The Coolidge Week

Crates, barrels and boxes--a vanload of them--accompanied Calvin Coolidge to Northampton, Mass., when he went home to vote. In silk topper and wing collar he personally superintended the unloading and disposition of his goods at his house on Massasoit street. It was the visible beginning of the end of his residence at the White House and seemed to indicate where the Coolidges will reside after March 4th. The goods were souvenirs of the past eight years--books, objets d' art, bric-`a-brac from all over the world. A favorite article is a chair given by a Hungarian society with heads of Washington and Kossuth carved on the posts.

> President Coolidge had written to British Ambassador Houghton: "I need not tell you how much I shall feel the loss of your services" (TIME, Nov. 12). But that it seemed did not mean that the President accepted the Ambassador's resignation. He was merely acknowledging its receipt. Last week, having failed of election to the Senate from New York and conferred with the President at the White House, Ambassador Houghton announced that he was returning to the Court of St. James's.

> A resignation which President Coolidge did accept was that of Owen J. Roberts, Philadelphia lawyer, as special U. S. counsel in the oil scandals. Lawyer Roberts' business was suffering because the Congressional resolution under which he was appointed forbade him to serve any client whose case had to be taken up with any branch of the government. President Coolidge sympathized and said: "I want to express my gratitude to you on behalf of the government for the fidelity and energy with which you have prosecuted these cases." Actions still pending against Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair and Albert Bacon Fall were to be single-handled by Lawyer Roberts' special colleague lawyer, Atlee Pomerene of Cleveland.

Learned Lawyer Roscoe Pound, dean of Harvard's law school, pounded the administration heavily last week in a speech in Manhattan on its selection of Lawyers Roberts and Pomerene to conduct some of the cases against Fall and Sinclair. The Pound point was that while the Messrs. Roberts and Pomerene are able enough as chancery lawyers and did well in the civil suits against Sinclair, they are no great shakes as criminal lawyers. From the criminal charges against them Sinclair and Fall have after long delays and many a slip comfortably escaped so far. Said Dean Pound: "Did Sinclair keep the same lawyers in the criminal case that he had employed in the chancery proceedings? He has not. He hired the best criminal lawyers he could find. Chancery or civil practice is very widely different from criminal practice. To put two civil lawyers up against a corps of criminal experts spelled defeat for the government from the first, for criminal prosecution is in itself a fine art that can be developed only by long practice."

> The White House social season began 30 days earlier than usual. Vice President and Mrs. Dawes, the Cabinet et ux, Budget Director and Mrs. Lord and minor notables enough to require 50 covers dined in the State Dining Room amid chrysanthemums, maidenhair fern and strains from the Marine Orchestra. Afterwards there was a musicale in the East Room. The program included Dvorak, Chopin, Massenet, Liszt and Moussorgsky's "Song of the Flea." White House musicales have been arranged since the Taft administration by Henry Jonge, famed Lotos Club impresario. Mr. Jonge's company (Steinway) donated the official White House piano, gilt with 48 state seals, upon which musical instrument Mrs. Coolidge is supposed to have gazed longingly one day years ago before she became First Lady.

> On Armistice Day President Coolidge went with Secretaries Davis of War and Wilbur of the Navy and stood silently with his top hat over his heart at the grave of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. After nightfall he mounted the rostrum of the Washington Auditorium and as chief national spokesman thanked all who had helped in the War, dead and living. To the world at large, especially England, France and Germany, he said: ". . . Our resources delivered Europe from starvation and ruin. . . .

"It is sometimes represented that this country made a profit out of the War. Nothing could be further from the truth. . . .

"With what has been paid out and what is already apparent it is probable that our final cost will run well toward 100 billion dollars, or half the entire wealth of the country when we entered the conflict. . . .

"While our own losses were thus very large, the losses of others required a somewhat greater proportionate outlay but they are to be reduced by territorial acquisitions and by reparations.

"While we shall receive some further credits on the accounts I have stated as our costs, our outlay will be much greater than that of any other country. Whatever may be thought or said of us, we know and every informed person should know that we reaped no selfish benefit from the War. No citizen of the United States needs to make any apology to anybody anywhere for not having done our duty in defense of the cause of world liberty. . . ."

He then flayed England and France for not acceding to the U. S. view of navy reduction and reasserted this country's right and intention to build cruisers for defense. He said: "To be ready for defense is not to be guilty of aggression "

He also loosed a broadside against Europe's debt reduction talk:

"We have heard an impressive amount of discussion concerning our duty to Europe. Our own people have supplied considerable quantities of it. ... They are not all on one side, however. They are mutual. We have sometimes been reproached for lecturing Europe, but probably ours are not the only people who sometimes engage in gratuitous criticism and advice. We have also been charged with pursuing a policy of isolation. We are not the only people either who desire to give their attention to their own affairs.

"We . . . lent large sums to the governments and corporations in other countries to aid in their financial rehabilitation. . . . The needs of our own people require that any further advances by us must have most careful consideration.

". . . If we could secure a more complete reciprocity in good will the final liquidation of the balance of our foreign debts and such further limitation of armaments as would be commensurate with the treaty renouncing war, our confidence in the effectiveness of any additional efforts on our part to assist in the further progress of Europe would be greatly increased."