Two hundred writers, journalists, physicians, radio commentators, lawyers, playwrights, college presidents, clergymen, educators, editors artists, publishers and government officials sent a cable message yesterday to Leon Blum, former leader of the French Popular Front, who has spent nearly two years in prison as one of the accused in the “war-guilt” trial at Riom. He is 70 years old today.
“The undersigned Americans, on the occasion of your seventieth birthday,” the message read, “wish to express to you their sympathetic greetings, and their admiration of your courageous stand in the cause of freedom and democracy.”
The signers included Governor Lehman, Albert Einstein, Louis Bromfield, Joh Dewey, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Fannie Hurst, Marquis James, Dorothy Thompson, Christopher Morley, Vincent Sheean, Upton Sinclair, Archibald MacLeish, Sigrid Undset, Arthur Garfield Hays, George Battle, the Rt. Rev Edward L. Parsons, Bishop Frank J. McConnell, Major George Fielding Eliot, Professor Franz Boas, Raymond Gram Swing, Walter Damrosch, William Green, and John Haynes Holmes.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.