"Dear Guy"

Franklin Roosevelt came his closest yet to announcing for Term IV. He sent a friendly letter to Iowa's Senator Guy Mark Gillette congratulating him on his decision to run for reelection. The letter was not made public, but friends of the Senator said it began: "Dear Guy."

That Franklin Roosevelt should choose to make overtures to Guy Gillette was significant. In 1938 the Administration sought, unsuccessfully, to purge him.* Since then he has been a pretty consistent Administration foe: he voted against Lend-Lease, draft extension and neutrality act revision; as late as last February, he was the only member of the Foreign Relations Committee--Democrat or Republican--to oppose UNRRA. He has also said: "I would oppose a fourth term for my own father."

How much the President could help Guy Gillette was problematical. A recent Des Moines Register and Tribune poll indicated that, if the election were held now, Guy Gillette would be swamped by 220,000 by Iowa's vote-getting Gov. Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper. But the President is straining hard to have a united Democratic Party, apparently behind himself.

*The chosen instrument for the purge was one Otha D. Wearin, then billed as a red-hot New-Dealing Congressman, now a red-hot anti-Fourth Termer.

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