Flu & a Fit

No respecter of persons, a flu bug bit Franklin Roosevelt last week, while other bugs attacked Secretaries Stephen Early and "Missy" Le Hand. The bedded President certified his plan to board U. S. S. Houston this week and view the Navy's war game restfully under tropical sun (see p. 12). He also managed to get some work done.

In Washington to discuss trade, money, Dictators and armaments was Brazil's Foreign Minister, Dr. Oswaldo Aranha, onetime (1934-38) Ambassador to the U. S. Secretary Hull had a bug, too, but omnipresent Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles took good care of Dr. Aranha. The Navy's impending war game emphasized Brazil's importance in a war involving "hemisphere defense" (see p. 12), and Dr. Aranha stated that in any "international civil war," Brazil would be on the U. S. side, "Absolutely!" His major contribution to U. S. news columns was that the "old" Germans in Brazil* dislike Adolf Hitler's regime.

P: Stubborn as a Dutch dike, Franklin Roosevelt last week announced he had signed Congress' bill for $725,000,000 to run WPA until June 30, and promptly took emphatic advantage of its invitation to ask for the $150,000,000 it had lopped off, in case an "emergency" loomed. He said in effect that the lopping itself had created an emergency. Then he pictured the abrupt firing of 1,000,000 WPAsters in April, or the scaling-down of 1,500,000 from April to June 30.

P: The President conferred once more with Ambassador to the Court of St. James's Joe Kennedy, God-sped him back to his post two weeks ahead of schedule. Foreign policy, meantime, was a hushed subject. To a press conference which got after him again about the sale of prime air power to foreigners, Franklin Roosevelt exploded with characteristic trick humor:

"When a President, who would not allow the use of his name, read the story in a newspaper yesterday morning, he had a fit."

The story was that England had been allowed to buy an advanced U. S. anti-aircraft gun director. The President's story:

The gun director was a British invention originally. It had been improved on by Sperry Corp. (U. S.), then released back to England in penultimate form.

*Of more than 4,000,000 immigrants to Brazil from 1887 to 1936, 155,000 were Germans, 1,354,000 Italians, 1,148,000 Portuguese, 577,000 Spaniards, 177,000 Japanese, 107,000 Russians, 83,000 Austrians.

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