Gloomy Visitors

Through the gates of Hyde Park all last week passed a stream of big cars. Across the terrace of the Roosevelt house marched a parade of important visitors. As they came out, after talking to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, there was gloomy information for the press. Said Financier Bernard Baruch, just back from abroad: "Europe is a tinderbox. Anything can happen." Said ordinarily cheerful Ambassador-at-Large Norman H. Davis, of the situation in general: "I can't see anything that is very promising." With two wars and a stockmarket slump to worry about between visitors, Franklin Delano Roosevelt presently absorbed his callers' point of view.

In a press conference, a reporter referred to the jitteriness of the stockmarket. President Roosevelt nodded emphatically. Feelings were jittery everywhere and rightly so, he said, not only in financial circles but in homes all over the world and in every democratic government. Same afternoon, the President addressed 200 members of the Roosevelt Home Town Club on the lawn of his tenant Moses Smith, who founded the club. Said he: "World conditions are no better than they seem to be to those of us who read the newspapers. They are pretty serious. . . . It requires some planning to keep us out of war."

During a week in which--as the President told his neighbors--the foreign situation had kept him busy 12 to 15 hours a day, he also found time for an automobile ride with gloomy Guest Baruch, two short trips down the Hudson on the Potomac, a picnic lunch with members of the summer White House staff. And in a call at the Hudson River State Hospital for the insane, the President proved himself a less gloomy visitor than his own guests. He told a class of graduating nurses what had happened when he visited a similar institution at Ogdensburg, N. Y. An old man mowing the lawn, said the President, "took off his hat very politely. After I had passed, I heard the family, who were looking back, roar with laughter. I turned and there was the old gent thumbing his nose at me." While the nurses chuckled, the President gave a demonstration of the gesture.

P: Then the President departed, a day earlier than he had planned, for Washington where he called Secretary Hull and Chairman Joseph P. Kennedy of the U. S. Maritime Commission into conference to discuss the problems of routing U. S. shipping in Chinese ports.

P: First question reporters asked John Aspinwall Roosevelt, youngest (21), one of the tallest (6 ft. 4 in.), and only unmarried son of the President when he got back from Europe last week was what had actually happened at the Cannes carnival last month when someone who looked exactly like him doused the mayor of Cannes with champagne. Said John Roosevelt: "I haven't found out yet who it was. . . . I'll be awfully glad to see the Old Man. ... By the way, where is he?"

Second question reporters wanted to ask John Roosevelt concerned Anne Lindsay Clark, debutante daughter of the late F. Haven Clark, Boston investment counsellor, who last April broke her engagement to Samuel Stevens Sands, grandson of Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt Jr. Last spring, Anne Clark went to Harvard's commencement with John Roosevelt. Last week, she was on hand at Hyde Park to welcome him home. Before reporters got a chance to ask him about the romance, he and Anne Clark set off to motor to Boston. John Roosevelt's ostensible business was to arrange for a room for his senior year at Harvard, but three days later, Mrs. Clark announced that her daughter and John Roosevelt were engaged. Said she: "They will not be married until after he graduates." At Hyde Park, news of the engagement was confirmed. Said James Roosevelt, speaking as his father's secretary: "The family is very pleased."

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