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because he had talked about it a number of times before. He knew that, although it didn't matter to me who was Vice President, - I'm not a politician - that was what my hunch was, and that if I had been told to choose, that was what I would have chosen.

The thing which caused so much trouble later on in the campaign as far as Wallace was concerned was the episode of the “Guru Letters.” That story broke in October 1940, and I didn't know about the letters before that. However, I'm not sure that I hadn't heard some rumor that Wallace was interested in mysticism. When the letters were made known, I recall several episodes when they were discussed in a small group and the President saying, “Oh my God, isn't that something? Letters are always cropping up in campaigns, but in this case there's no girl. What a pity!” That was, of course, by way of being a joke when he said, “What a pity!” There's at least a political code of honor about what you do about letters to a girl that turn up, but there was no political code of honor with regard to these letters.

Nicholas Roerich was involved in all this, of course. He was a well-known person in New York. I had met him. He was roaring around Columbia University