The Roosevelt Week

With an Astor, a Mellon, a Widener, a Baruch, a Pulitzer, two Du Ponts and many another notable, Franklin Roosevelt last week attended his first Gridiron Club dinner as President of the U. S. From the seat of honor in the Willard Hotel ballroom he watched Washington correspond- ents royally "roast" his New Deal in song and skit. Burlesqued before him was "a wonderland from which men in hair shirts have been expelled by men in asbestos pants." With a high wide grin he saw himself welcomed into the peerage of dictators by Russia's Stalin, Italy's Mussolini, Germany's Hitler. Turkey's Kemal Pasha, Poland's Pilsudski. A sow named Cleopatra was tried for high treason because she had littered two more pigs than the President had allotted her. President Roosevelt made a speech but, according to Gridiron rules, "reporters are never present." Neither are ladies--in fact, though not in theory. Madam Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was only member of the Cabinet not invited. While the Gridiron dinner was in progress. Mrs. Roosevelt gave Miss Perkins a party-for-ladies-only at the White House. In an exuberant moment Major, the Roosevelt police dog and only male present, nipped Madam Senator Caraway of Arkansas on the arm. P: At work last week was President Roosevelt on his three last special messages to Congress which he hopes to get adjourned about June 1. If it should dally longer at the Capitol, he was expected to raise a point of personal privilege in demanding a vacation. One message dealt with tariffs and War Debts, another with railroads. The third was to cover the Administration's public works program, if & when that program is fixed. Last week the Cabinet was divided into one faction that wanted to spend upwards of $2,000,000,000 per year on roads, harbors, bridges, slum clearance, etc. etc. and another faction that wanted to spend less than $1,000,000,000 for the same purposes. P: On June 3, 1898 Richmond Pearson Hobson won the nation's applause by sinking the Merrimac to bottle up the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba. Last week President Roosevelt pinned a Congressional Medal of Honor on the Hobson breast for that feat. Mr. Hobson is nowadays a famed anti-narcotics crusader (TIME, March 2, 1931). P: Long and loyal service was rewarded last week when President Roosevelt appointed Robert Hayes Gore of Florida to be Governor of Puerto Rico. Loudly had Publisher Gore boomed Franklin Roosevelt for the Presidency through his Fort Lauderdale News, his Deland Sun-News, his Daytona Beach Sun-Record. The President picked his first cousin Warren Delano Robbins as Minister to Canada, and Hugh Gibson, Ambassador to Belgium and for 25 years a career diplomat, to be Ambassador to Brazil. P:Down the Potomac to Indian Head and back to Washington cruised President Roosevelt one balmy afternoon and evening last week. Also aboard the Sequoia were seven big-eyed girls from Manhattan's Todhunter School, guests of Mrs. Roosevelt, their onetime teacher.

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