"Save My Files!"

The Presidency was moved 200 ft. westward last week when President Hoover officially crossed West Executive Avenue. Flanked by Secretaries George Akerson and Walter Newton, the President marched up the steep outside steps of the State, War & Navy building, climbed the sharply curving inside stairway to the third floor, entered the ornate office of General John Joseph Pershing, Chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission. There he was officially greeted by his Secretaries of State and of War who work in the same building. Clerks peeped in at him, buzzed with excitement at having "the Chief" under their roof.

The President sat down at the Pershing desk, went to work. Above him was a starry blue ceiling. Statues of Grant and Sherman peered over his shoulder. War relics lined the paneled walls. From his east window the President could see across the street the reason for his move: the charred ruins of his own executive offices within the White House grounds.

On Christmas Eve the President and Mrs. Hoover were giving a party to the children of his Secretariat. Dessert was just being served when Secretary Lawrence Richey whispered something in the President's ear. Quickly the President arose, put an overcoat on over his dinner jacket, hurried out of doors to see flame-shot clouds of smoke billowing from his office building, 200 ft. from the White House proper.

Fire apparatus clanged into the White House grounds. Into the burning building dashed Secretaries Akerson and Richey and the President's son, Allan, to salvage the President's papers. President Hoover rubbed his hands, stroked his hair nervously, called to the firefighters: "Save my files!" He saw the drawers of his desk lugged out safely. It was very cold. Water froze on the hose lines, smeared the furnace-like structure with tentacles of ice. Without rubbers, the President's feet got wet and cold. At the height of the conflagration he remembered his little guests in the White House, returned to bid them a ceremonious goodnight. For three hours the fire burned, gutting the building, ruining its contents with water and smoke.

Damage: $75.000. Cause: Secretary Newton insisted it was a short circuit. Washington fire chiefs blamed a faulty flue in the chimney from Secretary Newton's office. A fire had been burning on his hearth barely an hour before while he was dressing there for the White House party. The half-story garret above was a fire-nest where flames fed greedily on bundled papers in storage.

Next day President Hoover inspected his wrecked office, chopped to ruins by firemen seeking flames within partitions. Promptly he ordered the building reconstructed, moved his office for two days into the Lincoln study on the second floor of the White House where for the first time in a generation a Cabinet meeting was held. For the 60 days required for repairs, the President will work in General Pershing's headquarters.

P:President Hoover last week accepted the resignation of Jacob Gould Schurman, Ambassador to Germany. Berlin was asked if Republican Senator Frederic Moseley Sackett of Kentucky would be persona grata in his place. Senator Sackett worked with Herbert Hoover in the food administration. President Hoover has been hard pressed of late by Kentucky's complaints of patronage starvation.

P:From the White House last week was carried a huge wreath of white carnations to the Cathedral of St. Peter & St. Paul on Mt. St. Alban, there to be placed before the grillwork of a famed tomb in Bethlehem Chapel. President Hoover had remembered that the day was the seventy-third anniversary of the birth of Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

P:With an escort of soldiery, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, President-Elect of Mexico, called formally upon President Hoover at the White House. A few minutes later the President made his way to the Mexican Embassy, returned the call, broke a nation-old precedent that the President of the U. S. repays the visits only of heads of states. On his South American trip last year as President-Elect, Mr. Hoover had himself been accorded all the honors of a head of state, had himself used the formula "Great & Good Friend," the greeting of official rulers only, when addressing Latin-American Presidents. In his own Capital he could accord a President-Elect no smaller courtesy.

P:Tatler & American Sketch (New York gossip monthly) reported that Mrs. Anne Morrow Lindbergh had sent to her Smith College classmates the following verse, written by her while a guest at the President's camp on the Rapidan River: You girls have always called me slow, Now beat this if you can-- When a Great Man named his mountain camp, He called it Rapid Anne!

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