The Coolidge Week

President Coolidge again had opportunity to appear in his favorite role of defender of the U. S. taxpayer. Premier Poincare of France, unveiling a monument in a minor Alpine spa, had referred briefly to the persistent belief of his Government that France's ability to pay her War debts is inevitably conditioned by Germany's payments of reparations to France. President Coolidge, at his first press conference of the week, made the Poincare speech the leading topic and reiterated his Administration's insistence that there can be no connection between what Germany owes France and what France owes the U. S. France's debt to the U. S. has already been scaled down once, by the Mellon-Berenger debt-funding agreement of 1926. France has not yet ratified that agreement and likes to consider that her U. S. debt is still an open question. The legal life of the debt-funding commission has expired, however, and the Coolidge-Mellon attitude is that the question is closed. "They hired the money, didn't they?" President Coolidge is supposed to have said in 1926. Now he says, and from time to time repeats (in effect): "The U. S. taxpayer should not be asked to pay Germany's reparations.'"

P: Into conclave more secret than mysterious went Calvin Coolidge, his good friend Frank Waterman Stearns, and Nominee Hoover. When Mr. Hoover came out, he said: "I don't know that he [Mr. Coolidge] will make any political speeches, but he will make some public speeches." When Mr. Stearns came out, he said: "No human being, including myself, can tell three minutes ahead of time what he [Mr. Coolidge] is going to do." It was denied at the White House that Calvin Coolidge was planning to make a speech in Massachusetts. Nor had he decided whether to go to Northampton to vote, or to mail his ballot.

P: Wilfred Veno, hockey man, lying in a New Haven, Conn, hospital, nursing injuries received when John Coolidge, driving Governor Trumbull's car, crashed the Veno car (TIME, Oct. 8), said that he had been assured that President Coolidge would "take care of him." He displayed two dozen roses from the President. He said there would be no damage suit.

P: Mrs. Coolidge observed their 23rd wedding anniversary, privately, at the White House.

P:"The discovery of America must always rank among the foremost accomplishments of a single man's genius and purpose against discouragement, ridicule and ignorance. . . . Columbus holds place as one of the few greatest among men. ... It was fitting that a son of Italy& should have been marked by destiny. . . . It is the fortune of our country to have attracted thither an impressive number of the sons and daughters of this land where leadership and lofty talent have so long found noble fruition. . . ."--Calvin Coolidge, by letter, to the Italian Benevolent Society, among whose honorary presidents are Alfred Emanuel Smith and Benito Mussolini. The occasion: a Columbus Day festival in Manhattan.

*There is good evidence for the belief that Columbus was born on the Island of Corsica.