Arthur A. Ballantine '04, Under Secretary of the Treasury under Hoover, recalls, "there was never any doubt of Franklin Roosevelt's ability to write. When as a holdover Under Secretary of the Treasury, I came to the White House almost every day in the early days of his administration as President, I found that same skill, further developed.

More Class Instruction?

"As I watched his extraordinary career I could always see that a most useful factor in it was his CRIMSON training. There were times when I wished that Franklin Roosevelt had managed to spend more time in college on some of our excellent instruction in economics and in government."

The Rev. W. Russell Bowie '04, now a dean at the Union Theological Seminary, remarked, "He was handsome and light-hearted and apparently easy-going, not of particularly high rank in college class, quick witted and capable as a CRIMSON editor, but not extraordinary.

"Yet there were traits of his which, as one looks back on them, become significant. He had a force of personality which was latent and which subsequent occasions would call out. He liked people, and he made them instictively like him. Moreover, in his geniality there was a kind of frictionless command."

Other editors agree the CRIMSON could be called the start of Roosevelt's rise in success.

Lauds CRIMSON Training

Roosevelt's own views on the CRIMSON are probably best summed up in the last message he sent the board on the occasion of the paper's 70th anniversary in 1943: "I am sure that I voice the sentiment of all that company of happy men when I say that none of them would exchange his CRIMSON training for any other experience or association in college days.