First Act

In Washington no owl hooted in the market place at high noon; no man's hand was aflame "like twenty torches join'd"; there was no dreadful night of thunder & lightning, of yawning graves and skittering ghosts; no two-headed dogs were seen; no lioness whelped in the street. There were no such signs or portents anywhere. Yet very soon now, on a Monday at high noon, a U. S. President would be inaugurated for a third term--a fact as gravid with significance to the U. S. as Julius Caesar's fatal Ides of March were to Rome.

Even more modern omens were lacking : no bands of feverish citizens swarmed around newsstands to buy papers whose damp headlines hourly leaped higher and blacker; the radio was dull with soap operas and swing versions of Old Black Joe. On the surface, there was little tension.

Yet great doings were afoot. The first major act of the nation's first third-term President was an act of ominous significance. And it was made last week.

Franklin Roosevelt had moved carefully, according to the timetable he keeps, a table whose time is set not by the Naval Observatory, but by public opinion. In a speech to the world he had laid down the broad outline for U. S. action--an outline so broad that it swept with it the almost unanimous support of the country; in a speech to Congress he had somewhat narrowed his audience but had left the specific method of action still unspecified. Last week he got down to cases.

The lend-lease bill he sent to Congress in effect presented a blank check for Congress' signature. To no U. S. Congress had ever gone such a bill (see col. 2). No man could read its simple text, sweeping such enormous powers into the hands of the Executive, without seeing at last that the very presentation of such a bill meant that a point in history had been reached, a point of immeasurable gravity. Last week many a U. S. citizen was reminded of the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt's first term. But in 1933 the field of operations was the U. S.; in 1941 it had widened to the world.

Last week the President:

> Appointed as his fifth (of six) administrative assistants Sherman ("Shay") Minton, 50, defeated Senator from Indiana. Tall, black-haired, jut-jawed Mr. Minton, a 200% New Dealer, will get $10,000 a year; will not be used as liaison man with Congress--where his forthright tongue too often rasped colleagues raw.

> Set up the Office of Production Management (see p. 21).

> Reorganized the U. S. Fleet into three fleets, appointing a new CINCUS, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel (see p. 21).

> Sent a message recalling the old motto of the First French Republic, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," to Henri Philippe Petain, Marshal of France, in returning a New Year's greeting.

> Conferred at length with Vice President-elect Henry A. Wallace; then the Cabinet; then with five Cabinet members, Defense Chief Knudsen, Senators Barkley, Connally, Harrison and George, Representatives Rayburn, McCormack and Bloom, Luther Johnson and Treasury Counsel Edward H. Foley Jr. Subject: new lend-lease bill to aid Britain without limit.

> Conferred with Norman Davis, Red Cross chairman, on food to France and Spain (see p. 19}.

> Proclaimed, effective Feb. 3, regulations stringently restricting exports of copper, brass, bronze, zinc, nickel, potash.

> Spent the weekend at Hyde Park, where were also Son-in-law John Boettiger, Daughter Anna Eleanor Dall Boettiger.

> Appointed his old friend, Charles Harwood, 60, New York lawyer and onetime district judge in the Panama Canal Zone, to the Governorship of the Virgin Islands.

> Appointed round-faced, bespectacled ex-Congressman Guy Swope,* Pennsylvania's Democrat who had the backing of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, to the Governorship of troubled, depressed, strategic Puerto Rico.

> Set up a new Division of Defense Housing Coordination to supersede all ordinary Federal domestic housing agencies (Army & Navy divisions, FHA, USHA, credit agencies), with enormous powers to force and speed construction wherever rearmament or military programs create housing emergencies. Chief: balding Charles Forrest Palmer, 48, of Atlanta, Ga., housing expert of NDAC; salary, $9,000 a year.

> Appointed Assistant Solicitor General Charles Fahy, Colonel Harry J. Malony. Commander Harold Biesemeier to work out in London the formalities of U. S. leases of military bases in British possession. The trio will leave for Lisbon this weekend.

* No kin to tomahawk-faced Brothers Gerard (General Electric), Herbert Bayard (mind-about-town) Swope.

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