Vigilant Fisherman

Arising pale but well from his bed of flu, Franklin Roosevelt last week headed south for his first vacation since Thanksgiving. His favorite cruiser Houston awaited him off Key West to take him out to the navy's game of defending the Panama Canal (TIME, Feb. 20). The Presidential fishing rods were already on the Houston. Lest citizens suppose he was a frivolous President, Mr. Roosevelt packed into his last two days ashore several statements calculated to keep the country thinking well of him.

Lounging in an old grey suit on the train to Florida City he used his press conference: 1) to lay the ghost of "secrecy" still haunting him for his aid to the French in their U. S. plane-buying (see p. 14); 2) to allay any lingering doubts Business might have about his policies. When asked about a new business "appeasement" program about to be popped by Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt asked: what businessmen need appeasing? No new taxes are planned, he said. With the removal of private obstacles to TVA,* he said, no further Government excursions into the power industry are planned. Business confidence, he insisted, was now in order. In Manhattan, the stockmarket took small notice of this reassurance.

At Florida City there was a flurry of excitement just before the President shifted from train to motor car. A male figure in brown sweater and dark trousers was seen lurking by the road. Secret Service and police quickly threw a cordon around the President and beat the thick scrub for the lurker. He escaped, nothing happened. The President entered his car and rode 140 miles over the trestles built by the late Rail Tycoon Henry M. Flagler to lace the Florida Keys, converted by PWA from a defunct railroad into a $3,600,000 motor highway. At Key West, which WPA saved from indigent desuetude, Mayor Willard M. Albury and Admiral William Leahy sat beside the President as he delivered two backseat radio talks in rapid succession (see cut).

To the Pan-American Hernando de Soto Exposition at Tampa he said, for the benefit of national neighbors to the south: "We purpose to heed the ancient Scriptural admonition not to move our neighbor's landmarks, not to encroach on his metes and bounds."

To the Golden Gate International Exposition on manmade Treasure Island at San Francisco (see p. 17) he said: "America's newest insular possession . . .is an outstanding example of territorial extension without aggression.

"I have never thought it unfortunate that New York and San Francisco picked the same year for their world fairs. Instead of one incentive, people have two, and it is my sincere hope that 1939 will witness a swing around the whole American circle that will give some realization of our resources and our blessings and, more important, emphasize the essential unity of American interests. Getting acquainted with the United States is about as good a habit as I know."

As a parting shot at the dictators he added: "By setting an example of international solidarity, cooperation, mutual trust and mutual helpfulness, we may keep faith alive in the heart of anxious and troubled humanity, and at the same time lift democracy high above the ugly truculence of autocracy."

A newshawk then asked when the President would return to Washington. March 4, replied Franklin Roosevelt, was the date set, but fresh reports which he had just received from abroad about new threats by the Dictators might bring him home earlier. On that vigilant note he cast off and, before boarding the Houston, went fishing.

As Europe buzzed excitedly about Mr. Roosevelt's ominous, mysterious "reports." U. S. observers guessed that he might be fighting crisis with crisis, as forest fires are fought. If European crisis-criers (see p. 19) were right and another Munich was really in the offing, his diplomatic flaring might give its makers pause. > Word was that the President would appoint Supreme Court Justice Brandeis' successor before going south. It was understood the new man must be a Westerner. Several names, none of them a standout, were in the air. Then something happened: a journalist friend recollected that extremely able Chairman William Orville Douglas of the SEC, 40, was born in Minnesota, lived in the State of Washington from 1904 to 1922, hence is a Westerner. From his hospital bed in Baltimore, where he was recuperating from an appendectomy and faithfully hatching out some hen's eggs (TIME, Feb. 13), Janizary Thomas ("The Cork") Corcoran applauded. Mr. Douglas was called to the White House. When the President left town without making any appointments, the Douglas trial-balloon was still in the air.

> Sick almost unto death last week with intestinal flu and stomach hemorrhages was popular, convivial, emaciated Presidential Secretary Marvin ("Mac") McIntyre, who usually runs news headquarters ashore when the President goes to sea without the press. Detailed to take "Mac's" place in Miami was Assistant Secretary Bill Hassett, the quiet, dependable oldtime AP man whom Franklin Roosevelt calls "My Bartlett, my Roget, my Buckle!"*

*Following the lead of Commonwealth & Southern which this month sold TVA its Tennessee utilities for $80,000,000, National Power & Light last week sold to TVA and the City of Memphis for $17,360,000 the distributing system of Memphis Power & Light Co., leaving TVA with no major private competitors in Tennessee. TVA is dickering for parts of Commonwealth & Southern's Alabama and Mississippi properties that would give the Authority a clearly defined power empire in three States.

*John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Peter Roget's Thesaurus of English Words & Phrases, Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization are three indispensable aids to erudite orators.

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