National Affairs: The President-Elect

Out of the California sky, all the way from the Atlantic seaboard by air, dropped Col. William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan, Assistant Attorney-General in the Coolidge Cabinet and “the next Attorney-General” in the press. He said he was there to work on some cinema cases. But everyone knew that President-Elect Hoover had sent for him, his friend and confidant, to discuss political this and governmental that before departing good-willingly for South America.

Col. Donovan grinned when newsgatherers begged him to admit that he would be the Hoover Attorney-General. Said he: “I appreciate the compliment you fellows are paying me. . . . But I do want to make it plain that Mr. Hoover has not asked me. . . . That is a fact.”

Newsgathering curiosity was further piqued by the arrival at Palo Alto, just after Col. Donovan got there, of that other equally famed Assistant Attorney-General, Mrs. Mabel Elizabeth Walker Willebrandt, “personification of Prohibition.” In view of the Hoover promise to appoint a commission to investigate the “grave abuses” now suffered by the “experiment noble in motive,” newsgathering speculation ran to unanswered questions like this: Was the President-Elect asking Mrs. Willebrandt to tell Col. Donovan all she knew about Prohibition so that the redoubtable Colonel could make plans for stricter enforcement? Or was this conference preliminary to a great “Hoover investigation?”

First Dog. Mrs. Florence B. Ilch of Red Bank, N. J., made an announcement. She, proprietor of the Bellhaven Collie Kennels, had crated and shipped to Mrs. Hoover, on the day before election, a young celebrity named, with the fanciness peculiar to kennels and stables, “Bellhaven Behoover.” A “staff correspondent” of the arch-Republican New York Herald Trib une described Bellhaven Behoover as an “eager-eyed scion of champion collie stock … a seven-month-old sable and white collie, the sable a lustrous golden brown and the white like the fluffed ala baster of a snowdrift at dawn.”* Son of Triple Champion Bellhaven Braveheart and Multiple Champion Bellhaven Blossom time, grandson of Bellhaven Starboat Strongheart (“greatest collie of all time”), young Bellhaven Behoover was valued at $1,000. But Mrs. Ilch said that, for Mrs. Hoover, “nothing was too good.” Her idea was, of course, that Bellhaven Be hoover would now be First Dog of the Land.

Whether or not Bellhaven Behoover would be accepted by the Hoovers as First Dog was, however, uncertain. It promised to be a delicate matter. Of course, so illustrious a pet would be welcomed and appreciated by anyone with any feeling at all for dogs. But the Hoovers had a dog already, a shaggy, grim-grinning German police dog, perfectly respectable as to breeding though no multiple champion. To predict that this staunch friend of Commerce Department days would be relegated at the White House to give place to ever-so-aristocratic Bellhaven Behoover, was something few predicters would venture. The odds seemed the other way, that this dog would be First Dog, just as surely as faithful Secretary’s Secretary George Akerson is slated to become President’s Secretary and White House Spokesman.

Letter to South. Editor Richard H. Edmonds of the Manufacturer’s Record (Baltimore) published a letter from the President-Elect, written on Nov. 7. Excerpts: “… I am not at all unmindful of the conditions which for years brought about the political solidarity of the South. I firmly believe, however, that the time has come when, in all sections men and women should vote for their convictions as to conditions at the present time and not based on things of former generations.

“. . . It is well said that ‘the development of the South means the enrichment of the nation,’ and this is true not only in the material sense, but also in the broader sense of the development of the spirit of Americanism which will permeate the lives of the people of the entire country, rounding out to a greater extent than we have ever known before a genuine Americanism instead of a certain degree of sectionalism.”

Letters to All. More than 30,000 letters, cablegrams, telegrams, radiograms of congratulation descended upon Palo Alto. The President-Elect resolved to acknowledge each & every one. A corps of stenographers was installed downstairs in his house. He cogitated, dictated, duplicated, stuck at it. Answers issued at the rate of 1,000 per day and better. Postal and telegraph bills ran into thousands of dollars.

Hooveria. Among the proudest of the President-Elect’s admirers were Austria’s Astronomers, one of whom, Professor Johann Palisan, discovered a new asteroid between Mars and Jupiter in 1920 and, by vote of the Senate of Vienna University, got it named “Hooveria” in recognition of the Hoover relief work in Europe. Being only an asteroid and a star acquired after birth, “Hooveria” cannot be regarded as the guiding Hoover star. If there were anything in a name or in a star’s position when discovered, “Hooveria” might be said to connote a mixture of Martian and Jupiterian qualities, such as “intolerant,” “idealistic,” “aggressive,” “swiftminded,” “passionate,” “impatient,” “avenging.” The real zodiacal “influence” upon the President-Elect is, however, the sign of Leo, governed by the Sun. Leo’s people (according to Astrologist Evangeline Adams) are lordly, haughty, gluttonous for work, full of the “joining” spirit, inclined to early baldness. With Hoover under Leo are Mussolini, Ford, Shaw, Shelley, Napoleon, Ethel Barrymore.

Southbound. “Herbert Hoover is not going to South America with an American flag in one hand and a cash register in the other.” So said a Hoover spokesman, protesting in his chief’s behalf against cartoons and editorials that pictured the President-Elect as the country’s star drummer setting out on a selling trip. It was pointed out that no trade experts were being taken along, that no trade data had been requested from the Commerce Department. Businessmen reflected, however, that where foreign trade is concerned few U. S. citizens would have less need for experts and data than Herbert Hoover.

The State Department forwarded a resume of diplomatic issues, present and potential, between the U. S. and countries to the south. Also furnished was an official adviser and personal representative of President Coolidge, in the person of Henry Prather Fletcher, the U. S. Ambassador to Italy. Mr. Fletcher, a longheaded gentleman of 55 years, has been in the diplomatic service since 1902. He was five years Minister to Chile (1909-1914). From 1916 to 1920 he was Ambassador to Mexico. He was Under-Secretary of State during the first year of the Harding administration, then went to Belgium, then to Italy. Last winter, President Coolidge called him home, as Harding did in 1923, to attend the Pan-American Congress. In addition to all this experience, Mr. Fletcher has learned about Latin-America from his three brothers, who own large mines in Nicaragua.

Personal Representative Fletcher joined the Hoover party at San Pedro.

Mrs. Hoover and the younger son, Allan Hoover, were in the party; also Secretaries George Akerson and Ruth Fessler; John G. Mott of San Francisco, the Hoover attorney; Commander Augustin T. Beauregard, naval aide to the President-Elect.

San Pedro harbor fluttered with bunting, resounded with saluting cannon. The U. S. S. Maryland steamed out; first stop Corinto, Nicaragua. When the Hoovers went to their cabin Mrs. Hoover had to admire the first vanity dresser ever installed on a U. S. warship. Mr. Hoover, unpacking, cast a bright eye on his new-bought kit of deep-sea fishing tackle. Watching the lazy Pacific swells some of his first thoughts were about the monster sailfish, amber-jacks, tuna, wahoos, crevalles and yellowtails that live off the coast of Lower California and in the tide-rips from there to Chile.

* Poetic license. Snowdrifts are blue-grey at dawn, do not look white until after sunrise.