Last week the U. S. heard a great noise. It was the sum of many voices: the burnished periods of Franklin Roosevelt (see p. 11); the hoarse, earnest voice of Wendell Willkie (see p. 12); the tragic solemnity of John L. Lewis (see p. 18); the twanging, drawling, rasping, dry voice of the U. S. in campaign conversation:
> Said Jim Farley, who gave up his Democratic National Chairmanship rather than work for a Third Term: "I shall vote the straight Democratic ticket on Nov. 5 and I urge the members of my party to do likewise."
> U. S. Attorney General Robert H. Jackson: "[I] have done all [I can] to stop the increasing concentration in this country of great aggregations of other people's money in the hands of lawless, irresponsible and ruthless men like Wendell Willkie."
> U. S. Solicitor General Francis Biddle: "Of course, Hitler wants Roosevelt defeated."
> G. O. P.'s Vice-Presidential Nominee Charles L. McNary: "We have something better. . . ."
> Mr. Roosevelt's Henry Agard Wallace: "No farm-minded Republican can go up against the buzz saw of the national leadership of the Republican Party . . . without . . . deciding to become a Democrat."
> New York City's Mayor LaGuardia: "Mr. Willkie's utterances ... as far as I have quoted . . . [contain] a total of six different positions on foreign policy, nine contradictions . . . regarding the New Deal's policies and legislation, three contradictions on ... power, and one contradiction each regarding the control of monopolies, Government ownership, Argentine beef, and the Third Term."
> Columnist Westbrook Pegler: "I submit that Fiorello LaGuardia has been the worst mucker on the New Deal team."
> Irvin S. Cobb, a Democratic humorist who is serious about Willkie: "I'm getting just a little bit tired of voting for a family, even though it's such a busy, literary, military, oratorical, insurance-selling, financially successful family. I am, this year, going to try the experiment of voting for a man."
> Negro Champion Joe Louis: "I think Willkie will give us a square deal. Roosevelt had two terms . . . didn't give us an anti-lynching law."
> Dressed up as Uncle Sam, Horace Woodward, of Arlington, Va., mounted and coaxed his steed into Bull Run, switched horses in midstream with Ann Hedrick, just to show it could be done.
> Recently Senator Theodore ("The Man") Bilbo of Mississippi asserted that Wendell Willkie's father had once lived in Columbus, Miss, under an assumed name: "John Stover." Last week indignant Willkie Democrats of Mississippi offered to give $1,000 to the Red Cross if anyone could prove it. At Columbus, 80-year-old Historian E. R. Hopkins cracked: "Senator Bilbo says a lot of things besides his prayers."