Visitations

Many were the visitations of great and near-great at the White House last week. Some talked out against the enormous sounding board of presidential prestige. Others came and went in silence. To all President Hoover extended his even-handed hospitality.

Across the White House luncheon table Henry Ford discussed prohibition with President Hoover, then stepped in front of the White House to announce: "Prohibition is here to stay. Absolute enforcement must come. . . . Nobody wants to fly with a drunken aviator."*

Mr. Ford also took occasion to hint that he, like the Packard Company, was developing a new motor for aviation. He then proceeded to Alexandria, Va., to buy antiques.

Editor & Mrs. George Horace Lorimer followed Mr. Ford as White House guests. Publisher & Mrs. William Randolph Hearst came next, for lunch.

Then came two famed southerners, Principal Robert Russa Moton of Tuskegee Institute (Negroes) and Bishop James Cannon Jr., of the Methodist-Episcopal Church South. Bishop Cannon was asked to stay for a meal, discuss prohibition.

Another White House guest of the week was George Woodward Wickersham, Chairman of the new Law Enforcement Commission, who called for a preliminary talk with President Hoover.

P:"President Hoover has just been assassinated ! Vice President Curtis is mortally wounded!" So cried a voice to the Paterson, N. J., radio audience. Frantic telephone calls for confirmation of this News were made to National Broadcasting Co.'s Station WJZ. Last week the company started a search for the amateur radio-news-faker who used the WJZ wave length and call letters to broadcast such gruesome "humor."

P:U. S. travelers and shippers breathed easier last week when President Hoover declared: "I am confident that there will be no increase in railway rates as the result of the O'Fallon decision."

P:Presidents get college degrees without studying for them. Not so for President's sons. Allan Hoover will not graduate with his class at Stanford University this month. Reason: he lost five scholastic months accompanying his father during the campaign and South American tour.

P:On the rear White House veranda Mrs. Hoover gave a tea last week. To it went as honor guests Yoshiro Ohta and Tamio Abe, Japanese team in the Davis Cup preliminaries. The same day, headlines screamed--DREADED JAPAN INVADER AT LAST ATTACKS CAPITAL! The "invader" was not the Japanese tennis players but Japanese beetles which had just been discovered in White House foliage. Department of Agriculture experts advanced upon the pests with chemicals.

P:Nine telegrams over the Hoover signature went forth from the White House last week to nine state governors, asking them to meet in Colorado Springs on June 10 to frame an interstate compact limiting oil production. The nine oil states: Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, California, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Kansas and New Mexico.

P:The Hoover week-end outing: A motor ride into the Maryland foothills of the Blue Ridge, where President Hoover got lost on a back road; an inspection of a farm patented in two 50-acre tracts by Andrew Hoover, the President's great-great-great-grandfather, in 1746 and 1748, prior to his migration to North Carolina in 1762. William Zepp now owns the site of the ancestral Hoover home.

P:Dispute among Congressional advocates of different Mississippi River flood control plans last week prompted President Hoover to hold up construction contracts pending further legal surveys by his Secretary of War and Attorney General. Con-troversy was renewed over flowage rights across river lands.

*Another prohibition announcement of last week came from Pierre Samuel Du Pont, retired board chairman of Mr. Ford's competitor, General Motors Corp. Mr. du Pont denied that Prosperity was due to prohibition, claimed the automobile, the radio, had replaced the saloon for recreation. Said he: "The iniquities of the saloon itself have been largely overdrawn. . . . The workingman gets all the spirituous liquor he wants at probably not a greatly increased price."