Speech No. 1

A good President must have a good Press.--U. S. POLITICAL PROVERBS. A fortnight ago, guests at the White House were Mr. and Mrs. Adolph S. Ochs of Manhattan. While Mrs. Hoover motored Mrs. Ochs around Washington and entertained her (TIME, April 15), President Hoover devoted spare moments to Mr. Ochs, who publishes the august, fatherly (and almost always Democratic) New York Times. President Hoover asked Publisher Ochs this and that about U. S. journalism. After the Ochses had gone, President Hoover wrote a speech. Last week President Hoover went to Manhattan, taking his speech with him, the first extra-routine speech of his administration. Publisher Ochs was at the station to meet him, to escort him to a hotel where the Press was assembled. It was the Press in a far larger sense than what the President meets each Tuesday and Friday at noon in his office. This was the Associated Press--a non-partisan organization which collects and distributes news, not for profit but for its members' convenience. Newspaper publishers from all over the land were in Manhattan for the annual meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Most of them went into the hotel to hear what the President would say. Those who did not go in either listened in or read the speech as soon as it was printed.* There was not much in the speech that any alert publisher could not have prophesied beforehand. President Hoover's biggest project is Law Enforcement. He urged the Press to be a quick public conscience to that end. Freedom of the Press to discuss public questions is a U. S. cornerstone. President Hoover acknowledged this, adding earnestly: "I put the question, however, whether flippance is a useful or even legitimate device in such discussion. ... Its effect is as misleading and distorting of public conscience as direct misrepresentation." U. S. newspapers make crime romantic, glamorous. President Hoover suggested that they might "invest with a little more romance and heroism those thousands of our officers who are endeavoring to enforce the law. . . ." He also added, before taking train back to Washington: "I have no criticism to make of the American Press. I admire its independence and courage." P: Struggling into his winter overcoat, President Hoover last week went out and inaugurated Washington's baseball season at Griffith Stadium. Calmly he watched the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Washington Senators 13 to 4. With him and Mrs. Hoover were four members of the Cabinet: Secretaries Mellon, Good, Hyde, Davis.

Walter Johnson, longtime pitcher and now manager of the Washington team, entered the President's box, handed him a shiny white baseball. President Hoover stood up, held a pitching pose long enough for cameramen to get the picture, then hurled the ball high and far to Umpire George Moriarty.

Mrs. Hoover ate peanuts out of a bag. The President, contrary to custom, sat through the entire nine innings. P: Last week President Hoover made more appointments. He advanced his good friend Dr. Julius Klein from chief of the Division of Foreign & Domestic Commerce to Assistant Secretary of Commerce. From Hartford, Conn., he called Col. Earl D. Church, insurance man, to serve as Commissioner of Pensions. To the post of Commissioner of Indian Affairs he named Charles James Rhoads of Philadelphia, president of the Indian Rights Association.

P: Ten other judicial nominations the President forwarded simultaneously to the Senate. Contrary to all precedent he sent also the list of men who had recommended and endorsed each appointment. Heretofore Presidents picked their judicial appointments out of the air, so far as the public ever knew. Under the new system backdoor political pussyfooting will be eliminated, each appointee will have the full strength of his endorsers to aid his confirmation and, if a judge later bogs down in crookedness, the responsibility will rest not upon the White House but upon those who supported his appointment.

*Publishers who subscribe to the Associated Press's rival, the United Press, were few at the Associated Press's party.