"Shock & Surprise"

The President had been working on his budget message and his address on the State of the Union until 1:30 the night before, but as he sat at his desk after luncheon he gave no hint of fatigue. The telephone rang, and when he lifted the instrument he could hear the soft Arkansas drawl of Senate Democratic Leader Robinson.

"I have a great shock and surprise for you," said Senator Robinson with mock gravity. "Restrain yourself. Congress is organized and ready to receive any communication you desire to make."

President Roosevelt boomed out a big laugh, hoisted himself out of his chair. Thus omitted was the formal top-hatted delegation which a more conventional Administration would have expected Congress to have sent down Pennsylvania Avenue to say the same thing that Leader Robinson had made a joke of. His children, grandchildren, wife and friends following in four cars behind, the President rode hatless to the Capitol. His secretaries clucked their tongues at the wreaths of mist which hung about their bareheaded chief as he swung up a ramp to the House wing. On the arm of his son James he passed into the well of the House and after a round of applause and a volley of cheers, began to deliver his message to the first and only regular session of the 73rd Congress.

P: That night the President did what no President had done within the memory of the oldest White House attache. He called some 35 Washington correspondents to his study. Like a football coach going through skull practice with the squad, he read the budget message he was to send to Congress next day. Then he answered the questions of his digit-dazed friends. The reward of the President's patience was a uniform and intelligent presentation to the public through the Press of his two-year $17,000,000,000 budgets.

P: Day after his budget message, President Roosevelt was host at luncheon to silvery-whiskered Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, Democratic whip. How soon, asked the President, could Congressional business be attended to? By May 15? Illinois' Lewis thought not before July.

"I must say," Senator Lewis told newshawks after lunch, ''that it appears to me that the President feels that the nation suspects or fears Congress when it begins to do unnecessary talking."

P: Unnecessary Congressional spending was also President Roosevelt's concern. So he called in members of the House Appropriations Committee and subcommittees, who promised they would get right to work passing the necessary bills to provide the required budget billions. Still a little shocked at the budget's size, they heartily agreed that further expenditure would be undesirable.

P: The very day after his budget had gone forth, the President himself prepared for some extra spending. In spite of the fact that he had told Congress that Federal Refinancing of farm and home mortgages had met with "good success," there was evidence of hesitation by some mortgage holders to accept Farm Credit Administration and Home Owners' Loan Corporation bonds for their mortgages. Through FCA and HOLC the Government only guarantees the 4% interest on the bonds. The President planned to ask Congress to carry out a "moral obligation," guarantee the principal of the bonds as well, authorize up to $2,000,000,000 worth of such securities for each agency.

P: Among the 1,000 guests at the President's Supreme Court reception was cherubic old John H. McCooey, Tammany ally and longtime Democratic boss of Brooklyn. If he thought that his invitation was a peace overture from the White House instead of a routine bid due him as Democratic national committeeman, Boss McCooey was mistaken. Since the open break between the Administration and Tammany in the New York mayoral election, the 24 erstwhile Tammany Congressmen have begun taking orders from the White House, not from the Hall. Boss McCooey's complete undoing was forecast last week when Brooklyn's Sheriff Frank J. Quayle announced that he was Brooklyn's boss and Federal patronage dispenser, that he had disposed of 150 Federal jobs in the past few weeks.

"That junket of McCooey's down to the White House was just to make it look as though he still has his finger in the pie," said a Quayle spokesman. "He is positively out."

P: To the Senate President Roosevelt sent nominations of more than 100 men who had already received interim appointments in the Administration. Included were those of Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, three Assistant Secretaries of State, two Ambassadors, two Federal Trade Commissioners, 19 Ministers.

P: A baby left on Franklin Roosevelt's Albany doorstep by Alfred Emanuel Smith, and which he has come to cherish, is the projected hydro-electric power development on the St. Lawrence in New York State. The President prodded the matter along last week by urging the Senate to pass the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Deep Waterway Treaty with Canada, necessary preliminary step before any dam can be built.

P: The President's own limousine rolled up to the White House portico and out stepped the stocky, silk-hatted figure of Alexander Antonovich Troyanovsky, first Soviet Ambassador to the U. S., first diplomat from Russia since Kerensky's representative departed in 1922. With his escort he waited in the Green Room for a moment until the President was ready to receive him in the Blue Room. In excellent English the Ambassador read: . . . The very fact of the cooperation and friendship between two such great and powerful nations as the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics must inevitably be of great historical significance and of direct far-reaching moment in the cause of world peace. . . . On entering my mission here. I shall consider it my highest task to do everything in my power toward the creation of the closest bonds . . . between our two nations." After the Ambassador handed over his credentials, the President read in reply: "A deep love of peace is the common heritage of the people of both our countries. ... It will be your privilege and mine to work together." The two men smiled, shook hands, strolled into the Red Room for a private chat.

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