LaGuardia's Job

Even the Manhattan newspapers admitted that Mayor LaGuardia had never been in better form. There were 675,000 people in Central Park (some estimates were 750,000) in a patriotic rally to celebrate "I Am An American Day" and the Mayor, facing the biggest crowd in Manhattan's history, let himself go. He led the bands, introduced the speakers, exchanged ancient jokes with Eddie Cantor, and wound up with a message to dictators : "I tell them not to depend on the fifth column in this country because there is only one column here. That is the American column." He overshadowed Harold Ickes, bubbled and sizzled like a drop of water in a hot frying pan, and left Manhattan with the astonished realization that it had produced at a patriotic rally an audience almost as big as the population of Munich.

The next day the Mayor hurried to Washington for a conference with the President. For weeks Fiorello LaGuardia has been turning down appeals to head the civilian defense organization of the U.S. He has been holding out for a job with Cabinet status. Last week, the day after Manhattan's sensational rally, he gave in. But when asked if he would keep on being Mayor he ducked by saying that it was up to the voters. Already co-chairman of the joint Canadian-U.S. defense board, he will divide his time between New York City and Washington.

As projected by Braintruster Wayne Coy, the civilian defense organization will have three big objectives: 1) to translate defense needs to States and towns; 2) to co-ordinate civilian effort; 3) to boost national morale. Even before the Mayor took the job, the Office for Emergency Management had blueprinted a set-up for volunteer air-raid spotters, to be functioning by June 15, calling for observation posts on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, with some 16 volunteer spotters for each post. Volunteer groups all over the U.S. -- especially women's clubs and American Legion posts -- have long been active on their own hook. But nothing so far undertaken suggests the scope of Administration plans, which call for the protection of water systems and public utilities, fire extinguishing, treatment of fire hazards, training to insure the continued operation of utilities and transportation, until hundreds of thousands -- and perhaps millions -- of men, women and children are taking part.

Washington made no bones about the biggest effect it wanted to achieve: to make the war real and immediate to ordinary U.S. citizens. It was generally agreed that the Mayor's new job could be about whatever he wanted to make it. There was every likelihood that bustling Fiorello was determined to make it big.

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