The Press: School of Expression

Proportionally better attended than President Roosevelt’s weekend party at the Jefferson Islands Club (see p. 7) was the annual commencement of the J. Russell Young School of Expression this week in Washington. This school has no endowment, no buildings, but claims the White House grounds for its campus. Its function is to spot notable feats of word-spouting and to reward them with 50¢ diplomas, all “Doctor of Oratory,” all cum laude or better. Its ceremonial dinner at the Mayflower Hotel brought 125 acceptances out of 130 invitations issued to Washington correspondents, three Cabinet members, one Senator (Pat Harrison), but no Representatives.

Seventeen diplomas were handed out between speeches. Had he not failed to appear, James Roosevelt would have got one “for his reply to the President of Brazil, thanking him for the decoration of the Brazilian Order of the Southern Cross, fully earned because nobody knew what James Roosevelt said, not even those who understood Spanish.”*Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings was honored “in anticipation of his first argument before a packed Supreme Court.”

Founder and inspiration of the School of Expression is John Russell Young, 55, White House correspondent of the Washington Star, who looks so much like a storybook Senator that waiters always serve him first. He is a delight to President Roosevelt, who calls him “the Senator,” and when in a tight fix at press conferences often finds an out with: “I think I’ll deliver the Senator’s No. 17.” Young, good schoolmaster that he is, has a set of speeches for any occasion. No. 1 is “Our Flag,” No. 8 is “America the Beautiful,” No. 12 is “For a United Party” (now in great demand).

*Most Brazilians speak Portuguese.