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Columnist Dorothy Thompson, the greying seeress of the New York Herald Tribune, long ago clinched her title as No. 1 U. S. Breast Beater. One of the things over which Miss Thompson beats her breast is U. S. Isolation. Sometimes, impatient with U. S. Isolation, she has personally intervened abroad. Last week, after visiting the Maginot Line, she was soothsaying from a war-tremulous Paris.

Even in these shocking days, her words were a shock to the arch-Republican readers of the arch-Republican Herald Tribune. Miss Thompson asked herself: "What is the very wisest thing we could do?" And like a shot from a French 75, she answered: "It is not wise to make any change in the Presidency or in the Department of State."

Miss Thompson proceeded to make a clean breast of it: " The President has been right. He foresaw what has happened, when people were branding him a calamity howler. In the democratic world he is a figure of immense proportions. The fall of Roosevelt in America would be worse for the cause of democracy and freedom than the Nazi occupation of Switzerland." Miss Thompson then had the feminine audacity to propose that the G. O. P. not only hail Term III, and renounce any opposition, but nominate only a Vice-Presidential candidate: Wendell Willkie.

A national desire for political unity in time of crisis soon became apparent, although not on Miss Thompson's terms. To the White House Franklin Roosevelt invited his 1936 G. O. P. opposition: Presidential Nominee Alf Landon, Topeka oilman, Vice Presidential Nominee Colonel Frank Knox, Chicago Daily News publisher. After his visit, Publisher Knox announced a plan to establish several air service training camps "Aviation Plattsburgs."

In the first rush of national alarm, Republicans Landon, Knox, Thomas E. Dewey, Herbert Hoover hailed the President's defense message. " The President is right," said Herbert Hoover. But alarm over U. S. security was quickly succeeded by alarm over the fate of the G. O. P. in 1940. On second thought Mr. Landon denounced the President's message as "tragically late." Republicans in Congress listened in visible melancholy to Mr. Roosevelt's demand for 50,000 planes, haunted by a sombre vista of another four New Deal years. Third Termites were uncontrollably elated-they believed the Republican Party was the first U. S. casualty in World War II; and that their amateurish maneuverings for Term III were blossoming as a national demand to Draft Roosevelt. Both Republicans and Third Termites believed that the President wanted Term III, would accept the nomination.

But some observers close to the White House still thought they knew better. Their reasoning: Mr. Roosevelt has many times said that only an almost inconceivable crisis would make him a Term III candidate. Such a crisis might be the conquest of England and France by Adolf Hitler. To the question: Are the German successes enough to make him change his mind and run? their answer was: No, not yet.

Another big argument against Term III was still unmentioned. Month ago at least a dozen Congressmen had heard from varying sources that Mr. Roosevelt's health would not permit another term, that if he accepted the job again he might knowingly be writing his own death sentence. Each such report was promptly scotched by White House Secretary Stephen T. Early, but the rumors continued. Last week's rumor had it that a famed heart specialist, presumably called to the White House to look over Harry Hopkins (lounging in a bathrobe on the second floor), actually went to see the President. It was more than rumor that every close relative of the President is violently against Term III. solely for reasons of health.

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