Eye to Eye

"Excellency!"

"Excellency!"

The two men eyeing each other in the Blue Room of the White House really had little more than that to say to each other, little more to do than eye each other and feel that they knew each other better. For President Hoover it was a chance to see at close range and in virile, bristling reality the neat little black beard which is the international tag of Italy's young Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dino Grandi. The latter, in turn, could study at close range the greying hair, chubby cheeks and pleasant squint of the man to whom Europe's statesmen have been coming in procession with their plans and problems. Italy was joining that procession merely to create goodwill and keep her place in the international sun. She, more than any other European power, sees eye to eye with the U. S. on most current questions. Said her emissary:

"The scope of my visit here is to offer the Italian contribution to the common work for the common good." Washington officials expected practically no concrete results to spring from Minister Grandi's three-day visit at the Capital.

All day the State Department had been panicky lest anti-Fascist demonstrations mar Signer Grandi's reception. A plan to have him flown from New York harbor by Pilot Charles Augustus Lindbergh was canceled because of bad weather. In clothes grey as the encircling fog. Minister Grandi & party were taken off the S. S. Conte Grande at Quarantine in a tug, hustled over to a Pennsylvania R. R. pier in Jersey City to a special train. Everywhere were armed guards, special agents, railroad detectives to suppress any hostility. None occurred.

P: President Hoover retired to the Lincoln Study, spread a mass of notes on the desk, began to write his "State-of-the-Union" message to Congress. Cabinet officers who have contributed ideas declared it would be one of the most important economic documents ever to go from the White House to the Capitol. G. 0. Politicians were inclined to view it as preliminary platform building for the 1932 campaign.

P: President Hoover inspected the U. S. S. Constitution when that famed old frigate tied up at Washington Navy Yard. He went poking down into her bilge where officers had to use flashlights, emerged with his grey felt hat battered out of shape by low beams. In the centre of the gun-deck President Hoover stopped to gaze at a brassbound barrel marked: GROG TUB. Commander Louis Gulliver explained that from it used to come the sailors' daily ration of a half-pint of strong drink. The President nodded, passed on silently.

P: The Stanford football team of 1894 of which Herbert Hoover was treasurer assembled at the White House last week for a reunion (TIME, Nov. 16). After greeting his old teammates the President led them out to the rear posing ground for pictures. In his soft hand he gingerly balanced a brand new football, marked '94. Then he went back to his office-- "probably to count the gate receipts," jibed one old footballer. Because he was a good Hoover friend and biographer and onetime Stanford cheer leader, Will Irwin was invited to the reunion. He waved his arms excitedly while the teammates rah-rahed mildly for Stanford. Then on the lawn the players crouched in their oldtime positions and, with "Bill" Harrelson calling the half-forgotten signals at quarter, went through several phantom formations. One drop-kick sailed over the hedge and Halfback Jackson Eli Reynolds, president of the First National Bank of the City of New York, went scrambling after it. That evening 14 Stanford men sat down to dinner with the President in the State dining room. Because Lawyer Charles Fickert, flying East, was delayed by a snow storm, Representative Arthur Monroe Free of California (Stanford 1901) was hurriedly summoned to fill in. Softly the Marine Band played "A Bicycle Built for Two." There was quiet, reminiscent talk but no songs, no cheers, no collegiate informality. Despite their friendship for the President, no member of the team could screw his courage up to calling him "Bert." Coffee and cigars were followed by a lantern slide show of undergraduate days. When the reunion broke up before midnight. President Hoover said to his guests: "Come back tomorrow morning for medicine ball." Some of them did, and the next night, without the President, they ate another reunion dinner. A tour of the Gettysburg battlefield completed Stanford '94's celebration.

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