THE PRESIDENCY: Busy

Nobody in the District of Columbia was busier than President Hoover last week. Returning from the World Series baseball game at Philadelphia, he announced that he had summoned a Congressional caucus (see col. 3). On Tuesday he held a Cabinet meeting all morning, prepared a draft of his Super Plan (see p. 13) which he read to his visitors at 9 p. m. The meeting adjourned at midnight. Next afternoon President Hoover held another long conference with builders, financiers, real estate men—notably Clarence Dillon of the Manhattan brokerage firm of Dillon, Read & Co. and President William Aiken Starrett of Starrett Corp. Purpose: to devise some means of liquidating badly deflated real estate mortgages throughout the land.

From the first, President Hoover has realized that a one-year War debt moratorium would be insufficient to get Germany’s economy straightened out. He also knows that the European man-in-the-street regarded his moratorium as the first step toward cancelling War debts to the U. S. Such a move has the backing of bankers like Chase National’s Albert Wiggin because if foreign governments have to repay their War loans to the U. S., banks like the Chase will have to wait a long time to collect their foreign loans. But Senators like WilHam Edgar Borah of Idaho and Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas were quick to catch up the President when they thought they detected a cancellationist note in his Super Plan as read to them at the caucus. Therefore surprise was occasioned last week when the White House announced that when the year’s moratorium in intergovernmental debts expires, the United States will not insist that European payments be resumed, except on the basis of the capacity of the debtor nations to pay. In return, the U. S. will expect thumping decreases in armaments from favored nations.

One nation which sees eye-to-eye with the President in the matter of arms reduction is Italy, which likes to rattle the sword but really cannot afford the martial trappings of a Great Power. Foreign Minister Dino Grandi of Italy last week accepted the invitation of Secretary Stimson to go to the White House on Nov. 14 to discuss the world’s economic plight. His visit will follow that of Premier Pierre Laval of France, who was to sail for the U. S. Oct. 16. Already on their way to the U. S. were Deputy-Governor Charles Farmer of the Bank of France and Director Robert Lacour-Gayet to

“study President Hoover’s financial proposals” and generally pave the way for Premier Laval.

¶Last week President Hoover: sent greetings to the 20th annual National Safety Congress at Chicago; spoke over the radio to the International Association .of Chiefs of Police at St. Petersburg, Fla.; received a petition pleading for disarmament from a delegation of the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, headed by Jane Addams of Chicago’s charitarian Hull House; received and was photographed with a delegation of the National Council of Catholic Women; agreed to open the loth Olympic Games at Los Angeles, July 30, which he may take in his stride while campaigning in the West for a second term; sent greetings to President Chiang Kaishek of Republican China on the latter’s 20th birthday; sat long with his Cabinet discussing Japan’s inroads upon Chinese terrain (see p. 18).

¶ Last week the nation’s Press was embroiled in a controversy as to whether or not President Hoover had been booed by rooters at the Philadelphia World Series baseball game. Sports Editors Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News and Joe Williams of the World Telegram reported booing. The Associated Press heard none. Consensus was that on the entry and exit of President Hoover, respectful folk in the grandstand near him cheered, folk in the bleachers, farther away, jeered.

¶ Departing possibly for the last time this year for his Rapidan camp, the President took with him some of his closest friends: Mark Sullivan, his favorite Washington correspondent; Associate Justice & Mrs. Harlan Fiske Stone; Dr. & Mrs. Vernon Kellogg.