The Coolidge Week

P: President Coolidge spent the last afternoon of 1927 assembling facts and ideas, and words and phrases to express them, for the Pan-American Congress in Havana, whither the officers and crew of the battleship Texas expect to ferry him from Key West, Fla., next week.

P: When 1927 had but a few minutes to live, some buglers were stationed on the White House roof under a spotlight. Holding their instruments at the ready, they could look down into a pool of illumination which spread out from the mansion across the lawn to the iron fence and sidewalk. In the pool swam thousands of white ovals with dark spots on them--Washingtonian faces waiting to "see" an annual phenomenon. As 1927 expired, the buglers played "Taps," switching into "Reveille" on the stroke of midnight. Then a band played "Your Land and My Land." The crowd sang, cheered, tooted horns, went home. . . . This program had been arranged by Mrs. Coolidge, as was most of another program, when throngs from officialdom, societies and the body public trooped 3,291 strong into the White House for the annual New Year Reception.

P: The bill by Senator Walsh of Montana re-amending the statute of limitations to its pre-War form, providing legal immunity for a conspiracy more than three years old, designed to force reluctant testimony in the Fall-Sinclair oil trials, received the President's signature.

P: "MEXICAN VICE RESORTS APPEAL TO COOLIDGE TO STOP RINGING CURFEW AND KEEP OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT." So headlined a Scripps-Howard newspaper. The gist of the matter was that Representative Philip David Swing of California had petitioned the State and Treasury Departments to close the California-Mexico border at 6 p.m. daily. Businessmen in Tijuana and other Mexican towns hoped to invoke the spirit of Lindbergh to keep their best customers from being locked out in the evenings. President Coolidge, with many a more vital Mexican matter on his mind (see p. 9), made no statement on "vice resorts" or "curfews."

P: An exchange of letters between Secretary Mellon and Senator Smoot gave people the impression that the Administration's tax policy had altered through force of circumstance. President Coolidge explained that such was not the case (see p. 9).

P: Outclassing all other White House callers of the week in point of ceremony was Halvard Huntfeldt Bachke, Norway's new Minister to the U. S., who came bearing letters of credence.