The Roosevelt Week

President Roosevelt sat in his big armchair with his back to the windows of his oval office and beamingly told newshawks as they trooped in for their press conference that he had a lot of news for them. He told about General MacArthur's being held over as Chief of Staff, told about plans for a new local airport. Then he intimated that he had something really important to say.

"Bernard I. Baruch," he began.

"Bernard M." a correspondent promptly corrected.

"General Hugh M. Johnson," the President continued.

"Hugh S." chorused the crowd.

Franklin Roosevelt tossed his head, laughed heartily, declared that he had them all intrigued about what was coming. Then he recited more names--Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials--and again grinned. Was it not a queer combination of notables? The puzzled correspondents agreed that it was. That group, the President explained, was going to meet that very afternoon to devise ways; means of taking profits out of war.

Uncertain grins appeared below the beaks of the newshawks. There was dead silence. Used to Presidential leg-pulling, they waited for the joker. Then gradually it. dawned on them that the only joke was the President's deliberate error with the middle initials of Messrs. Baruch and Johnson, that he was stealing the show from the Senate munitions investigation. The correspondents began to babble questions and Franklin Roosevelt beamed at the success of his pleasantry.

P: Busy though he was all week with the job of whipping his 1936 budget into shape for Congress, President Roosevelt found time to have oldtime Democrat Newton D. Baker to lunch at the White House. The Wartime Secretary of War was there not as a Party man but as an attorney challenging the constitutional right of TV A to sell electric power (TIME, Nov. 12). On subsequent days the President received calls from bigwigs of the utility world: Wendell L. Willkie, president of Commonwealth ; Southern; Preston S. Arkwright, president of Georgia Power; Floyd L. Carlisle, board chairman of Niagara Hudson; Thomas N. McCarter, head of the Edison Electric Institute (utility trade association). No one told what passed at the meetings except the President. He whispered to the Press that he had made it clear that if too much money had been invested in utility companies, the stockholders should take the loss in reduced dividends rather than consumers in high rates. He said also that the utility tycoons had not fought with him on that point.

P: Into President Roosevelt's office went John L. Merrill, president of the Pan-American Society, followed by a delegation of 21. There one of the delegates hung around Mr. Roosevelt's neck a medal for promoting friendliness and co-operation among American countries. Said the President: "It is with the greatest appreciation, that I receive from your hands the medal of the Pan-American Society, particularly because it comes to me from an institution which was formed over 22 years ago. . . ."

P: A notable caller upon the President last week was Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, obstetrician to the Dionne quintuplets. Said the country doctor on emerging: "All he asked about was those five little babies of mine."

P: To Philadelphia went Mrs. Roosevelt for a dinner at Gimbel's department store. There she was presented with a $1,000 check from four Gimbels--Richard, Ellis, Bernard and Benedict--as "the outstanding woman of the year." She forwarded the check to 8-year-old Walter Fox, truck-driver's son, to take him to Warm Springs for infantile paralysis cure. Later she went on to Manhattan to complete her Christmas shopping at a sale of things made by the blind. There she bought six $2 neckties (black, white, red, white, yellow, white) saying: "The President is going to love to wear these ties."

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