Light

President Hoover last week was all aglow as he boarded a special train at Washington, wound his way up along the Potomac, zigzagged through the Alleghenies and rolled down across level country to Dearborn, Mich. There he was met by Henry Ford, Thomas Alva Edison. Together they climbed into the wooden coaches of an antique train, chugged on to Smith's Creek station. It was the President's first extended pilgrimage out of the capital, his mission was important: to help celebrate the invention by Mr. Edison half a century ago of the incandescent electric lamp, to participate in the climax, lavishly arranged by Mr. Ford, of Light's Golden Jubilee. Being President made its demands of Mr. Hoover. He had to go into flag-draped Detroit, to receive the uproarious greetings of the city and state, to drive through the streets in a heavy rain. His public duty done, he returned to the Ford domain along the River Rouge, inspected the antiqued village of Greenfield, hobnobbed informally with his old friends. That night the President spoke in tribute to Mr. Edison and his achievement at the dedication of the Edison Institute of Technology, a Ford establishment to advance scientific research. The President's vein was reminiscent of his famed, mellow essay on fishing. Said he: "The electric lamp . . . enables us to postpone our spectacles a few years longer; it has made reading in bed infinitely more comfortable; by merely pushing a button we have introduced the element of surprise in dealing with burglars; the goblins that lived in dark corners and under the bed have now been driven to the outdoors. . . . It enables the doctor to peer into the recesses of our insides; it substitutes for the hot-water bottle in aches and pains; it enables our cities and towns to clothe themselves in gaiety by night, no matter how sad their appearance may be by day. . . . And it has enabled us to read the type in the telephone book." P: The President entrained again, journeyed down to Cincinnati to participate in another, no less practical, dedication-- of the new $18,000,000 waterway down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Cairo. There awaited him the river steamer Mississippi, flanked by a fleet of similar chunky craft, ready to cruise him slowly downstream to Louisville. P: President Hoover last week took a step forward in his plan to transfer from the U. S. to the states unreserved public lands, in the name of conservation. He appointed 13 out of 20 members to a Com-mission on Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain to inquire into the wisdom and practicality of his new policy. Heading the commission was James Rudolph Garfield, son of the 20th President, younger brother of Harry Augustus Garfield, president of Williams College. Well qualified is Chairman Garfield for his new duty. Under President Roosevelt he was a Secretary of the Interior (1907-1909) and thus a managing director of U. S. land. Tennis player, Shakespearean scholar, he possesses a humor as dry as the desert areas his committee will survey. Other famed commissioners: George Horace Lorimer (Saturday Evening Post) James Putnam Goodrich (onetime governor of Indiana), Elwood Mead (Commissioner of Reclamation). P: Against the inscriptions Furore Teutonico Diruta; Dono Americano Restituta on the American Memorial Library at the University of Louvain (TIME, Oct. 21) President Hoover, as "Friend of Belgium," last week threw his influence. Said he: "I . . . wish to emphatically disclaim any approval of the action of Mr. Whitney Warren [the architect] in insisting upon an offensive inscription upon the building."

P: Last week the President determined to send as chairman of the U. S. delegation to the forthcoming Naval Parley in London his able Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson. Shrewd, he searched about for Senators to put on the delegation to insure senatorial support for the Parley's handiwork. Likely choices: Republican David Aiken Reed of Pennsylvania; Democratic Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas.