"Vehicle of Destiny"

One day last week Franklin Roosevelt called on the U. S. people to pay tribute on Oct. 9 to the memory of Leif Ericson, who "almost a thousand years ago opened a path to the New World."

This was not exactly hot news. But it was one minor chord, a treble note, in the vastly planned, superbly played concert that Virtuoso Roosevelt was playing on the national organ--the U. S. Press.

Wrote the President: "Every stout heart that has advanced the frontiers of human knowledge by exploration has been accompanied . . . by destiny as an unseen fellow wayfarer.

". . . In time, the seed of history that Leif Ericson had planted bore fruit. Another explorer, also a vehicle of destiny, was courageous in his faith that land lay westward. . . ."

Franklin Roosevelt, himself perhaps a "vehicle of destiny," went ahead last week trying to close up and obstruct Leif Ericson's path to the New World.

Day before, the President had written Navy Secretary Frank Knox a tribute on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, supreme U. S. Navy strategist. Significantly the President pointed to Mahan's theories that "threats of aggression can best be met at a distance from our shores rather than on the seacoast itself."*

Organist Roosevelt, feeling that his audience was with him, now began pulling out the stops and bearing down on the booming diapason. Rapidly, dramatically, the President:

>> Authorized Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones to lend China $25,000,000 for $30,000,000 worth of tungsten, needed for defense.

>> Declared an embargo on the shipment of scrap iron & steel to Japan--another thrust in the Far East, another smash in the headlines.

>> Set up a Defense Communications Board to coordinate all branches of communication--radio, wire, cable--for national defense and for any "national emergency."

>> Dedicated his "dream airport" at Gravelly Point, Va. a 729-acre, $12,500,000 field soon to be the nation's finest.

>> Received a group of U. S. citizens, self-dubbed "The Flying Squadron," who came to urge him to rush every possible aid to Great Britain. The delegation including Herbert Agar, editor, Louisville Courier-Journal; Chester Rowell, editor, San Francisco Chronicle; Maury Maverick, Mayor, San Antonio, Tex.; Lewis W. Douglas, president, Mutual Life Insurance Co.

>> Received the British Ambassador, Lord Lothian; Sir Walter Layton, editor, London Economist; Nevile Butler, Embassy counselor--who came to say "Britain needs more of everything, and quickly."

>> Gave Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd a new special medal--a gold star to be attached to the Distinguished Service Medal he was awarded in 1927 for flying the Atlantic. Byrd, owner of all U. S. Government medals, had to unpin several to make room for the new star, won for his Antarctic surveys.

>> Sent a laudatory message to the American Legion convention in Boston.

>> Sent a message to the Young Democrats convention in Miami, Fla., asserting that the U. S. would always contain two parties, one conservative, one liberal.

>>Announced that he had made his own election forecast, sealed it in an envelope in his desk, saying slyly that, as everybody knows, he is habitually given to understatement.

>> Dedicated (this was the vox humana stop) a new Recorder of Deeds building in Washington, paying tribute to the country's No. 1 colored officeholder, solemn, influential William J. Thompkins--a ceremony that buttoned thousands of Negro votes into his pocket.

>> Tripped to the Army proving grounds at Aberdeen, Md. to inspect new ordnance and explosives; to the Glenn Martin plane plant in Baltimore; to Camp Meade, Md., being photographed everywhere with guns, tanks, planes.

>> Prepared to receive military chiefs from 20 Latin-American countries, here for consultations on the defense of the Americas.

Thus the President played on the press. Big sections of that press, even papers most violently pro-Willkie & anti-Roosevelt, gave up. Willkie news, Willkie speeches were buried deep inside; the front pages were split between Franklin Roosevelt and the war.

The organist played on.

* For news of a similar sentiment last week, see p. 19.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.