The Hoover Week

Like Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge in the White House promoted intimate publicity by letting the Press learn the comings and goings, the small doings of himself & relatives. Like Woodrow Wilson, President Hoover objects to such family publicity. He considers the private side of his life and of those about him something in which the public can have no legitimate interest. To him the White House is a home as sacred from intrusion as his own Palo Alto residence. Yet last week he put aside his distaste for this type of publicity to the extent of allowing two of his grandchildren-to make a formal appearance before the talking newsreel cameras on the White House lawn.

Peggy Anne and Herbert III ranged themselves before the microphones, pulled the tail of a big white collie but flatly refused to talk. Finally their grandmother stepped in to help the baffled cameramen, asked the children what they wanted for Christmas. Herbert III listed his desires: a policeman's uniform, badge and club, a wagon and a "train engine--a big one." Peggy Anne wanted "a very big doll," several smaller ones and a wagon. Their six-month-old sister Joan, who had arrived in Washington in the arms of Nursemaid Florence Gehlke (see cut) was not brought out of the White House to express her Christmas wants.

P: The offstage crockery crash which annually opens the Gridiron Club's dinner was explained this time as: "That's the American people vindicating Mr. Hoover at the polls." General fun-making included a song: "Oh, the moon's behind a cloud along the Wabash, for the Democrats are making all the hay; in the sycamores the G. O. P. is hiding, on the banks of the Wabash hell's to pay." President Hoover, present as No. 1 guest as usual, as usual addressed his news-gathering hosts, as usual eased his feelings in reply to their horse play, as usual was not reported.

P:One evening President Hoover went to the Capitol, took a front row seat before the Senate rostrum. Before him rested a grey coffin in which lay the body of North Carolina's Senator Lee Slater Overman who had died that morning. The Overman desk (on the aisle, second row) was draped in black. The funeral service, conducted by Spnate Chaplain Phillips, was brief, simple (see p. 8).sb P: As custom requires, Vice President Curtis gave a State dinner at the Mayflower Hotel last week for President Hoover. Forty-four other guests attended including Harvey Firestone, Charles Michael Schwab, William Wallace Atterbury, Mrs. Jacob Leander Loose (Kansas City cracker widow). Afterward Vice President Curtis entertained them with a newsreel of a Cabinet meeting and of Will Rogers' cinema Lightnin'.

P:To Newport News went Mrs. Hoover to break a champagne bottle of water collected from the seven seas over the prow of a new Dollar liner, to declare: "I name thee President Hoover." Herbert Hoover III in the launching stand, shouted with excited glee, gave his grandmother's arm an impulsive shove. Declared R. Stanley Dollar: "Such is our answer to the rumor of a business depression."

-Only veteran and distinguished Senators may have Senate chamber funerals. Some others thus honored: Ohio's Hanna, Georgia's Bacon, Ohio's Burton, Wyoming's Warren, Kentucky's Beck. -0ne John Grable, 21, confessed last week to robbing the home of their father, Herbert Hoover Jr. at Pasadena, Calif.

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