The Roosevelt Week

No crucial problems demanded Franklin Roosevelt's attention last week. Nevertheless he managed to keep busy on a wide national front.

P: To 4,000,000 U. S. Jews the President sent a message of goodwill: "It gives me special pleasure to extend cordial greetings ... on this Rosh Hashana. I trust that the New Year will bring . . . great prosperity and happiness."

P: Six presidents of six big insurance companies filed into the President's office to discuss mortgages and real estate appraisals. As they were leaving, Franklin Roosevelt jocularly warned them that newshawks would be waiting to ask them about Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Frank Knox's declaration that no insurance policy is safe today (TIME, Sept. 21). Taking the cue, they announced as they emerged that life insurance company assets were up $3,000,000,000 since 1933, called attention to the fact that FCA, HOLC and RFC had bailed insurance" companies out of some $523,000,000 of troublesome assets, declared U. S. life insurance policies "the safest of all possible securities." Later when newshawks asked him if the conference was, in effect, a retort to GOPartisan Knox, the President replied: "Res ipsa loquitur."

P: Announced was a Roosevelt speech in Pittsburgh on Oct. 1. The President explained that because of European conditions, he dared not leave the Capital for more than four days at a time. After election, however, he will take a two week fishing trip to the Bahamas.

P: At Harvard's Tercentenary (see p. 22) Franklin Roosevelt again demonstrated the rainmaking ability which month ago made him a hero in the Drought belt, two weeks ago made him a Noah in North Carolina, last week made him a Jonah at Cambridge.

P: From Cambridge Harvardman Roosevelt rushed back to Washington instead of to Hyde Park because Mrs. Roosevelt, for the first time since March 4, 1933, was sick abed, with a bad cold (see p. 56).

P: Through Secretary Stephen Early, President Roosevelt cracked Publisher William Randolph Hearst for bringing the Red issue into the campaign (see p. 12).

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