Axis Fever

Franklin Roosevelt was not immune to the fever blowing across the world from Singapore. War nerves set the President to snapping irritably at Congress, at the people, at inquisitive newsmen.

P:In a mood of biting irony, President Roosevelt made sport of Congress for voting itself a porkish pension plan (see p. 16). Said he: If I chose to pay a few dollars a year until I leave the White House, I could retire on a modest pension of $37,500 a year for the rest of my life.* Literal minds promptly raised a howl. Next day, White House Secretary Steve Early had to explain the President's humor: The Boss, he said, had been speaking "facetiously," had no idea at all of asking for a pension. (Or, mumbled some newsmen, of retiring, either.)

P:Asked what he thought of stories in the press deploring the smugness of the U.S. people (TIME, Feb. 16), the President said promptly: I agree. But he was optimistic, as usual, said the U.S. is growing more realistic about the war day by day.

P:To Chairman Joseph J. Mansfield of the House Rivers & Harbors Committee, Franklin Roosevelt sent a stern reminder that he had not yet gotten action on his long-cherished St. Lawrence Seaway. The Seaway is now a $277,000,000 item in a $990,000,000 catch-all pork-barrel bill. Its prospects are not good. The bill is buried deep down in the House calendar, with a conservative Rules Committee sitting on its chest. If it ever staggers up, bitter, bespectacled Representative Alfred Beiter of Buffalo, N.Y. (who sees his home town as a deserted village if the bill is passed) says he has 256 votes pledged against it.

P:In a page 1 editorial, the Washington Post took President Roosevelt hotly to task for criticizing the people's complacency while his Government goes on piling up useless jobs and bureaus. Said the Post: "If there is any one industry in this country which needs conversion to a wartime basis it is our Government." The President answered: It would help if the "bright boys" who talk of Government economy would specify what activities they would like to see reduced. Economy was up to the people and their representatives, said Franklin Roosevelt. Then he quietly ordered all agencies to divert surplus manpower to war work.

P:To a suggestion that Admiral Tommy Hart, relieved last week of his command, had been made the victim of an "unfortunate deal," President Roosevelt gave an impatient answer. Said he: That is typical. (Typical, he meant, of the ugly hints and rumors of the day.) The Asiatic Fleet is still a unit, said the President, and Tommy Hart is still its Commander in Chief, though he is on his way home. To Navy men, this Alice-in-Wonderland situation made little sense--unless the President has other plans for Tommy Hart (see p. 23).

P:Asked for comment on the scornful words allegedly uttered by Ontario's Premier Mitchell Hepburn ("The proud United States Fleet is in hiding . . ."), President Roosevelt took refuge in a morose silence. Any comment, he said, would have to come from Ottawa.

But this week, on the day Singapore fell, Franklin Roosevelt did answer the fears of Canadians who share the U.S. people's frustration. It was a soft answer. In a broadcast to Canada, the President praised the Dominion's war effort, called what Canadians have done "the achievements of a great nation." Said the President: "There is peril ahead for us all, and sorrow for many. But our cause is right."

* The Presidential arithmetic was worse than usual. Actually, to retire with a pension of $37,500 a year, the President would have to serve another 26 years (well into Term IX) and pay $131,250 into the pension fund.

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