The Coolidge Week

P: "Under the guidance and watchful care of a divine and beneficent Providence this country has been carried safely through another year. Almighty God has continued to bestow upon us the light of His countenance, and we have prospered. Not only have we enjoyed material success, but we have advanced in wisdom and in spiritual understanding. The products of our fields and our factories and of our manifold activities have been maintained on a high level. We have gained in knowledge of the higher values of life. There has been advancement in our physical wellbeing. We have increased our desire for the things that minister to the mind and to the soul. We have raised the mental and moral standards of life.

"We have had the blessings of peace and of honorable and friendly relations with our sister nations throughout the world. Disasters visiting certain of our states have touched the heart of a sympathetic Nation, which has responded generously out of its abundance. In continuing to remember those in affliction we should rejoice in our ability to give them relief.

"Now that these twelve months are drawing to a close, it is fitting that, as a Nation, and as individuals, in accordance with time-honored sacred custom, we should consider the manifold blessings granted to us. While in gratitude we rejoice, we should humbly pray that we may be worthy of a continuation of divine favor. . . ."

Thus and therefore did President Coolidge make his fifth Thanksgiving Day Proclamation. This year it comes Nov. 24.

P: Some one said that manufacturing chemists of the U. S. had addressed President Coolidge on the subject of altering the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. For reasons other than the reasons of industrial chemists, Labor wants this law changed (TIME, Oct. 24). For yet other reasons, oilmen want this law changed. When interviewed, President Coolidge said he recalled no letters from industrial chemists about the anti-trust law, adding that he thought oilmen had the. most legitimate grounds for seeking a change. Petroleum is limited in the U. S. If U. S. oilmen are not permitted to combine and limit production, U. S. oil will soon vanish.

P: "L'Etat, c'est moi,* "beamed Louis XIV of France. Secretary Frank Billings Kellogg might paraphrase: "The State Department, that's me." Last week, in an aftermath conversation about Senator Carter Glass's criticism of the State Department's foreign loan policy (TIME, Oct. 24), in retort to a rumor that the State Department was of divided opinion on the subject, President Coolidge said he had always assumed that the Department of State was the Secretary of State.

P: The President appointed Walter F. Brown of Toledo to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce, succeeding J. Walter Drake of Detroit, who resigned.

P: The President appointed Henry Herrick Bond of Boston to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury,/- succeeding Charles Schweldt Dewey of Ohio, who resigned to become financial adviser to Poland.

P: To President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, at Prague, President Coolidge cabled congratulations on Oct. 28, the 9th anniversary of Czeschoslovakia's independence.

P: To five commissioned and two non-commissioned Army officers,, President Coolidge awarded the Soldiers' Medal, for their rescue work after the Lake Denmark, N. J. arsenal explosion (TIME, July 19, 1926).

P: President Lewis E. Pierson of the Chamber of Commerce of the U. S. called on President Coolidge to present a platform of six broad, rather vague planks: antibureaucracy, anti-paternalism, better postal rates, proper flood control, marked tax reduction, continued Federal "cooperation" with business.

P: Other White House callers included :

Prince Albert de Ligne, new Ambassador from Belgium, to present his credentials.

Vincent Massey, Minister from Canada, to pay respects.

John Van A. MacMurray, U. S. Minister to China, to urge that the U. S. policy of nonintervention be continued.

Isaac J. Curwen, Mayor of Lancaster, England, to be presented.

Louis Wiley, business manager of the New York Times, to pay respects.

Senator Andrieus Aristieus Jones of New Mexico, to introduce a Miss Vonciel Viking who was riding a horse from New York to California.

George D. Pratt, a trustee of Amherst College, to ask the President please to sit for a new portrait of himself to hang at Amherst. President Coolidge consented.

*"The State, it is I" or "I am the State."

/-There are 3 assistant secretaries of the Treasury, to help the Secretary of the Treasury with the supervision of Prohibition, Internal Revenue, the Mint, the Federal Farm Loan Board, Bureau of Public Health Service, the Coast Guard, the General Supply Committee, Construction and repair of Federal buildings, etc., etc.