The Coolidge Week

President & Mrs. Coolidge dined at the house of the Secretary of State & Mrs. Frank Billings Kellogg, of St. Paul. Other Minnesotans present, with their ladies, were Sumner Thomas McKnight (banker, realtor, expert on criminal pardons & paroles), John Sargent Pillsbury (flour--"Eventually. Why Not Now?"), President Donald John Cowling of Carleton College at Northfield. Also present was Dr. William Holland Wilmer, ophthalmologist.

P: Some hours before the Kellogg dinner, the President had sent to the Senate the Kellogg-Briand multilateral treaty for the renunciation of war. He accompanied it with a dignified exhortation: "The fact that I approve of the treaty is well known," he stated. "I hope that it may come into force with the least possible delay and I should be pleased if the Senate should take such action during the present session as to enable the U. S. to ratify the treaty before the expiration of my term of office." Equally well known is the fact that Missouri's cigar-gnawing Senator Reed disapproves of the Treaty and would like to defeat it as a crowning event of his irreconcilable career. Other opponents are California's Johnson, New Hampshire's Moses, Minnesota's Shipstead. Maryland's Bruce, bumbling against the Treaty last week, called it "utter inanity."

P:The President forwarded to the Senate, for confirmation, a long list of officers appointed during the Congressional recess. Sent separately was a name most likely to be frowned on by the Senate--Secretary of the Interior Roy Owen West (see The Cabinet, "West Case"). The list, fairly certain to be approved in toto, included Utah's J. Reuben Clark, Under Secretary of State; Tennessee's H. Theodore Tate, Treasurer of the U. S.; Ohio's John W. Pole to be Comptroller of Currency; William S. Culbertson of Kansas, Ambassador to Chile; also five Ministers, a Farm Loan Board man, a dozen postmasters.

P: "... I have often remarked that at least I had one distinction. I have been the healthiest President that the country has ever had.

". . . My habits have been regular. It is seldom that I have been late at mealtime and I have avoided keeping late hours. Very little work has been done before breakfast, but usually I have taken a short walk and during the winter season a more extended walk before dinner, which has been my chief mode of exercise. I have kept a couple of vibrating machines in my room which I found helpful.

"It will be seen that in the matter of exercise my efforts have been toward a conservation of time.-. . .

". . . my experience in public office made me know that whether I was to be overburdened with work and broken down in health depended more on myself than any act of Congress. . . .

"If he [the President] permits himself to be engaged in all kinds of outside enterprises, in furnishing entertainment and amusement to great numbers of public gatherings, undertaking to be the source of inspiration for every worthy public movement for all of which he will be earnestly besought with the inference that unless he responds civilization will break down and the sole responsibility will be on him, he will last in office about ninety days. . . ."

These obiter dicta were dictated by the 30th President for the 50th anniversary issue of the Pulitzer-owned St. Louis Post-Dispatch (see page 28). In conclusion, President Coolidge suggested that Presidential health would be helped if "some place" were provided in the hills near Washington where Presidents could withdraw, relax, escape the sea-level humors of Washington over weekends.

P: The International Conference of American States on conciliation and arbitration meeting in Washington received a Presidential welcome: ". . . Nations do not explode all at once without any previous warning and begin to attack one another. Such action comes as the culmination of a series of irritating incidents. If these are adjusted there is no fuel to feed the explosive elements. . . ." Representatives of mutually-irritated Bolivia and Paraguay were present listening gravely.

On a motion by Cuba and Peru unanimously agreed to by the 18 other nations represented, the conference voted to telegraph Bolivia and Paraguay and urge them to arbitrate "in conformity with the traditions of this continent."