Water Works

Since Franklin Roosevelt accepted renomination at Philadelphia two months ago, he has studiously refrained from all political activity. Nevertheless, he was at pains to give White House correspondents the slip one afternoon last week and, on pretext of visiting his ailing Secretary of War at Walter Reed Hospital, motored 20 miles into Maryland to Oxon Hill Manor, country house of Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles. There the President conferred with some 30 local Democrats, including Maryland's Senator Radcliffe, Baltimore's Mayor Jackson, National Committeeman Howard Bruce. When the Baltimore Sun discovered this privy excursion, newshawks rushed to the White House to question Press Secretary Stephen Early who told them without cracking a smile that the Maryland meeting had been merely social. Up piped United Pressman Fred Storm: "Say, Steve, is this going to be a non-political campaign?"

Equally caustic were other newshawks' comments. Scripps-Howard Columnist Raymond Clapper: "So far as the White House reporters can learn officially there is no political campaign on, or if there is, Mr. Roosevelt isn't running for office."

Undeterred by such comments, the President last week continued his non-partisan activities which included: P: The ostentatious summoning to Washington of his Congressional finance heads to announce that no new taxes were in prospect. P: A trip by rail to Johnstown, in pivotal Pennsylvania, where he motored for two hours through last spring's flood regions, was cheered everywhere by great throngs, declared, "The Federal Government, so long as I have anything to do with it, is going to cooperate ... in taking every possible measure to prevent floods in the future."

P: A visit to Cleveland, in pivotal Ohio, where he drove through miles of streets lined with cheering people to see the Great Lakes Exposition. He told Clevelanders that they looked more prosperous than they did in 1932.

P: A visit to Chautauqua, in pivotal New York. Speaking in place of his wife, whose address scheduled for this week was canceled, Non-Partisan Roosevelt declared in favor of Peace and Neutrality: "I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of the line --the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. . . . Nevertheless--and I speak from a long experience--the effective maintenance of American neutrality depends today, as in the past, on the wisdom and determination of whoever at the moment occupy the offices of President and Secretary of State." P: A visit to Binghamton, N. Y., another flood region, where he made another automobile tour and encountered the only lukewarm reception on his trip.

P: Visits to Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania's anthracite region. In a 30-mile drive he was met by an unprecedented turnout of several hundred thousand, including many of John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers, each of whom has been asked to contribute $1 toward the President's reelection. The Roosevelt panama was crushed completely out of shape in an afternoon of strenuous hat-waving at enthusiastic admirers.

Still unready to begin partisan campaigning, but fairly brimming with first-hand flood knowledge, President Roosevelt returned to Hyde Park for some more rest.

Having surveyed the matter of too much water in the East, he will continue his non-political campaign by surveying the matter of too little water in the West when he starts on an extended Drought trip next week.

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