"Affectionately, Frank''

Spring plowing was getting under way in Georgia's fat black fields last week. Peepers were already loud in the "branches" (brooks) and the doves and quail had started pairing. Along the red clay roads trundled wagonloads of grey cottonseed to market. A faint green was beginning to tint the woods. The season was getting along, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his white cottage among the pines at Warm Springs, had not yet announced his Cabinet or perfected his "New Deal."

Between swims at the pool the President-elect shut himself up with visitors for long hours in his study. Starved for facts, newsmen had to content themselves with writing long-winded speculative pieces, often based on nothing more authoritative than a casual aside by Marvin Mclntyre. Mr. Roosevelt's press contact man. The three most important callers upon the President-elect during the week:

Bernard Marines Baruch who gave Mr. Roosevelt his views on War Debts, government economies, railroad relief. Asked by newshawks if he had been offered a Cabinet job, Mr. Baruch quizzically replied: "I've been mentioned in the papers for a number of appointments. They include Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of National Defense, Ambassador to Great Britain, Ambassador to France, chairman of the R. F. C. and chairman of the American delegation to the World Economic Conference."

Walker Downer Hines, onetime Federal director general of railroads, who some wiseacres promptly predicted would be the next Director of the Budget. After Mr. Hines left, the President-elect confided to the Press that he was working on a plan for a national transportation commission in which would be consolidated the Interstate Commerce Commission and Federal regulation of civil aeronautics, shipping and bus & truck traffic. Less concrete were his ideas on a national commission on communications to be built around the Federal Radio and Power Commissions.

Sir Ronald Lindsay, British Ambassador, who flew to Warm Springs for a conference on War Debts. Earlier in the week Secretary of State Stimson had telephoned the President-elect the contents of a British note accepting, with reservations, the invitation to confer on War Debts and related problems after March 4. Two days later Sir Ronald was ordered back to London to advise His Majesty's Government on U. S. debt ideas.* Again by telephone Mr. Roosevelt told the State Department he would like to see the Ambassador before he sailed this week. The President-elect outlined his debt ideas to Sir Ronald during a four-hour talk at Warm Springs. Mr. Roosevelt considers himself "in a poker game" on the debt negotiations, from which he hopes to win a pot of trade advantages for the U. S. in return for any cut in British obligations. Britain, no mean diplomatic poker player, began by ruling out all idea of economic concessions as the bargaining price for debt reductions.

President-elect Roosevelt, with some 60 candidates to pick from, announced that he would not announce his Cabinet until after his return from a cruise aboard Vincent Astor's Nourmahal about mid-February. An unexpected guest on that cruise, it developed last week, would be Kermit Roosevelt, son of the late President, fifth cousin of the President-elect. Thus was seen a patch-up between the Republican and Democratic branches of the Roosevelt family. An ardent Hooverite, Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth wrote a note of congratulation to fifth Cousin Franklin shortly after his election. Last week Mrs. Longworth was reported going proudly about Washington, exhibiting a reply which began "My dear Alice" and ended "Affectionately, Frank."

-Last week Arkansas' Senator Robinson lunched Sir Ronald at the Capitol, took him on the Senate floor. Later Indiana's crude Robin- son flayed the Ambassador as a "lobbyist" for debt cancelation. Arkansas' Robinson promptly admitted that he had made a "mistake" in taking Sir Ronald on the floor, explained: "It was an unintentional disregard of the Senate rules. T did not refresh myself on them. The subject of international debts was not mentioned, much less discussed."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.