Full Week

Returning refreshed from Hyde Park, and no longer skittish about saying that he had been there (see PRESS), Franklin Roosevelt plunged into a full week.

First he set out resolutely to repair some of the damage done to U.S.-French relations. Greeting a group of visiting French correspondents after his press conference, he spoke a few words of Rooseveltian French to them, then told them (in Rooseveltian English) how sorry he was he had not got to France on his way home from Yalta. In glowing terms, he recalled the days of his youth, when he had bicycled through the French countryside.

As the correspondents beamed, Franklin Roosevelt told them they should pay no attention to all those stories of friction between himself and General de Gaulle. After all, said the President, they were great friends. They had had a good time together in Washington last July, and it was only a matter of schedule that he had not got to France last month. The differences between himself and the General, the President added with a gesture, were no bigger than a fingernail.

The President also:

P: Had a visit from Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, gave him a full fill-in on Yalta (see CANADA AT WAR).

P: Greeted a dozen of the lean young U.S. Army Rangers who carried out the liberation at Cabanatuan.

P: Pinned yet another Gold Star, in lieu of a third D.S.M., on famed Admiral "Bull" Halsey.

P: Took part in various conferences concerning the forthcoming Pacific command.

P: And, never too busy to politick, conferred with Democratic National Chairman Bob Hannegan and New York State Chairman Paul Fitzpatrick on the 1946 New York gubernatorial election, still 19 months away. The conversation apparently was heady. Emerging from the White House, Chairman Fitzpatrick made a bold prediction: if Tom Dewey runs for reelection in 1946, he will be defeated.

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