Planning Ahead

Within three or four weeks Franklin Roosevelt may be in London.

The President gave a hint of this last week at his press conference. A correspondent, remembering Mr. Roosevelt's plan to confer with Winston Churchill "about" every three months, asked if he hoped to see the Prime Minister soon. Oh yes, the President replied, he hoped to, either in summer--or autumn--or late spring. "What about winter?" the correspondent asked. Fianklin Roosevelt replied that he did not like the North lantic in winter.

The New York Times's Turner Catledge seized on the President's remark about "late spring," wrote a hot-&-heavy story that this was prime evidence that Franklin Roosevelt hoped still to be in the White House in the spring of 1945. No other correspondent went out on this limb. Most took it as a tip that another Roosevelt-Churchill meeting is on soon.

Reasons: the number of diplomatic decisions to be made are piling up; and the Republican convention meets in Chicago on June 26. In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt announced the appointment of Republicans Stimson and Knox on the very eve of the G.O.P. convention, successfully stealing the headlines. On convention eve, 1944, dopesters guessed, he may be making headlines on the white cliffs of Dover.

Last week the President also:

P:Found a new name for the war. Discarding his unsuccessful earlier name, War of Survival (coined in April 1942), he said the invasion should now be known as The Liberation. For the new phrase he gave full credit to the Washington Post, which had suggested it in an editorial. The Post, in turn, gave credit to Southern Historian Douglas Southall Freeman.

P:Called a world monetary conference for July 1 at swank Bretton Woods, in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Invited: all of the United Nations except Bolivia.

P:Spent a morning at the Navy's skyscraper hospital at Bethesda, Md., for a physical checkup.

P:Remained publicly mum about a one-day flare-up in Congress over whether or not the U.S. had given a U.S. cruiser to the Russians. The question was angrily raised by New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges. No one seemed to care about the cruiser; but everyone agreed they wanted more information from the White House.

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