Teams

Barring an extreme radical or an extreme reactionary, almost any citizen of integrity would be better to have in the White House than Mr. Roosevelt.

Thus, in the autumn of 1935, wrote Manhattan Banker James P. Warburg in Hell Bent for Election. Last week, in the most dramatic reversal of the campaign, this early, vehement and brilliant member of the "anybody but Roosevelt" school announced his intention to vote for Franklin Roosevelt's reelection.

Brisk and personable young "Jimmy" Warburg welcomed Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932 with high enthusiasm, took his place as one of the New President's close economic advisers. Among the first such pilots to abandon the New Deal ship, he quit in bitter disillusionment after the President torpedoed the London Economic Conference, at which Banker Warburg was U. S. fiscal expert, and with it Warburg's hopes for currency stabilization and revived international trade. Last year Banker Warburg capped his outspoken criticism of his old chief with Hell Bent for Election, which eloquently denounced Franklin Roosevelt as a promise-breaker, an incipient dictator, an "ineffective and dangerous man to have in the White House" because he was dominated by his emotions and his prime emotional drive was "an inordinate desire for popularity." Republicans gobbled up 400,000 copies of this booklet.

Presumably his GOPatrons were no less embarrassed than Author Warburg when he wrote to Secretary of State Hull last week that his disillusionment with the Republican candidates and platform plus his gratification at the New Deal's reciprocal tariff treaties and recent moves toward currency stabilization had won back his vote. Of his Roosevelt criticism. Banker Warburg wrote: "I make no retractions." Of Republicans: "It is impossible for me to support an opposition which either will not or cannot recognize that economic nationalism lies at the root of our great difficulties. . . ."

In Pittsburgh last week New York's Republican-Fusion Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia announced himself for Franklin Roosevelt "without reserve." In Washington, Secretary of Agriculture Wallace's Uncle Dan, a Minnesota farm paper editor, declared that New Deal agricultural policies filled him with "doubt and fear," said he would vote for Landon.

Thus last week continued the lining up of teams of famed names for the big game on Nov. 3. To offset the Republicans' Cornelia Otis Skinner, Geraldine Farrar and Ginger Rogers, Democrats had Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, Grace Moore. Sally Rand. George Ade and Booth Tarkington were signed for Landon. George Jean Nathan and Theodore Dreiser for Roosevelt. Chester A. Arthur III. for Roosevelt, was ready to cancel out John Coolidge's vote for Landon.

Other Republican first-stringers: Thomas (The Clansman) Dixon, Clarence Buddington Kelland, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Branch Rickey, Alice Marble.

Democrats: Virginia C. Gildersleeve, Mary Woolley, Will Durant, Robert Taylor, George Raft, George Jessel, George Gershwin, George M. Cohan, Lee Shubert, Eddy Duchin, W. C. Fields, Beatrice Lillie, Joe E. Brown.

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