"It Shall Come to Pass"

The big man in the rumpled suit scratched his pen steadily across the large white sheets. In the stillness of the Oval Room the two flags hung limp on the mahogany standards; blue smoke from his burning cigaret wavered up from the silver tray. On his desk were newspapers, staring headlines of bombings and battles; and a Bible, open at Isaiah.

"Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it. . . ."

The big man wrote on. Through the ceiling-high window, framing the long roll of grass, tired-green now with winter, came the faint honks of the cabs, rolling shoppers home with Christmas packages. Thousands of miles away, helmeted men squinted through bombsights; homeless families trudged despairingly through the snow.

"Come now, and let its reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. . . ."

The big man's face, rocklike when he is intent, the mouth sad and downbitten when he isn't smiling, bent steadily over the pages scrawled in his bold vertical hand.

Then he pressed a buzzer--the one that goes off like a small bomb under Steve Early's desk. Down the colonnade that is called the President's Walk, past the swimming pool and up the elevator, there awaited him a highball, a Christmas tree shiny with colored balls and tinsel, two soap-smelling, be-diapered grandsons--warmth and relief from the crushing responsibility, the solemn loneliness that is a U. S. President's when he has to make a momentous decision.

To a gaunt, dark-eyed man in a skullcap and ermine-trimmed robe, Franklin Roosevelt had written a letter for Christmas, remembering perhaps how that man's long pale hands had twisted with painful earnestness when they talked together of world peace three years ago.

To Pope Pius XII, Mr. Roosevelt wrote: "I take heart in remembering that in a similar time, Isaiah first prophesied the birth of Christ. Then, several centuries before His coming, the condition of the world was not unlike that which we see today. Then, as now, a conflagration had been set; and nations walked dangerously in the light of the fires they had themselves kindled.

"But in that very moment, a spiritual rebirth was foreseen,--a new day which was to loose the captives and to consume the conquerors in the fire of their own kindling; and those who had taken the sword were to perish by the sword. . . .

"In their hearts men decline to accept for long the law of destruction forced upon them by wielders of brute force. Always they seek, sometimes in silence, to find again the faith without which the welfare of nations and the peace of the world cannot be rebuilt.

"I have the rare privilege of reading the letters and confidences of thousands of humble people, living in scores of different nations. ... I know that these, and uncounted numbers like them in every country, are looking for a guiding light. We remember that the Christmas star was first seen by shepherds in the hills, long before the leaders knew. . . .

"While statesmen are considering a new order of things, the new order may well be at hand. I believe that it is even now being built, silently but inevitably, in the hearts of masses whose voices are not heard, but whose common faith will write the final history of our time. . . .

"In the grief and terror of the hour, these quiet voices, if they can be heard, may yet tell of the rebuilding of the world. . . .

"In these present moments, no spiritual leader, no civil leader can move forward on a specific plan to terminate destruction and build anew. Yet the time for that will surely come. . . .

"When that happy day shall dawn, great problems of practical import will face us all. Millions of people of all races, all nationalities and all religions may seek new lives by migration to other lands or by re-establishment of old homes. Here, too, common ideals call for parallel action. . . ."

With this letter, sent also to the Rev. Dr. George A. Buttrick, president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and Rabbi Cyrus Adler, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Mr. Roosevelt announced a significant appointment.

To the Vatican in Rome, as the President's personal representative to talk and work for peace in Europe before all hell breaks loose this spring, will go Myron Charles Taylor, 65-year-old retired head of United States Steel Corp., most recently chairman of the Evian conference on international refugees.

Mr. Taylor, who will have the rank of Ambassador, but without portfolio, will be the first U. S. envoy to visit the Vatican officially since Rufus King left Rome in 1868, after Congress refused to appropriate any more money for his salary.*

Buffalo-built, his massive head set forward on wrestler's shoulders, Myron Taylor of Quaker stock, will be the first industrialist to match minds with the thoroughly schooled and skillful Catholic diplomats.

But the wise pouches under Mr. Taylor's sad, deepset, clear-green eyes are there by no accident; his stubborn, pugnacious nose, his mailbox-slit mouth, his underslung jaw are all testimonials of the strength and judicial balance of his mind. And good, dead Cardinal William Mundelein of Chicago would be happy to know that the idea he planted with Franklin Roosevelt in 1936--a restoration of relations with the Vatican since it is now a temporal State, not just a religion--has flourished thus solidly in the person of Tycoon Taylor.

