Smiling Sphinx

Off the train popped Joe Kennedy, face red as ever, to race through the echoing grand concourse of Washington's Union Station. His Mayfair chums would have been horrified, for it was breakfast time and spectacled Mr. Kennedy was still wearing last night's evening clothes.

Unimportant to Joe Kennedy was his garb: Important was the bulging briefcase he clutched in one freckled hand -- the fruit of a year's diplomatic ferreting in London's Whitehall by the U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. After a quick change Mr. Kennedy zipped to the White House. It was before 10 a. m., when Franklin Roosevelt goes to the Executive Office. Bobbing in his blue uniform, 68-year-old Negro Butler Charles Green grinned a welcome, threw open both White House doors to grinning Mr. Kennedy.

Out of Joe Kennedy's overstuffed briefcase came for Mr. Roosevelt's inspection stacks of reports "too confidential for the cables." In them, some said, was a basis for a U. S. move toward international peace. Stuff & guff, said others; in the Kennedy dossiers was proof there will be no international peace soon.* Only sure fact was that Mr. Kennedy likes to spend December in Florida.

Pessimistic was Diplomat Kennedy: ". . . Continuation of the war will be catastrophic for the political, social and economic life of the peoples of the world." Prophetic was Politician Kennedy: "The problems that are going to affect the people of the United States ... are already so great and becoming greater by the war that they should be handled by a man it won't take two years to educate. . . .

"President Roosevelt's policy is to keep us out of war, and war . . . would bring to this country chaos beyond anybody's dream. This . . . overshadows any possible objection to a third term."

The Franklin Roosevelt Joe Kennedy saw last week was not the fractious, irritated, harried man who sat at the same cluttered desk last summer. A remarkable change has come over the President: once again he is relaxed, confident, charming. Gone is his captious attitude to the U. S. press. Old Mark Sullivan, dean of Washington columnists, noted the change a month ago, hopefully analyzed the President's bubbly jocularity as a signal he has decided not to run again.

On the other hand :

> Franklin Roosevelt had a long talk with Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas few days back. Its gist, as freely reported in inner circles: That the President solemnly told Mr. Douglas that he was the Crown Prince & Heir Apparent to the New Deal but that his election in 1940 is an impracticable dream.*

> Many times in recent weeks, in talking to callers, the President has listed all 1940 Democratic aspirants, then damned them all with faint praise. For example: To many a caller Franklin Roosevelt has indicated that Cordell Hull is completely acceptable to him as the best 1940 compromise. But he also expressed fears that Mr. Hull is too old, and too much of a worrier.

> The mutual dislike between Mr. Roosevelt and Vice President Garner has now reached the point where each hates the other's guts. Said Mr. Roosevelt last week to one visitor: "Old John is the best candidate the Republicans have."

>At session-end of the last Congress, leaders in both parties pledged to stay in Washington to counsel with the President. To all but one Mr. Roosevelt said in effect: Go on home if you want. Airplanes are always handy. But to Charles Linza McNary of Salem, Ore., Republican leader in the Senate, Franklin Roosevelt said: Stay here. Since then wise, weary Charlie McNary has constantly counseled with the President, breakfasts at the White House sometimes thrice a week, always entering from the Treasury side to dodge reporters. To the President Charles McNary has given many pieces of his mind, but only one piece has leaked out. Over the scrambled eggs one day Mr. Roosevelt grumbled about the pressure on him to say what he will do next convention time. Said Mr. McNary: "This is your baby, Mr. President. Tell 'em to go to hell."

> The President has many times announced a slight turn to the right (breathing spell, etc.), has always turned again to the left. Now, say the Washington wiseacres, he means really to do a right turn--proves it daily with deeds instead of words. Their evidence: Constantly Mr. Roosevelt appeases the Democratic conservatives, consistently he calls to heel the business-baiting Janizariat. To keep party harmony, he plans no reform legislation at Session III of the 76th Congress, will actively support none. He has dumped taxes in the Congressional lap; almost daily pinches budget appropriations for New Deal agencies, slashes down works, relief, spending ideas. His hope: a short, sweet session that will end in a burst of party harmony.

To that end, all stops are out on the appeasement pipe-organ, and Chief Organist Stephen T. Early has orders to stomp on the bass. Time was when Virginia's old fireball, Carter Glass, would as soon enter the White House as a poolroom; likewise, Utah's William H. (I'm Against It) King, and many another. Now these conservatives are smiled on, their counsel taken, their birthdays and patronage remembered.

And privately from ths White House last week went this warning to Mr. Garner's hopeful wrecking-crew: Franklin Roosevelt will either make the next President or be the next President.

Last week the President:

> Greeted informally coffee-colored, short Stenio Vincent, President of Haiti, in Washington to get credits for works projects. French-speaking President Vincent, now serving a second five-year term,* was referred to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, who gave a stag dinner in his honor at Welles's Oxon Hill, Md. mansion. Mr. Vincent did not get to see Secretary Hull, nor was he officially welcomed with pomp and display. Said one Washington official: "Well, you can't get those five tanks out every day."

> Authorized Federal Loan Administrator Jesse H. Jones to open a $10,000,000 credit for Finland through the Export-Import Bank and RFC. With this first material U. S. aid, the Finns may buy "agricultural surpluses and other civilian supplies."

> Asked Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. to place the Finnish "War-debt" payment of $234,000 in a "suspense account" until Congress could be asked to formulate a plan of Finnish debt relief.

>Decided flatly (but privately) not to recall from Russia U. S. Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt, but left the matter on a 24-hour basis. Franklin Roosevelt firmly believes that in his foreign policy he has made but one bad blunder: withdrawal one year ago of U. S. Ambassador to Germany Hugh Wilson. Mr. Roosevelt regards Ambassadors as reporters, doesn't like the second-hand reports now coming out of Berlin to the U. S. via London and Paris. The Kremlin, he well knows, would not care a fingersnap if Mr. Steinhardt were recalled, and then the U. S. S. R. would indeed be an insoluble mystery.

> Approved a note sent by Secretary Hull to London, asking the British Government not to apply to U. S. ships and goods the British blockade program. The document, purely a matter of form, will halt no British seizures, but aids establishment of a base for later damage-delay claims.

*For a corroborating view, see p. 53. *Janizariat version of this stops before the word "but." *Mr. Vincent may run for a third term, but it will be over the dead body of Colonel Demosthenes Petrus Calixte, former commandant of the Garde d'Haiti, now exiled to New York City's Harlem, where he is awaiting a turnover in Haiti.

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