After the US declaration of war against Germany on 6 April 1917, Franklin Roosevelt traveled in the summer of 1918 to England and France as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He met Wilson Churchill in London and George Clemenceau in Paris. On his return to New York on 19 September 1918, he caught the Spanish flu. This virulent disease caused the first fatal case in Boston in mid-September 1918. There was a very high mortality rate of 3% of those infected. In the infected areas, 25% of the nurses died. The epidemic, which began in the United States in 1918, caused the deaths of at least 21 milli...

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