EDWARD JAMES FREED ON BAIL, LEAVES PRISON

Because a Probation Department official approached him with the request that he go to the Psychopathic Hospital for observation, Edward H. James '96 requested and received freedom on bail yesterday.

Declaring that he felt he was safer outside the jail than in, James, who was arrested on a charge of libel of President Roosevelt, remarked "I told the official that I am sane, and would fight any commitment to the last ditch."

Trial Called Yesterday

The leader of the Yankee-American Action movement, a group exposed several years ago when it was holding meetings in PBH, he was arraigned in court yesterday morning, when the trial, the first of its kind in this country, was supposed to open.

The case, however, was continued indefinitely, and James reversed his previous stand on bail, asking that he be allowed to go free under those conditions. After he had paid the $500 fee set by Judge Brogna he left with his possessions, and the law books which he has been studying while he has been confined.

"I was prepared to go on trial and was about to file a demurrer to the indictments based on what I believe to be the good legal contention that Franklin D. Roosevelt was not and is not within the jurisdiction of the Middlesex Court, and that no crime has been committed within the jurisdiction of this court."

James, who is alleged to have dubbed the President a "blood-stained assassin" was exposed by Joseph P. Lyford '41, who became a "member" of the organization, and worked himself into it to such an extent that James, in a pamphlet published soon after the expose, called him a "human bug."