Point Blank

Point-Blank

This week the President:

> Read in the Washington Post an article by his biographer, handsome Ernest K. Lindley, quoting point-blank un-Rooseveltian answers to point-blank political questions by a Democratic stalwart (supposedly South Carolina's Jimmy Byrnes), who was fed to the gums with the Term III mystery. Mr. Roosevelt was interested to read that he had said flatly: he would not run again unless the Germans overrun England; that Cordell Hull is his choice for successor, is safe, can be elected; that the Vice Presidency lay between Bob Jackson, Paul McNutt, Burt Wheeler; that Jim Farley would not be a sound Vice Presidential candidate on a Hull ticket. Mr. Roosevelt supposedly said that Farley "has done more for me politically than any other living person, not even excepting my wife." But people might "say we were using Cordell Hull as a stalking horse for the Pope."

> Welcomed into benedicts' ranks bounding, longtime Bachelor Thomas Gardiner Corcoran (who married his secretary, Peggy Dowd). Washington wits surmised Peggy had struck for better hours; wondered how the news hit No. 2 Braintruster Ben Cohen, whom The Cork has long jestingly called "My Wife."

Last week the President:

> Heard, in the Caribbean, how four days of pounding rain had sent northern California's Russian and Sacramento Rivers smashing down their valleys in a flash flood* that drowned four persons, damaged over $1,000,000 worth of property. Promptly the President approved a $130,000 emergency relief allocation.

> Renominated Thomas Parran of Maryland as U. S. Surgeon General.

> Wrote the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born: "We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens whatever their background."

> Gained in Pollster Gallup's popularity index as a second-term President--up to 64%; still lagged below 50% as a Term III executive.

> Asked Congress to appropriate $2,500 to bear the cost of a portrait of former President Herbert Hoover to hang in the White House.

"Flash" floods do not rise and spread steadily--they explode, like dynamite.

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