Travels, Public & Private

Most of last week President Roosevelt spent away from his desk, the White House and Washington. His travels first took him to Gettysburg where he drove through cheering crowds to the battlefield. As the President ascended the platform there he was greeted by a white-haired lady of 85. Mrs. M. O. Smith, who as a girl, 71 years before, had stood on a similar platform, had sung a song to a great gathering, had heard Abraham Lincoln begin: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers. . . " Last week Mrs. Smith did not sing. President Roosevelt, addressing a crowd of 50,000, declared: "Here, in the presence of the spirits of those who fell on this ground, we give renewed assurance that the passions of war are moldering in the tombs of Time. . . ."

At dusk his train sped north and east to Manhattan where he arrived after midnight. A few hours' sleep in his East 65th Street home and he was up & away to review the U. S. Fleet aboard the cruiser Indianapolis (see p. 17).

That finished the public half of the President's travels. The private half began when he entrained with wife, mother, daughter and eldest son to awake next morning parked on a freight siding at Worcester, Mass. The next two days the President & party spent at Groton, his old school 25 miles away, with a return to Worcester and the special train for the night. At the school gates, by order of Dr. Endicott ("Peabo") Peabody, rector and headmaster, the President's entourage of newshawks and all his bodyguard save two Secret Service men were promptly locked out.

To the chapel went the Roosevelt family and sat in the front surrounded by families of graduating "Grotties." President-Emeritus Lowell of Harvard made the "prize address." Dr. Peabody distributed 23 ordinary diplomas, one of which went to John Aspindall Roosevelt. 18 years old and 6 ft. 3 in. in stocking feet, youngest Presidential son. To others the venerable rector gave seven diplomas cum laude, one magna cum laude and 39 prizes.

After the ceremony and a leisurely lunch the President and Mrs. Roosevelt drove out of the gate and paused for several minutes to let photographers snap them in the tonneau of their car. As the car started on, startled newshawks spied tall Son John who had been lying hidden, his 75 inches curled up on the floorboards of the car, rise and sit between his parents. Of late young Roosevelt has developed a fanatical aversion to having his picture taken.

Next day at Groton the President lunched with other old boys, attended a baseball game and in the evening addressed a dinner in honor of Dr. Peabody. At midnight the presidential special set out from Worcester again and next morning the Roosevelts detrained at their home, Hyde Park. There the President took a Sunday's rest, drove out with Mrs. Roosevelt to view the crops growing on his ancestral acres.

A morning later he was again in Washington nonchalantly catching the balls of politics that for five days he had left in midair.

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