The Hoover Week

P: Two years ago Rumrunner James Horace Alderman killed two coast guardsmen in Florida. Last week President HooVer was asked to commute Alderman's death sentence to life imprisonment. This he declined to do.

P: The White House is the springboard to head lines--Washington Axiom. President Hoover last week set about uprooting the conditions which made this saying, known to every wide-awake capital press agent, lobbyist and promoter, unpleasantly true. For months the President has been annoyed at the old and accepted practice of self-important little men entering the White House, saying "How-do-you-do" to the President, coming out to the newsgatherers in the lobby to talk of their "mission." What is said is generally of small importance; it would get scant press attention anywhere else. But because the publicity-seeker stands at the White House and begins, "I outlined to the President my plan for--," his selfish words are broadcast as if with the President's consent.

The President made these changes: 1) Such callers will be sidetracked to the "proper department" without seeing the President; 2) those who get in by mistake will be ushered out a back door to the South Grounds, will be kept away from lobby newsmen; 3) letters addressed to the President and given to the press in advance of their receipt at the White House, will never reach the President, will never get a presidential reply.

P: Rain fell upon President Hoover on his weekend outing at the Shenandoah National Park camp. Indoors he talked tariff with Senator Reed Smoot, congestion in U. S. prisons with Attorney General William DeWitt Mitchell He amused himself by cooking ham and eggs over a coal range, while Filipino chefs stood about as assistants.

P: To National Commander Paul Vories McNutt of the American Legion, which had protested President Hoover's suspension of cruiser construction, the President last week wrote: ". . . This is a forward step of the first importance. ... It is far better to at least try to establish [parity] by agreement before we resign ourselves to establish it by rival construction programs. ... I fear you have been misinformed as to the actual problems that lie before us, for they are far more intricate and difficult than can be solved by the simple formula which you suggest "

P: Last week the Public Health service opened a special drive on rats in Washington. Despite his objection to drives in general, President Hoover did not object because two of the animals had recently frisked on the lawn back of his office.