Party & Poison

Diplomatic parties, political parties, socialite parties, stuffy parties, have been held at the White House for some 135 years, but until the arrival of Roosevelt II the old building had never seen the kind of party which he gave there last week, his annual entertainment for the Press. Upwards of 700 people attended, the men predominantly young fellows who work on Washington's newspapers and in the local bureaus of agencies and out-of-town papers ; the women, some wives, some newspaper women but the majority lively young things who spend their days at typewriters or store counters, pretty as debutantes are not. They had the time of their lives in their swankiest $11.98 copies of Paris models, dancing in the President's parlor, strolling on the President's south lawn between strings of Japanese lanterns, congregating in the lobby around the table where tall glasses of cold beer were poured all evening long.

Feature of the evening was a Virginia Reel danced by a party in costume including Newshawks Raymond Clapper, J. Fred Essary, Ulric Bell, Ernest Lindley, Secretary Morgenthau, James Roosevelt and their wives, not to mention Gracie Hall Roosevelt and his sister, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. The President from his armchair called the changes: "Do-see-do! Down the middle and back again! . . . Swing your partner around to the right." Fledgling newshawks clapped in time to Turkey in the Straw, Dixie and Yankee Doodle. Soon a half-dozen reels, more energetic than polished, were in progress in different parts of the East Room. That evening the President stuck to his armchair instead of retiring early as he does at official parties, and the Press went home as usual in high good humor.

A very different exit had been made by White House newshawks after one of the President's regular press conferences a week before. Then they were in anything but good humor and straggled through the lobby of the Executive Offices muttering audibly to one another the name of one Richard Waldo. What the President had said to them was "in committee of the whole" (off the record) but by last week the record was publicly apparent.

Richard H. Waldo, 58, an oldtime magazine man, is president and editor of McClure Newspaper Syndicate which distributes, besides articles for publication (Calvin Coolidge was its all-time high), a "confidential letter" printed on a pink sheet "not for publication." Recently this pink sheet quoted a partly identified business executive as talking bloodthirstily about a White House assassination. Quoting "a New York specialist," the pink sheet, in another issue, had described the President's Southern fishing jaunt as a disguised health trip necessitated by his being found in the coma of a dread disease. The purport of these quotations being outrageously untrue, libelous and incendiary, the White House did not wish to dignify them by denial but put the case of the McClure Syndicate up to the Washington news fraternity to deal with in its own way, for its own honor.

Action resulted last week. The executive committee of the White House Correspondents Association, which passes on the credentials of those who attend Presidential press conferences, ruled that persons representing agencies which distribute "confidential information" for profit should henceforth be excluded. The National Press Club, a substantial institution with a large responsible membership and extensive quarters in Washington's National Press Building, found that Editor Waldo, whose headquarters are in Manhattan, was one of its nonresident members. The governors of the club summoned him before them to answer charges of defaming a fellow member. The governors did not announce the fact, but it was an was open secret that "fellow member" was Associate-Member Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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