THE PRESIDENCY: The White House Week: May 17, 1926

¶ The Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church called at the White House. Bishop Joseph F. Berry said to the President:

“In the name of nearly 20,000,000 members and adherents, we express our admiration for your consistent devotion to the duties of your great office and congratulate you heartily upon the success of your Administration.”

The President replied: “It was in accord with basic truths of the universe that the signers of the Declaration of Independence declared their reliance upon the protection of a Divine Providence. Founded upon religion, our Government has derived strength and stability from the religious nature of its people.”

Afterward Bishop and Mrs. Hughes stayed to lunch.

¶ President Coolidge received a letter from Miss Maloney of Brooklyn: “I represent a number of girls with a grievance. We are dissatisfied with the way the Government treats girls. We think girls are just as important to this country as boys, and they should receive the same opportunities from the Government that boys do.

“But they don’t get them, the way things are now. The Government takes and trains thousands of boys every summer at citizens’ training camps free. Any boy can go there and learn to hike, camp, swim and shoot. They are shown how to take care of themselves in the outdoors.

“What does the Government do for the girls?”

The President asked the War Department to answer that question if it could.

¶ Partakers of the President’s breakfast last week were Senators Borah, Fess, Hale, Oddie, Gillett, Shortridge, Dale, Moses, Goff and Williams. All are Republicans. Their attention is reported to have been centred on the food to the exclusion of legislative matters.

¶ Reports which newspapermen gleaned from White House attaches last week affirmed that the President would summer in northern New York either at Saranac Lake or near Lake St. Regis at the camp of Irwin R. Kirkwood, whose wife, the daughter of William R. Nelson, founder of the Kansas City Star, recently died (TIME, March 8, THE PRESS).

¶It was said at the White House that the President would make no speeches in the interest of any candidates for election next fall, except that he might go to Massachusetts to aid Senator Butler, his close friend and political associate, who faces a stiff contest with onetime Senator David Ignatius Walsh (Democrat), who was unseated by Mr. Gillett two years ago.