The Roosevelt Week

As a prelude to the World Economic Conference, President Roosevelt's foreign economic policy was recited in outline for 300 of Britain's best citizens last week by Col. Robert Worth Bingham at the customary Pilgrims Dinner welcoming the new U. S. Ambassador to his post. For weeks in Washington Ambassador Bingham had soaked up the President's ideas on international economics until now he was able to wring them out like water from a sponge. More than the customary "hands-across-the-sea," the Ambassador's speech was authoritative advance notice of what the President's delegates would offer at the London Conference. The U. S., he cried, was "at last prepared, through proper agreement, to lower tariff barriers so that international trade may begin to move again.'' To Republican protectionists in the U. S. he sounded almost like a free trader. But even Edward of Wales uprose to take his side against "the vice of economic nationalism."

Day after Ambassador Bingham's open-ing-wedge speech, Secretary of State Hull sailed for London determined to negotiate a program of reduced tariffs, stabilized currencies and a general increase in world prices. Other conference delegates aboard the "President Roosevelt" with him were Nevada's Senator Pittman, Tennessee's Representative McReynolds and Texas' Ralph Morrison. Later in the week Delegate James Middleton Cox departed on the Olympic, declaring: "If the world is sick enough to have gained any sense, the Conference will be a success."

Bringing up the delegation's rear was Michigan's Senator James Couzens, the only Republican the President could get to serve. To silence its sideline coaching, the President still hoped to send Congress home before the W. E. C. opens June 12. But he had not yet submitted legislation empowering him to juggle tariff rates to conform with any bargains struck at London.

That no bargain would be struck at London, that the Conference would fall far short of its aims was a view widely held outside of Washington last week. In that event, it was predicted, President Roosevelt would utterly reverse his foreign policy, launch boldly on a program of extreme economic nationalism to achieve domestic recovery.

The Washington school of thought that the U. S. can prosper only if the whole world does is headed by Secretary of State Hull. At London he is being given his innings to prove his point. If he does not succeed, the economic isolationists, captained by Assistant Secretary of State Moley, will go to bat. Their objective will be a national economy of self-contain-ment. At hand for their innings they will have plenty of brand new heavy bats--the farm relief act, inflation, tariff uppings, embargoes.

P:Completed last week was the White House swimming pool, built by popular subscriptions of $15,000. Tiled in colors, 50 by 15 ft., it stands in the west wing connecting the executive offices with the main building. In accepting it, President Roosevelt revealed that he had once tried to build a similar pool but it caved in. He took a 30-min. swim before dinner -- his first exercise since entering the White House.

P:President Roosevelt filled the Federal Reserve Board with the appointments of John Jacob Thomas, Nebraska farmer-lawyer, and Menc S. Szymczak, Comptroller of Chicago, good friend of the late martyred Mayor Tony Cermak. Other Presidential nominations: Maryland's William Stanley to be Assistant to the Attorney General; Utah's Harold M. Stephen, Florida's Frank J. Wideman to be Assistant Attorneys General; Tennessee's John Harcourt Alexander Morgan* and Wisconsin's David E. Lilienthal to be Tennessee Valley Authority directors; Pennsylvania's Carroll Miller, brother-in-law of Demo-cratic Boss "Joe" Guffey, to be an Interstate Commerce Commissioner. P:A White House caller last week was pretty Margaret Kruis, who was wounded in the head last February when Joe Zangara attempted to assassinate the President-elect at Miami. President Roosevelt recalled that he had visited Miss Kruis at the hospital after the shooting, found her greatly upset because some of her hair had been snipped off to reach the wound. P:All in one day last week the following members of the Roosevelt Administration stepped out of their official roles to give the following public performances: Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, an article in the New York Times on the new farm bill's operation: Assistant Secretary of State Moley, an article for the McNaught Syndicate on why he was writing more articles on "The State of the Nation"; Celeste Jedel, private secretary of Assistant Secretary Moley, an article in the New York Times magazine section on how the State Department is run; Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. railroad adviser to Reconstruction Finance Corp., an article in the New York Times on the new securities bill; Louis McHenry Howe, Secretary to the President, a radio interview on budget-balancing. Secretary Howe con- cluded his broadcast with a half-sobbing account of how some woman had wanted to name her kittens after him but he had lost her letter--and, oh, he was so terribly upset about those poor little kittens. P:"I love the U. S. Navy more than any other branch of the Government," confided President Roosevelt at the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis last week as he handed out diplomas to 432 graduating midshipmen./-

* Named in 1922 for the 26th U. S. President, not the 32nd. -Not to be confused with Ohio's Arthur Ernest Morgan, chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

/- Because of naval cuts only 219 of these were commissioned as ensigns.

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