Stream-lined light metal braces.

13. The corset.

14. The spinal fusion operation.

15. The stabilization of the foot operation.

16. Countless aids towards muscular strengthening, balancing and correction.

17. Warm water swimming.

18. Death from suffocation reduced practically to nil.

19. Early symptoms.

These great laboratories in all sections of the country have already received grants and have donated facilities, men and equipment towards the endless fight against poliomyelitis. They need the support of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to carry on the heroic work that they have started:

Stanford University, California.
University of California, California.
University of Southern California, California.
University of Chicago, Illinois.
Yale University, Connecticut.
Harvard University Medical School, Massachusetts.
University of Michigan, Michigan.
Johns Hopkins University, Maryland.
Long Island College of Medicine, New York.
New York University, New York.
College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York.
Health Research, Inc., New York.
University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.
Western Reserve University, Ohio.
University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin.

In spite of seventy-five years of continuous research, in spite of the great advances made in the past ten years, of the hopes that have arisen from serum, vaccine and nasal sprays, of the magnificent work now going on throughout the country, four questions that every mother and father in America asks cannot be answered:

"1. Will my child be paralyzed?

"2. If the first appearance of muscle weakness involves an arm or leg, will that be all, or will it advance to other parts?

"3. What chance is there of death?

"4. Will the paralysis be permanent?

"These queries are simple and to the point and deserve answers which with equal directness convey the satisfaction of authoritative finality. But the honest and experienced physician, notwithstanding all that is known about poliomyelitis today, still must say, 'I do not know.' However, the situation is not quite so devoid of hope as such a terse reply suggests."

So says Dr. George Draper in Infantile Paralysis.

True enough, partial and sometimes satisfactory answers can be given to these queries. A frantic mother can be consoled, but she cannot be definitely and honestly assured.

The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis has set as its ideal the complete solution of these problems. They can -- they must -- they WILL be solved!