Grandson Grant

ARMY & NAVY

Spring was coming to Washington with a rush. Sap was rising. The Japanese cherry trees encircling the Tidal Basin in Potomac Park were about to burgeon. A soft greenish sentimentality was adrift in the air. Ulysses Simpson Grant III walked out of the long flat Navy building, sniffed the sweet air, drove to the Tidal Basin, examined the cherry tree buds with the expert eye of a lieutenant-colonel of engineers. Then, in his official capacity as Director of Public Buildings and Public Parks of the National Capital, he predicted that these famed trees would blossom forth in all their double-flowered, pinkish loveliness on April 5.

Great was the rejoicing in the wake of this forecast by the cherry trees' public custodian. Last summer the heavens had opened to pour upon Potomac Park a deluge of almost Biblical proportions. For days the cherry tree roots had stood in rotting slime. Their leaves browned, fell off. They were, apparently, dead. But now they had come alive again and were ready to draw multitudes of spring visitors to Washington to gaze in gabbling ecstasy. Great, among Washington's hotelmen and shopkeepers, was the name of Grant who fostered this renaissance.

Spring has brought to Col. Grant other problems. Spring makes the sap rise in human beings as well as in cherry trees and Col. Grant is the sworn foe of human sappiness in Washington's public parks. His was the campaign last year against "spooning, necking and petting" by night in automobiles along the Speedway and through Rock Creek Park. Now that the cherry trees are coming out, the motives of parking motorists may soon again disturb the peace of the Director of Public Buildings and Public Parks of the National Capital.*

A large thick man, full jawed, pleasant-faced, Col. Grant will be 48 come Independence Day. His father was Maj. Gen. Frederick Dent Grant, son of the Soldier President. The Colonel was graduated from West Point in 1903, did the usual round of foreign duty, married the daughter of Elder Statesman Elihu Root. He has three daughters of his own, but no U.S. Grant IV. In the War he was a member of the U.S. General Staff Corps, on the official fringe of the Paris Peace Conference.

In Washington he rules a great domain. To begin with he is the President's official landlord, charged with the maintenance of the White House. He is a potent member of these Commissions: Arlington Bridge, National Capital Park & Planning, Public Buildings, District of Columbia Zoning. His predecessor, Lieutenant Colonel Clarence O. Sherrill, retired in 1926 to go and be Cincinnati's $25,000-per-year city manager, a post he still fills to the greater glory of Cincinnati and himself.

Last week as chairman of the Inaugural Committee, Col. Grant wrote letters of appreciation to many distinguished persons, thanking them for their attendance in Washington March 4. Lamentably, one such letter went to Governor Henry Stewart Caulfield (Republican) of Missouri. On March 4, Governor Caulfield was putting in a normal working day at Jefferson City. Said he: "That shows the unimportance of my attendance at the ceremony."

* The common estimate is that for every attractive young white man in Washington there are five attractive young white ladies, owing to the preponderantly feminine personnel of the Federal Government.