Visiting Week

One morning last week Franklin Roosevelt, leaning on the arm of stalwart Naval Aide William Watson, emerged from the front door of the White House, an infallible sign that an international potentate is about to arrive. Cantering up the steps soon came a slender young couple smiling gaily at the beaming President. Premier & Mme Paul van Zeeland of Belgium were honored and delighted to meet Franklin Roosevelt. A few minutes later they were all three motoring together to the waterfront to board the Potomac and cruise down to Mount Vernon.

Diplomatically there was only one reason why Belgium's 43-year-old Premier had called on Franklin Roosevelt: courtesy. He had come to the U. S. to receive an honorary degree from Princeton University where 16 years ago, as a graduate student from Louvain, he studied economics. Certainly he had not come to the U. S. to negotiate a reciprocal trade treaty, for that was all signed, sealed and put into effect two years ago. Still he found enough to talk about with the President under the awning on the deck of the Potomac (except for a brief interval while he and Mme van Zeeland went ashore for a Mount Vernon wreath-laying) to talk all day. enough to keep him up to the small hours of the morning still talking to the President after a state dinner that night. And next morning when Secretary Hull returned from receiving a degree at Yale, lively M. van Zeeland trotted next door to the State Department and spent the entire morning talking there. That done he returned to the White House, said goodby to Host Roosevelt, moved his wife and baggage to the Belgian Embassy, cut short a press conference, attended a state luncheon given by Mr. Hull and went into another conference with the LT. S. Secretary of State.

Just what the Belgian Premier had afoot was a deep diplomatic secret. The only rumor into which Washington got its teeth was that there was a plan in the making to have the U. S. take a direct interest in the Bank for International Settlements and supply some capital that could be used for stabilizing currencies abroad. But whether it was this or some entirely different plan, the mere presence of M. van Zeeland was enough to make news, for it opened the possibility of the U. S. finding some new diplomatic playmates in Europe. The British and French are deeply involved in the intricacies of European politics. A more useful diplomatic connection with Europe may be through the neutral Oslo Group of Scandinavian countries. The

Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg. While President Roosevelt went off to the Jefferson Islands Club for his weekend "charm school'' party (see col. j), the van Zeelands stayed for a round of Washington parties, visited New York and it was announced that Premier van Zeeland would return this week to

Washington for still more conferences before sailing home on the Normandie. Of one thing about the most important diplomatic event of the week Washington could be certain: M. van Zeeland, Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hull were not spending long hours together playing ticktacktoe.

P: Franklin Roosevelt saved out an hour for Author Emil Ludwig who is going to write his biography (TIME, June 28), another for Lady Astor. Emerging afterwards she interviewed herself:

"What I think of the American press would never do to print. . . . I can see your headlines now. 'Lady Astor Slams America.' . . . But don't say 'British Peeress Came Back to Criticize'--because 't aint true. . . . What did I talk to the President about? All sorts of things. I knew him since he was a little boy. I was telling him how remarkable it was for a man so hated to be so free from hate. Don't you think he's hated? You haven't been where I've been since I came over on this trip."

>> The Jefferson Islands club, in Chesapeake Bay a few miles from Annapolis, is a onetime bootleggers' hideout which 90 wealthy men like Breckinridge Long, Winthrop W. Aldrich, Herbert Fleishhacker, Owen D. Young, August A. Busch Jr., Floyd B. Odium and Franklin Roosevelt remodeled as a bachelor club for shooting, fishing, escape from heat. Any club member can take the place over to give a party, giving advance notice so that members not invited will not be inconvenienced. At the three-day party staged by Member Roosevelt last week, Members Odium, Busch, Young, etc. were not present, for the gathering had but one object: to make all the Democrats in Congress, many of whom have been growing restive, feel once more that they and the President were all boys together in the Democratic party.

Most Senators and Representatives critical of the President's Supreme Curt Plan and labor policies attended, for not to attend, barring a good excuse, was tantamount to a break with the New Deal. Among absentees were Senators Glass, George, Burke, Gerry, Sheppard, Copeland, King, Donahey, Holt, Bilbo.

Mr. Roosevelt settled down in an arm chair under a big locust tree with a white-washed trunk, and each morning as four retired submarine chasers brought a flock of Congressmen to the island, he presided over something resembling an old-fashioned political picnic. Republican Senator McNary, not invited, sarcastically described the performance as a "weekend charm school." During the evenings which the President spent on the island with six members of his Cabinet and several Democratic leaders of Congress, some serious politics may have been talked but during the day he was surrounded by shirt-sleeved Congressmen eating off long tables on the lawn, drinking beer and confabbing between bouts of skeet shooting, swimming in the nude and other innocent occupations. The air was one of slightly stilted jollification for some of the divisions in the party were already too deep to be healed by such simple means, but the President guffawed at the Negro stories of bumbling Senator "Cotton Ed" Smith of South Carolina, heartily first-named hundreds of Congressmen. Representative Martin Dies of Texas inducted the President into the Demagogues Club, asking him to promise: to favor all appropriation bills and oppose all taxation bills; not to harm his chances for a third term; never to be consistent even though sorely tempted to be so; not to submit controversial legislation to Congress. Applause and laughter drowned out most of the President's answers.

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