Better Natured

Henry Wallace, 51, Secretary of Agriculture, author of Corn and Corn Growing, onetime editor of Wallace's Farmer, has a reputation as the dreamer of the Roosevelt Administration. He is, says Arthur Krock, "a high-minded, thoughtful man, a progressive, one of the best writers in the New Deal, compassionate and intelligent." But, adds Mr. Krock--like many an observer before him--the Secretary has no sense of timing. When the slaughtered pigs are better forgotten, according to all New Deal strategists, he delivers a carefully phrased explanation of the policy that led to their slaughtering; addressing restive, hard-boiled New York publishers at their Book Fair, he delivers a long baccalaureate sermon on the history and joy of literature. Too highly political to serve as a model for Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, there is nevertheless a touch of Mr. Smith about Mr. Wallace; in fact, says Mr. Krock, "He is one of those men whom reporters can induce to talk when they shouldn't about things they shouldn't discuss."

Last week Secretary Wallace did it again. In Berkeley, Calif., preparing to dedicate a new Department of Agriculture laboratory, to attend the Western Conference on Governmental Problems and other Bay district events, he broke the truce on partisan politics for which President Roosevelt asked when war broke out in Europe (TIME, Sept. 11). It was eight in the morning, and the reporters were sleepy. Whether or not they exercised their fatal fascination, the Secretary soon found himself saying: "The war situation obviously makes it clear that the President's talents and training are necessary to steer the country, domestically and in its foreign relationships, to safe harbor." Third term, again.

In Washington burst out quick pruts of irritation from Senators Minton, Thomas, Vandenberg, Burke, Nye and Adams, as well as several Congressmen. Steve Early, White House secretary, came out of the President's study next day and remarked to reporters with studied severity: "It would have been kind and polite of the speaker to have consulted the victim before he spoke." This satisfied nobody, but it served to remind a U. S. absorbed by the War that a Presidential election was only 377 days away, and that the third term was an issue.

More explosively a reminder this week was a sudden blast against a Roosevelt third term from, of all people, John L. Lewis, chairman of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. At the same time Lewis indicated his personal 1940 choice would be Montana's Senator Burton Kendall Wheeler. To many this seemed a political "kiss of death" for Mr. Wheeler.

More jovial was the response to Mr. Wallace. Scripps-Howard Cartoonist Tal-burt summed it up by picturing a beaming figure called Third Term perched on a stairway, to the consternation of Conservative Democrats below, and quoting New York University Professor Mearns's jingle about the little man who wasn't there: "He wasn't there again today: Oh, how I wish he'd go away." Ordinarily irritated at reporters' prodding about the third term, generally inviting them to go stand in the corner, put on the dunce cap, or merely rewarding them with a testy glance if they so much as asked about it, President Roosevelt last week was jovial too. A reporter popped up with another jingle:

"He's riding high and he's riding straight

He's heading right for the White House gate."

There was no doubt about the riding, said the reporter; question was, was he coming or going? The President just laughed.

Last week President Roosevelt also: > Discussed the refugee problem with Refugee Experts Myron Taylor, Paul van Zeeland, former Belgian Premier, reportedly urged surveys based on the possibility that 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 persons may be deprived of homes and countries by the war. > Sent a warm message to Turkey's President Ismet Inoenue on modern Turkey's 16th anniversary celebration. > Rapped the work of the Foreign Bondholders Protective Council, Inc., in its attempt to adjust Latin-American defaulted bonds held by U. S. investors, refused to comment on whether or not he favored scaling down the $1,000,000,000 Latin-American debts. Reason: the inter-American economic conference next month. > Tut-tutted flesh-creepers in a radio speech on the New York Herald Tribune Forum. Said he: "In and out of Congress we have heard orators and commentators and others beating their breasts and proclaiming against sending the boys of American mothers to fight on the battlefields of Europe. That I do not hesitate to label as one of the worst fakes in current history. . . . The simple truth is that no person in any responsible place in the National Administration ... or in any State Government, or in any city government, or in any county government, has ever suggested in any shape, manner or form the remotest possibility of sending the boys of American mothers to fight on the battlefields of Europe."

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