Candidature

Bringing to completion his climactic plan for ending Depression, the President announced appointment of Chicago's Charles Gates Dawes to be president of R. F. C. As expected, Eugene Meyer, the plan's reputed architect, took the post of chairman of the board (see p. 11). Banker Dawes, who had already resigned as Ambassador to Great Britain, resigned also as No. 1 U. S. delegate to the Geneva Arms Conference. To Geneva will go no less an official than Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson.

P: "To those who have inquired of me whether or not the President would be a candidate for reelection, I have replied that of course he was a candidate. The friends of the President feel that he ought to be renominated and they will take the proper steps to look after his candidacy in various States."

Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown, most politically-minded member of the Cabinet, was talking to newsmen in the lobby of the White House offices. He had just emerged from a long heart-to-heart talk with President Hoover. Now for the first formal time, he was announcing the obvious: Herbert Hoover would stand for another four years in the White House. What gave "General" Brown's words immense authority was the fact that, after the Chicago convention, he is slated to succeed Senator Fess as chairman of the Republican National Committee and manage the Hoover campaign for reelection. Only Republican candidates in the field so far against Mr. Hoover: onetime Senator Joseph Irwin France of Maryland and Mayor Jacob Coxey of Massillon, Ohio. Father James R. Cox of Pittsburgh told a crowd of 50,000 at Pitt Stadium he would run on an independent "jobless" ticket (TIME, Jan. 18).

This year loyal Republicans will vote for a presidential nominee who has aged 20 years since they first voted for him in 1928. The White House has left its scars of service on the President. His hair is greyer. His shoulders seem to droop in discouragement. The lines about his eyes have cut in deeper and those about his mouth have hardened. The round baby-pink face of the 1920's has grown firmer, more mature. Washington has been as cruel to him as to any President in history. And yet somehow, for all the heartbreak that has been his, Mr. Hoover has grown in inner stature. To strangers he may appear a beaten man but his friends marvel at his fortitude and lack of bitterness. Thin-skinned, he has learned to shrug off criticism with a philosophy described as "almost oriental in its calm." No longer do his fingers drum a nervous tattoo on his chair arm or his eyes rove the floor. He talks in a low, steady, less querulous voice. His words are weighted with patient resignation.

P: True and loyal friend of President Hoover is Hugh Simon Gibson, Ambassador to Belgium. Of late the Belgian Press has developed a virulent hatred for the U. S. and its "ignorance"' on Reparations. Declared L'lndependance Beige: "This ignorance is general, America being too busy recording the doings of gangsters to study politics. It is America's attitude, inspired by its ignorance of realities, that is compromising peace." When the Press began to flay even Herbert Hoover who holds a royal certificate as "Friend of Belgium" and charge him with lining his own pockets out of Wartime relief, Ambassador Gibson decided to act on his own initiative and without orders from Washington. From Foreign Minister Paul Hymans he received an official disavowal of the offensive articles by the Government and a public expression of regret: "Belgium cannot forget the help which the United States afforded her during the War and the admirable tactics Mr. Hoover showed in the organization of relief." The Belgian Press continued to seethe and fume indignantly at "U. S. interference."

P: As a reward for his "splendid service" in penalizing Chicago gangsters, President Hoover promoted U. S. District Judge James Herbert Wilkerson to the Circuit Court of Appeals. Because Judge Wilkerson had issued the drastic injunction which helped break the railroad shopmen's strike of 1922, U. S. Labor prepared to fight his confirmation by the Senate.

P: Last week President Hoover selected handsome bushy-browed Joseph Clark Grew, now Ambassador to Turkey, to succeed William Cameron Forbes resigning as Ambassador to Japan. The choice was approved by the Japanese Government. Ambassador Grew, Boston socialite and Harvard man ('98), has been a career diplomat since 1904. While President Hoover was casting about for an Ambassador to succeed Charles Gates Dawes at the Court of St. James's, political tradition went by the board when Henry Prather Fletcher, onetime Ambassador to Italy and lately chairman of the Tariff Commission, startlingly announced his candidacy for this No. 1 foreign job, telegraphed the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress a request for support.

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