Great-Uncle

After President Arias of Panama left the Houston at Balboa his Panama's red- white-&-blue flag dropped from the mainmast and up again went President Roosevelt's four-starred ensign. The cheering died down and Sons Franklin Jr. and John were left loitering on the dock at the end of the gangplank. Two women reporters pounced upon them.

"Our plans are indefinite," said tall, gangling 19-year-old Franklin Jr. "We are going to President Arias' dinner with father, and then, early to bed."

Had the President a statement for the Press? "Hi, Gus!" Franklin Jr. called up to bull-necked August Adolph Gennerich, the President's bodyguard. "Has father a statement for the Press?"

Gennerich did not know. So Franklin Jr. bobbed into the Presidential cabin, bobbed out again. There was no statement. "If father writes a speech for tonight," he informed the newshawks, "it will be handed out at the Presidencia."

At a cost of $7,000, Harmodio Arias, following his trip to Washington last autumn, had an elevator installed in La Presidencia, his official residence, in anticipation of President Roosevelt's coming there to dine. Rare is the spot with which Franklin Roosevelt does not trace some family connection, and Panama proved no exception. Opening his dinner speech on the "trusteeship" of the Canal, he remarked:

"My interest in Panama may be said to be of an historic character . . . because it was my own great-uncle, Mr. William H. Aspinwall, who was instrumental in starting the Panama Railroad in 1848, and who, in the face of many natural difficulties, carried it to a successful conclusion in 1855."

William Henry Aspinwall's sister, Mary Rebecca, married Isaac Roosevelt, the President's grandfather. Great-Uncle William passed a youth "of moral purity" in a "refined and Christian' home in Bleeker Street," according to his Staten Island minister upon the occasion of Mr. Aspinwall's death in 1875. Aged 25, he was taken into partnership in the mercantile firm of Gardiner G. & Samuel S. Howland. his uncles. The firm later fell largely into his hands, developed a thriving trade in the Mediterranean, an unrivalled one in the Pacific and East Indies, a downright monopoly in Venezuela. His venture into the promotion of the 49-mi. Panama R.R., whose eastern terminus was called Aspinwall,* and the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. which linked it to both sides of the continent, was regarded by his associates as a bold speculation for so sober-sided a financier as William Aspinwall. Promoter Aspinwall got his railroad charter from the New York Legislature but there is no record of his visiting Panama during the construction of the line. The California gold rush was a godsend to him, and until the Union Pacific was completed in 1869. Aspinwall had the coast-to-coast carrying service in his fist. In 1934 Great-Uncle William might have had some difficulty reconciling his profitable business to the Social Democratic ideas of Grandnephew Franklin.

In two days last week President Roosevelt had scored three "firsts." He was the first U. S. President to visit the Panama Canal, which he crossed in six hours. Day before he had been the first President ever to set foot in South American soil, the first to address the nation by radio from a foreign state. The last two "firsts" were recorded at Cartagena where he and Colombia's President Enrique Olaya Herrera greeted each other. After mutual professions of esteem and goodwill, the two Presidents took a drive about the 400-year-old capital of the Spanish Main. A point of interest was the old fort over the harbor. President Roosevelt could claim no direct connection with it by kin, but he recalled that when the British tried to take it in 1741, Lawrence Washington, brother of the first President, was on the expedition. President Herrera's interest in the place was chiefly occasioned by the fact that during one of Colombia's revolutions he had spent some unpleasant hours in jail there.

Leaving behind in Panama a wreath of newspaper eulogies calling him "the world's best neighbor," President Roosevelt and the Houston vanished into a blazing Pacific sunset. Next day the cruiser anchored off tiny Cocos Island, 500 mi. west of Panama, where Vincent Astor had told the President there was good fishing. From its davits the President's special fishing launch splashed into the blue waters. All hands applauded when the President hooked, played and landed a 50 lb. ono (mackerel-like fish). Franklin Jr.'s ono had its tail snapped off by a shark as it was being pulled into the boat. A Marine evened things up by pulling out his gun, shooting the shark.

Twenty-four hours later, President Roosevelt was relaxing as the grey warship sped him on toward Hawaii (see p. 13).

*New Colon.

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