Easing Up

After a ten-day bout with flu, complicated by two messages to Congress and a fireside chat, Franklin Roosevelt was warned by his doctor to "ease up." Shunning his office, the President:

P: Called off his regular Cabinet meeting and press conferences. Reporters went away grumbling that the Chief Executive grows more & more inaccessible. (Presidential press conferences--there were 83 in 1933, 96 in 1940, 91 in 1941--dwindled to a new low of 59 in 1943.)

P: Welcomed his good friend Leighton McCarthy, ex-Canadian Minister to the U.S.--now promoted to Ambassador as a symbol of closer U.S.-Canadian relations.

P: Planned a little White House "social" for disgruntled Southern Governors arriving in Washington to discuss discriminatory freight rates.

P: Gave the Pacific War Council its first star-performer account of the Cairo and Teheran conferences.

P: Persuaded Tennessee's able young Representative Albert Gore (who dropped by on post-induction furlough) that good men can be more useful in Congress than in the Army. For the benefit of other anxious-to-enlist legislators, the President announced flatly that no man could legally be both Congressman and soldier.

P: Spent 45 minutes swapping ideas on veterans' legislation with the American Legion's Commander Warren Atherton.

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