Minds Made Up

A lot of people got down off the political fence last week, and some hurdled it.

Most spectacular hop-over was the leap of voluble, iron-whimmed Dorothy Thompson, who declared for Franklin D. Roosevelt. With womanly consideration she lunched with Mr. Willkie (whom Miss Thompson knows as Wendell) first, made it clear that she was coming out against him. A lengthy talk failed to change her mind. Her reasons for coming out for Roosevelt: his experience, his prestige in the democratic world, her faith in his ability to "be a very great man in an emergency," her belief that he has "the confidence of the rank and file." Said she: "Mr. Willkie might also in time come to have that confidence. I think he would. But he does not have it now. He would have to win it and in winning it some of his supporters would be his greatest liability. Roosevelt has it, and time is of the essence." The sight of Miss Thompson's skirty cartwheel "saddened," "astounded," "shocked" readers of her column in the arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune. Wrote one reader to the editors: "Good heavens! What are you thinking about to let this occur?"

Publisher Ogden Reid began to wonder himself, did not print a Thompson column this week which declared that "there is not the slightest shadow of a doubt" that the Axis wants to see President Roosevelt defeated.

A mind darn-near made up was exhibited by Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh this week, when the ex-hero, naming no names, sharply questioned the "leadership" that was taking the U. S. "to weakness and to war." Said Radiorator Lindbergh:

"Above all, we must select leaders whose promises we can trust. . . . We question that the men who were unable to foresee . . . conditions in time to avoid them, who could not foresee the war in time to prepare for it, who refused to believe the reports of rearming abroad when there was still time to take action, are now competent to carry this nation successfully through a great crisis. Under their leadership, we have alienated the most powerful military nations of both Europe and Asia, at a time when we ourselves are unprepared for action, and while the people of our nation are overwhelmingly opposed to war.

"We find the same men who have led us to the greatest national debt in our history now telling us that as a nation we are weak and unprepared; that we must appropriate more billions of dollars, and devote more years of time, to building up our military forces.

"These same leaders who have failed to solve even our peacetime problems, who have a consistent record of promise followed by failure, now ask us to put ourselves in their hands again as they lead us steadily toward that climax of all political failure--war."

Democratic bolters:

>Splenetic Columnist Westbrook Pegler grumped: "I never thought it would come to this with me. I liked Mr. Roosevelt real well in 1929."

> Mrs. Harold M. Lehman, niece by marriage of New York's Democratic Governor Lehman. Said she: "I don't think that being a Democrat and not voting for Roosevelt is news this year."

>Mrs. Isabella Greenway King, onetime Democratic Representative from Arizona, bridesmaid 35 years ago at the wedding of Mr. & Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Said she: "Every instinct of my country tells me we should not risk a third term."

>Mrs. Deborah Delano, 93, who bolted the Republican Party to vote for her third cousin Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, bolted back last week, declaring: "Even if he is as smart as they say, no man is smart enough to run for three terms."

>William Church Osborn, attorney, lifelong Democrat, onetime Roosevelt adviser.

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