> In Rome, the Pope spoke to the resident Cardinals. His mind went back, too, to a conversation three years ago with a big man in Washington, a fond talk of peace on earth when there was still peace on earth. He thanked Franklin Roosevelt for his "gratifying Christmas message," and for sending such an outstanding man to be "the first Ambassador of the provisional Embassy at the Vatican." Damning "evil" Russia, praising "worthwhile" Finland, he asked the world to ponder, on the night when the angels sang, that man has too many instruments of death, too few of mercy and justice. He also said that any further plans for peace would be welcomed at the Vatican.

> On a sunny afternoon off Fort Lauderdale, Fla., war came so close to the U. S. that resort crowds thought it was coming right up on the beach. The flight of the German freighter Arauca from the British cruiser Orion (see p. 22) gave President and State Department a new diplomatic problem.

Typical of Florida's reaction was an experience of Harriet Jane Hughes, vacationing Detroit Times reporter, who was sunbathing on Fort Lauderdale beach when she saw, over the placid blue water, a long black and grey ship pursued by a warship. She watched through binoculars, then jumped in her car, followed the ships along the shore road. Overhead roared two Army bombers, Coast Guard seaplanes, several private planes, planes carrying photographers from Miami newspapers.

Wangling her way past Coast Guardsmen at Port Everglades' pier, where the Arauca presently tied up, she got a translator to ask crew members "What happened?"

"Nozzing happened," replied a crew member.

But Florida opinion differed. Excited papers played up the Arauca captain's story that the Orion had fired a warning shot across the bow of his ship after it got inside the three-mile limit, the conflicting reports of eyewitnesses. Some thought they heard the shot but saw no flash, some placed the Arauca well inside and some well outside the limit, one saw the ship approach so near a reef that it stopped, backed, maneuvered to keep two U. S. vessels between it and the British cruiser. Typical was a Florida headline: SEA INCIDENT AT MIAMI'S FRONT YARD DRAWS GAY HOLIDAY CROWD TO DOCK.

Last week the President:

> Used a pruning hook on departmental Budget estimates, slashing away steadily. NYA was cut from $100,000,000 to $70,000,000; PWA administrative funds from $20,000,000 to $3,000,000; even his beloved CCC from $286,000,000 to $230,000,000. Republicans shouted: "Drop in the bucket!" Franklin Roosevelt was reconciled, gossips said, to at least a $3,000,000,000 deficit in the next fiscal year.

> Accepted, with a "Dear Johnnie" letter, the resignation of orchid-grower John Wesley Hanes of North Carolina, Under Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Hanes, who has declared that U. S. taxpayers can't stand any more taxes, thus joined the long list of New Deal Treasury alumni, but parted with the New Deal on better terms than most of his predecessors. As he wrote his resignation, a mailman left on his desk a post card from the District's Public Library, informing him they now could furnish him with a novel by Ethel Vance he had requested. Name of the book: "Escape."

> Accepted the resignation of Forrest Hill, onetime Cornell University professor who has for 16 months headed the Farm Credit Administration; appointed in his stead Albert Gain Black, AAA market regulator, longtime chum of Henry Wallace. Reason: Mr. Hill wanted to keep the FCA autonomous, responsible only to Congress & the President. Mr. Wallace wanted to lay hands on the FCA's superb financial structure (including a $600,000,000 borrowing authority).

> Continued telling callers (off the record): 1) he does not want a third term, 2) he prefers Secretary of State Cordell Hull as his successor; 3) he will appoint Attorney General Frank Murphy to the Supreme Court; 4) that perhaps Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia of New York city might be a good Vice-Presidential candidate, might catch more votes than Postmaster General James A. Farley would.

> Promised, said John Owens, president of the Ohio C. I. O., that he would send an army of soup kitchens into Ohio, if necessary, to prevent starvation. "More money is being appropriated ... in Ohio for dog pounds than for starving people," Owens said. Governor Bricker retorted: "If soup kitchens are put in Cleveland or elsewhere in Ohio, it will be purely for New Deal political effect." > Mulled a new, modest form of Spending which log-rolling Congressmen could roll to suit themselves. PWA, WPA, and the U. S. Public Health Service jointly would spot small, low-cost hospitals in poor communities, let private physicians take charge after the U. S. had paid the first cost (perhaps $150,000 per 100-bed unit).

* William Howard Taft went to Rome on a specific mission in 1902; but not as a diplomat.

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