Exodus

By last week, with Congress adjourned, the great summer exodus from the capital was well under way. The Government was running on slack steam. President Hoover was, as he put it, "condemned" to remain in the White House by public business. The Cabinet, always loyal to a new President, accepted condemnation with him. Not so the emissaries of foreign powers.

Dr. Friedrich W. von Prittwitz und Gaffron, the German Ambassador, sought relief from Washington's heat at Hot Springs, Va., making occasional trips back to the capital only when necessary. He hopes to visit the Fatherland later in the summer. H. H. Prince Albert de Ligne, Belgium's Ambassador, has removed himself and his diplomatic entourage to Gibson Island, Md., in Chesapeake Bay. Katsuji Debushi, the Japanese, has gone to Buena Vista, Va., for cooling elevation. The Mexican Ambassador, Senor Don Manuel C. Tellez, went to his own country, where it is really hot.

Count Laszlo Szechenyi, the Hungarian Minister, took his wife, who was fashionable Miss Gladys Vanderbilt, to Newport, R. I., and there, amid surroundings thoroughly familiar to her, established his little diplomatic court. A veteran diplomat, he well knows the impossibility of escaping Washington's torridity in Washington.

The Count & Countess Szechenyi enjoy a Washington popularity second only to that of the British Howards. Their summers alternate between Newport where the Countess's mother, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Sr., resides grandly at "The Breakers," and the Count's estates in Hungary. On his last trip home, the Count had a bad automobile accident, suffered the loss of his left eye. Light-hearted despite this, he still rides and drives his car, plays his "fair" game of golf. In Washington the Szechenyis take their social and diplomatic duties most seriously.

The Cuban Ambassador prepared to sail for Havana, where there is almost always a cool breeze. At the Brazilian Embassy there was a great packing of trunks and boxes for a move to the Adirondacks.

Sir Esme Howard, the British Ambassador, was compelled to remain temporarily in or near the capital because of rapid naval disarmament developments. He. longed to get away to the usual British summer embassy at Manchester-by-the-Sea. Mass. French Ambassador Paul Claudel was likewise unable to escape because of the necessity of negotiating a postponement of the French debt settlement.

The few diplomats thus left behind wondered to themselves just why the founding fathers had ever placed a world capital on the steaming mudbanks of the Potomac. Washington's summer heat is notorious, despite the editorial efforts of the Evening Star to find a "refreshing quality" in the atmosphere and to deflect the attention of sweltering readers to the more pitiful conditions at Phoenix, Ariz and Hades.

In summer, horses on Washington streets heave and collapse. Eggs are fried on the northwest corner of 14th street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Idlers gather about the Weather Bureau's kiosk 100 yards away to watch the thermometer break 100DEG at midafternoon. Downtown streets are virtually deserted from 11 a. m. to 4 p. m. Men-in-the-street go about in their shirt sleeves.

About 150 quarts of water per month are removed from the humid air of the House of Representatives. In the evening, suffering residents troop down into Rock Creek Park where, 150 ft. below street level, cool air fills the gorge. Other crowds go to Potomac Park and around the Speedway. Loud are the complaints because the Potomac River is an open sewer and there are no public swimming pools.

"Everybody" is away. Only about 400,000 "nobodies," including the hot President and his aides, remain behind.