Main Chance

Franklin Roosevelt, adept at keeping his eye on the main chance, spent most of the week getting ready for the United Nations conference in San Francisco. The conference was still six weeks away, but there was no doubt that the President had pushed other matters with the notable exception of food for Europe (see above) —into the background, was bending every effort to make the conference a success.

First, he had a three-day visit from Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, rumored to be the President’s choice for chairman of the conference. What the President and the Prime Minister discussed was not disclosed in detail, but it was certain that the conference got more discussion than Neighbor King’s home political affairs, about which Franklin Roosevelt had a few kind words to say (see CANADA AT WAR).

Then seven of the U.S. conference delegates,† after a briefing by Secretary of State Stettinius, trooped into the White House for a chat. Three days later, Commander Harold Stassen, off for a month in the Pacific before going to San Francisco, came in to make a private call.

No word of these discussions leaked out. But the President made one announcement which drew cheers: like the Mexico City conference, San Francisco will be open to the press.

Last week the President also:

¶ Said he knew nothing of German peace feelers, which had been reported from the Stockholm rumor mill.

¶Celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary on St. Patrick’s Day, with a family luncheon. Members of the family present: wife Eleanor, daughter Anna, grandson Johnny Boettiger.

¶ Gave the go-ahead to professional baseball for 1945.

¶ Learned that both he and his wife were remembered in the will of his favorite secretary, the late Marguerite (“Missy”) Le Hand (see PEOPLE).

¶ Announced the resignation of lean, immaculate William Phillips, onetime Ambassador to Italy, as his personal representative in India. Ambassador Phillips had been in the U.S. since last fall, when he returned, indignant, after British Foreign Office hints that he was persona non grata because of his free-India position.

† All except ex-Secretary of State Cordell Hull, now in his fifth month at the Navy’s Bethesda Hospital.