VICE PRESIDENCY: Happy Jay Birds

An eight-week trip to the Orient with first-class accommodations for a man and his wife costs some $2,000, is about as pleasant a vacation as there is. It is even more pleasant if someone else is paying for it. Consequently, when Vice President & Mrs. John Nance Garner, with a party of 46 Senators and Representatives, their ladies, sailed away from Seattle last week aboard the American Mail Liner President Grant as the official guests of the Philippine Commonwealth to the inauguration of President Manuel Quezon next month, everyone was as happy as a jay bird with a worm.

Senators Barkley of Kentucky, Clark of Missouri and Robinson of Arkansas, being fat men, seem fairly jolly most of the time. But the crowd which went down to the dock to bid farewell to the highest ranking U. S. officer ever to visit the Philippines and his fellow-travelers , found the gaunt face of Speaker of the House Byrns one vast crinkly mass of smiles; Representative Bertrand Snell, the dour New Yorker who leads what is left of the House Republicans, seemed positively cheerful. The fact that his mission had its serious diplomatic side, to show the Orient that the U. S. eagle still has a protective wing over the Philippines,* was not evident in irrepressibly democratic Mr. Garner’s farewell remarks.

After a sail up Puget Sound, the President Grant’s distinguished junketeers were entertained at dinner at Victoria, B. C. by the Province’s Premier. There the Mayor of Victoria confessed he did not know whether to call Mr. Garner “Mr. Vice President” or “Your Excellency.” Chuckled Mr. Garner: “Just call me Jack.”

Asked what he was going to do during the 23-day free ride which would take him to Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai and Hongkong before reaching Manila, Vice President Garner observed: “We’ll play a little draw poker, I suppose, and talk about each other. They say we may meet the Emperor of Japan. I’ve brought along a couple of pairs of new cotton socks so I won’t be embarrassed like William Jennings Bryan. He had a hole in his sock when he took his shoes off to meet the Emperor.”

* Significantly, the State Department has announced that there will be no official foreign delegations at President Quezon’s inaugural, since for the next ten years of Commonwealth status, Washington will still remain the diplomatic contact between the Philippines and the rest of the world.