Who's an Excrescence?

Franklin Roosevelt, who recently described columnists as unnecessary excrescences, turned out to be a onetime excrescence himself. The fact was jubilantly reported last week by the New York Daily News's Columnist John O'Donnell, who mortally hates Mr. Roosevelt and delights in being high on the list of the President's journalistic dislikes.

The column ("As Roosevelt Sees It") was short-lived, ran just eight days in the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph in April and May, 1925. Franklin Roosevelt, then at Warm Springs, wrote the pieces to fill in for his friend Thomas W. Loyless, the Telegraph's regular columnist. More often than not, his style was playfully folksy. Sample: "It sure is time to get another Democratic Administration." But in one solid column, Franklin Roosevelt objected vigorously to the way the 1925 Navy maneuvers in the Pacific were announced by the Coolidge Administration. Wrote he: "It is hardly tactful ... to give . . . the impression . . . that we are trying to find out how easy or difficult it would be for the Japanese Navy to occupy Hawaii preparatory to a descent on our own Pacific Coast."

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