Midnight Mystery

I have no inclination to be a dictator.

I have none of the qualifications which would make me a successful dictator.

I have too much historical background and too much knowledge of existing dictatorships to make me desire any form of dictatorship for a democracy like the United States.

This statement was made last week by the President of the U. S. Fully as extraordinary as the statement itself were the circumstances which surrounded it.

In Warm Springs, Ga., where Franklin Roosevelt was nearing the end of his ten-day holiday, it was 12:45 amIn their cottage near his "Little White House,'' the ten newspapermen detailed to cover his activities were playing cards, listening to the radio or sleeping. At this point Marvin Mclntyre, who had previously telephoned to advise the correspondents to hold their "overnight" stories for a mysterious Presidential announcement, arrived with a handful of typewritten sheets which he proceeded to distribute. Ready for something remarkable, the reporters found the release up to their highest expectations.

It began with a preamble, in which the President dismissed the campaign against his bill to reorganize the Executive branch of the Federal Government (TIME, April 4) as "organized effort on the part of political or special self-interest groups." There followed a letter, dated two days earlier, to a friend whose name the President said he was withholding "because he did not write for publicity purposes." In the letter the President set forth, in 1,100 words, not only his personal disinclination to be a U. S. dictator but his objections to proposed amendments in the Reorganization Bill. Loudly demanded by the bill's opponents in the Senate last fortnight and the House last week was an amendment whereby Presidential changes in departments made under the new law could be nullified by a Congressional majority instead of by a two-thirds vote. The letter stated that the President would "in the overwhelming majority of cases go along with carefully considered Congressional action," but that the amendment was faulty on Constitutional grounds, since "a resolution cannot repeal Executive action taken in pursuance of a law."

The fact that the President of the U. S. considered it advisable to rouse reporters in the middle of the night, to say something which the world has every reason to take for granted, was not last week quite so remarkable as it might have seemed. Plain purpose of the midnight letter was to make front-page news in time to affect House debate on the bill which for a month has been causing the major political battle of the nation. Day after the Senate passed the bill last fortnight, the battleground shifted from Washington to Warm Springs when Franklin Roosevelt told an outdoor press conference its passage proved "that the Senate cannot be purchased by organized telegrams based on direct misrepresentation." Next day the Senate spent most of its time gloomily asking itself whether the passage of the bill did not in actuality prove that its members could be purchased--by administrative promises.

Effect of Franklin Roosevelt's nocturnal note was to add to the incredible amount of confusion already caused by the combination of an innocuous, 40-year-old plan to make the Government more efficient with a Presidential personality capable of such gestures. When the House began its own rowdy debate on Reorganization, Administration leaders found it advisable to accept the opposition amendment reposing ultimate authority for Presidential shifts in a Congressional majority. On this basis the bill seemed sure of passage, and riding back to Washington, tanned and rested after his busy week, Franklin Roosevelt felt reasonably convinced that in his noisiest fight since the plan to enlarge the Supreme Court a year ago, he had won at least a partial victory.

P: With Georgia's Governor Eurith Dickinson Rivers, whose four conferences with the President aroused rumors that he was being groomed to run for the Senate against Walter George, the President inspected Fort Benning, where the U.S. Army maintains its infantry school.

P: "The Roosevelt Depression" was the headline jubilantly chosen last week by New York's tory Herald Tribune to run over one of its own stockmarket graphs (see cut), accompanied by a letter from a reader:

"To the New York Herald Tribune: "If you will look at this chart of the stock market, held in the position in which you see it above, I believe you will see the profile of F. D. Roosevelt. It has surely been a Roosevelt market, 'as he planned it.'"

P: Aboard the Presidential special from Atlanta to Washington, were Solicitor General Robert Jackson, National Power Policy Committee Counsel Benjamin Cohen. Said Mr. Jackson, when asked if his presence indicated discussions of antitrust laws: "I don't think you would be out on a limb on that."

P: Released last week were the results of the latest Gallup poll on Franklin Roosevelt. Results snowed: 1) that the President was only slightly less popular with its respondents than on Election Day, 1936, but 2) that 70% of them are now against electing him for a third term. Results of previous Gallup polls on the question of a third term for Franklin Roosevelt:

Per Cent Against

June 1936............................ 57

December 1936................. 69

March 1937......................... 64

July 1937................................63

January 1938.........................67

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