Change of Seasons

It was a brisk autumn morning in Washington last week and the wind was whipping the last leaves of the Presidential trees when Franklin Roosevelt shuffled out on the egg-rolling lawn behind the White House. He promptly became the centre of a large gathering of mixed gender, for it was the annual occasion on which he shares the limelight with its authors, his annual photograph with White House newshawks. The rite performed, the crowd followed him into the oval reception room on the ground floor of the White House. There he sat and made gay quips as if he had nothing in the world to do. Actually he was a dreadfully busy man, for that day he was having a final conference with his Budget Director, appointing and having a secret conference with a new Ambassador to the Soviet Union (see col. 2), appointing a new Assistant Secretary of the Navy (see p. 12), accepting the resignation of the Under Secretary of Agriculture (see p. 12), approving arrangements for his reinaugural parade and plans for a reviewing stand modeled on Andrew Jackson's home, The Hermitage, preparing a statement urging industry to employ more men, particularly men over 40. authorizing the U. S.-owned Alaska Railroad to charter ships so that Alaska should not starve during the continued West Coast shipping strike.

Early that evening in Washington's Union Station, Attorney General Homer Cummings and RF Chairman Jesse Jones said farewell to him. and he was off to the Pan-American Peace Conference at Buenos Aires. From that hour, time failed to march on as rapidly as the seasons. It was an early spring next morning at Charleston, warm May next evening in the Gulf Stream, sweltering summer four days later at Trinidad. For Franklin Roosevelt was off over the rim of the calendar.

At Charleston with Governor Johnston of South Carolina and Mayor Maybank beside him he drove through two miles of cheering crowds to the Navy dock. There lay the fast cruiser Indianapolis, her rails lined with blue jackets at attention. Accompanied only by his son James, his son's friend Edward" Gallagher, his Military and Naval aides and White House physician, the President climbed the gangplank and was piped aboard. He ascended to the bridge, waved good-by and promised, "I'm going to have a good time."

Then the Indianapolis cast off, the guns of Fort Moultrie fired a Presidential salute and Franklin Roosevelt disappeared hull down over the public horizon. Through daylight and darkness he ploughed ahead at 25 knots for three whole days during which the nearest newshawks were the three representatives of the press associations who followed with the Secret Service men half a mile behind on the cruiser Chester. On the fourth morning when the cruisers dropped anchor to refuel at Port of Spain, Trinidad, the newshawks had a peek at him. Only news they got was that he and his mother had been in Port of Spain on a cruise 32 years before.

While the refueling went on, the President had three hours of fishless fishing in a whale boat. Then the swift voyage southward was resumed and the newshawks riding in the Indianapolis' wake racked their brains and filled the ether with radioed chit-chat about the President's initiation by Neptune's Court when crossing the Equator.

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