Winter Vacation

Like many another big and busy man, President Hoover last week began a ten-day winter vacation. The Senate was poking along on the Tariff. The House with its robot membership could not conceivably get into mischief. The well-reefed London Naval Conference sailed cautiously over well-charted seas of diplomacy. Therefore the President packed a trunkfull of fishing tackle, stuffed a few papers in a small brief case, ordered a private car tacked on the end of the Atlantic Coast Line's Havana Special, and, with Mrs. Hoover, departed for Florida. His guests: Associate Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, Dr. Vernon Kellogg, Mark Sullivan. Secretary George Akerson was left behind to temporize with White House callers while Secretary Lawrence Richey accompanied "The Chief."

The most private of public men, President Hoover insists upon absolute seclusion for his run. On the journey south he talked fishing with his guests, napped, ignored clamorous citizens along the way who wanted to see him. At Jacksonville where he got off to stretch his legs, he bumped into Gilchrist Baker Stockton whom he had lately appointed U. S. Minister to Austria. Cried the President: ''Hello, Gilchrist, come on over and join the party." To Jacksonville's Mayor Alsop President Hoover remarked: "Gilchrist is a mighty fine boy!"

Before dawn the next morning the Hoover car was cut off at Long Key, a barren palm-studded island 80 miles south of Miami. The President and friends detrained, walked a sandy way to the wharf where lay in spick & span readiness the white seagoing houseboat Saunterer. Its owner, Manhattan Capitalist Jeremiah Milbank, eastern G. O. P. Treasurer during the 1928 campaign, greeted the President, turned the boat over to him, got off. The President's ensign, a blue flag with four white stars around the seal of the U. S., was .broken out, cameras clanked and clicked, President Hoover waved his hand, and the Saunterer moved out to sea.

The President planned to eat and sleep on the Saunterer, to spend his days fishing for sailfish, kingfish, barracuda, perhaps tarpon, from small speedboats. His only contact with the shore would be a courier in a launch. Newsmen, left behind as they always are when the President plays, settled down at Long Key to amuse themselves the best they could, to welcome whatever scraps of information were daily brought in by the courier from the Saunterer.

What might well have kept President Hoover from having a guilty conscience about taking a holiday at this time was the presence in Florida of many another famed vacationist. Citizen Calvin Coolidge was gently relaxing from his literary labors at Mount Dora where he and Mrs. Coolidge were the guests of Capt. Archie Hurlburt. Mr. Coolidge had gone fishing only once in a month, had made no use of Capt. Hurlburt's outdoor swimming pool.

Citizen Alfred Emanuel Smith and friends were occupying the penthouse on Palm Beach's Whitehall Hotel (home of the late Henry M. Flagler). Mornings he went to the Breakers Hotel beach to swim in the ocean. His figure in a bathing suit, his startling ability to squirt a stream of Atlantic water through his front teeth several feet into the air while he floated on his back stirred the interest of fashionable folk. Afternoons he played golf at the Everglades club with John Jacob Raskob.

P: To discover how soon he can withdraw U. S. Marines from Haiti, what he can do for Haiti in the meantime, President Hoover with congressional authority last week appointed two commissions, one formal and white, one informal and black. White: Chairman, William Cameron Forbes, onetime Governor General of the Philippines; Henry Prather Fletcher, one-time Ambassador to Italy; Elie Vezina of Rhode Island, Papally beknighted newsman; James Kerney, editor of the Trenton (N. J.) Times; William Allen White, Editor of the Emporia (Kan.) Gazette. Black: Mr. Hoover appointed an informal, independent commission headed by Robert Russa Moton, President of Tuskegee Institute, to make an exhaustive survey of Haitian education.

P: President Hoover last week appointed Herman Bernstein, famed Jewish publicist, U. S. Minister to Albania. Born (1876) on the Russo-German border, Mr. Bernstein came to the U. S. at 17. Espousing Hebraism, he gave sharp battle to Jew-baiting Henry Ford. Last week he gave Mr. Ford, now his friend, credit for the appointment.

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