The President’s Week, Aug. 28, 1944

White House correspondents had not seen Franklin Roosevelt for 38 days. Many of them had watched newsreels to see how he looked; had seen the San Diego railroad-car film of his Democratic Convention speech, in which his face had seemed gaunt and slack, his eyes and cheeks hollow. They had not been able to tell whether bad lighting or deep fatigue was responsible. They had noted that in pictures shot in Hawaiian sunshine, and again, beneath a cruiser’s guns at Bremerton, he seemed healthier, more alert, though thinner of face. Therefore, with curiosity and concern, they filed in for the first post-Pacific press conference.

Franklin Roosevelt was coatless; his thinning grey hair was neatly combed. Though his face still had the thin and careworn look it has worn for months, he was lightly tanned, and looked rested and fit. This answered Question No. 1: how does he look? And immediately they got an answer to Question No. 2: how does he feel?

The conference had scarcely begun before his voice was edged with querulousness. A correspondent asked for comment on a New York Times report that he hoped to send a world-security plan to the Senate before the end of the war. The President said that obviously he was not there just to answer silly things printed in the newspapers. They knew perfectly well, he went on, that Mr. Hull had taken everyone into full confidence on those matters. For some moments he answered questions snappily, edgily.

Then, as if he had deliberately taken hold of himself, the President put his voice in its normal gear of geniality.

He quickly killed a report that he planned to discuss foreign policy with Wendell Willkie. (Willkie received a White House invitation to such a meeting shortly after the President left Washington in July.) Franklin Roosevelt tartly said this was one of those “New York stories.” But would the President like to talk to Mr. Willkie? That, he said, is a personal matter, an entirely personal matter. But he did plan to see Winston Churchill again. And soon. He smiled and spelled out soon. A reporter asked him about the biggest dope-story of the week: that he favored compulsory peacetime conscription. The President leaned back, talked thoughtfully about American youth (see col. 3). Jovially he suggested that the reporters near his desk could use some exercise themselves. He was chuckling as the conference ended.

Last week the President:

¶ Dispatched WPBoss Donald Nelson to China “for several months” as his personal emissary to “discuss economic problems” with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Also going along: Major General Patrick J. Hurley, veteran Presidential odd-jobman. Since Donald Nelson is the chief apostle of reconversion (“now to avoid a postwar smashup”), his sending-off seemed to speak for itself, particularly since Vice Chairman Charlie Wilson, the chief exponent of the Army-Navy view (“Don’t reconvert now; wait till we win the war”), will manage WPB in Nelson’s absence. Immediately a WPBster cried that Donald Nelson had been “kicked in the teeth and sent to Siberia.” In a few hours Washington comment grew so sharp that Franklin Roosevelt was forced to issue an explanation. Said he: “Any impression that Mr. Nelson’s temporary mission to China indicates a change in policy in the War Production Board is entirely unfounded. [It is] a most pressing mission . . . necessarily confidential …. When it is possible to tell the whole story, those who charge he is being ‘kicked in the teeth’ will realize how wrong and unjust they have been—what a disservice they have rendered their country and Mr. Nelson personally.”

¶ Saw Harry Truman for the first time since the Missouri Senator received the Vice-Presidential nomination. The two sat at lunch in their shirt sleeves, beneath a magnolia tree on the White House lawn (see cut). Said Truman, as he shook hands with the President: “I want to thank you for supporting me for the nomination for Vice President. I deeply appreciate the honor.” Said Franklin Roosevelt, “Hello, Harry. Congratulations.”

¶ Day after his return, took time out from World War II to discuss Term IV with Pennsylvania 1000% New Dealing Senator Joseph F. Guffey and Pennsylvania’s Democratic National Committeeman Dave Lawrence. Subject: political strategy in the key (and doubtful) state of Pennsylvania.

¶ Ordered the Navy to seize 99 San Francisco Bay shops in which 3,000 A.F. of L. machinists have refused, despite a WLB order in May, to work longer than 48 hours a week.