Wanted: a Poem

"What this country needs is a great poem. Something to lift people out of fear and selfishness. Every once in a while someone catches words out of the air and gives a nation an inspiration. We need something to raise our eyes beyond the immediate horizon. A great nation can't go along just watching its feet. I'd like to see something simple enough for a child to spout in school on Fridays. I keep looking for it but I don't see it. Sometimes a great poem can do more than legislation.

" 'John Brown's Body' [by Stephen Vincent Benet] was a step in the right direction. I've read it once and I'm reading it again. But it's too long to do what I mean. You can't thrill people in 300 pages. Three hundred lines is about the limit. Kipling's 'Recessional' really did something to England when it was published. Let me know if you find any great poems lying around."

Amid the aroma of cigar smoke President Hoover was talking to big, burly Christopher Morley, poet and writer, in the Lincoln Study. Inquisitive about the President's reading habits Mr. Morley had been invited as an overnight White House guest. Last week's Saturday Review of Literature published his White House findings.

Of the U. S. booksellers who presented him with a 500-volume library soon after he took office President Hoover remarked : "If they sent those here to educate me, I'm afraid it was too late. I'd read 85% of them before."

Reported Reporter Morley: "The President is a good man. He pronounces economics correctly, with a long e. Beware of statesmen who call it eckonomics. . . .* He does not care for wildcat literature. He sank his shafts deep into the solid ore of Balzac, Bronte, Cooper, Dickens, Dumas, George Eliot, Bret Harte, Hawthorne, Howells, Kipling, Meredith, Scott, Stevenson, Thackeray, Mark Twain. . . . There is nothing austerely highbrow in his choice: he enjoyed the same thrillers you and I were reared on. He knows his James Bryce, John Fiske, Parkman, Prescott, James Ford Rhodes, Trevelyan, Truslow Adams. . . . Among late American novelists his favorites seem to be Thomas Nelson Page, Tarkington, Edith Wharton, Stewart Edward White, Willa Cather, Harry Leon Wilson, Zane Grey."

Mr. Morlev was struck by the fact that Mrs. Hoover at the dinner table called her husband "Daddy" and that granulated sugar was served with the after-dinner coffee.

P: Last week executive representatives of the 21 railroad unions called upon President Hoover, petitioned him to use his good offices to prevent the carriers from cutting workers' pay another 20% on Feb. 1. Such a reduction, they asserted, would prove "a suicidal program ... an unsound and destructive policy."

P: Anton Joseph Cermak, Democratic Mayor of Chicago, called at the White House. Because he had no appointment he did not see President Hoover. A caller who did see the President was Roland Robinson, 24, youngest member of the British House of Commons.

P: President Hoover picked Des Moines and Oct. 4 to make his first campaign speech. Nominally an answer to Nominee Roosevelt's Topeka speech, the Hoover address was expected to avoid new relief prescriptions, laud the recovery program already initiated. Milo Reno, farm strike leader, planned a protest parade by 20, 000 of his followers. Republican leaders assured President Hoover the Reno demonstration would not prove hostile.

P: Poor friends at best, President Hoover and Pennsylvania's Governor Pinchot clashed over R. F. C. relief for that State again last week. Irked at R. F. C. delays Governor Pinchot wired the President a protest against "its cruel, needless and unexplained refusal" to advance Pennsylvania $10,000,000 for relief, asked for a White House appointment "to end this senseless embargo." President Hoover replied that he has "no authority or right to direct the board to make specific loans," declared it was composed of "eminent, patriotic and sympathetic men," suggested the Governor study the law. Mr. Pinchot rapped back: "I cannot concede that you are powerless to help. . . . Your appointees would unquestionably respect your wishes. You yourself have given the guarantee that no one shall starve in this country. I ask you to make that guarantee good in Pennsylvania." To hush the impetuous Governor, R. F. C. granted three hard-hit Pennsylvania counties $2,500, 000 which Mr. Pinchot exclaimed was "totally inadequate."

*Canadian newspapers criticized President Hoover's pronunciation during his speech of acceptance. He pronounced revenue "revenoo," dropped the "t" from ''kept."

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