Fun with Flies

Franklin Roosevelt tossed his head and laughed. He was off again for fun, and at a good clip. Over the Pennsylvania's newly (PWA) electrified tracks he made the old five-hour trip from Washington to Manhattan in 3 hours and 53 minutes. Before dinner time that night he descended from his train at Beacon, Mass, and motored into Cambridge.

As his car drew up at the door of No. 2 Holyoke Place, Secret Service men leaped to surround him, then looked foolish. In a nearby dormitory one of Harvard's bright young men had set off a firecracker in honor of the President's arrival. In marched Franklin Roosevelt to dine in Harvard's Fly Club.

Only the Flies know what happened there. Last time Franklin Roosevelt attended a dinner of the Fly Club (Harvardese for Alpha Delta Phi of which it was once a chapter*) was in 1929 when as Governor of New York, celebrating his 25th Harvard reunion, he sat down and pounded the piano for his fellow Flies and allowed them to kid him about that great political flop, the Democratic Party. Last week he was there not to be kidded, but to celebrate, to witness the initiation of Son Franklin Jr. into the club.

Just for dinner and the horseplay of the initiation did the President stay. Then, accompanied by his initiate son, he entrained for Hyde Park and the bosom of his fun-loving family: mother, wife and daughter. Next day he initiated his new son-in-law, John Boettiger in Roosevelt pastimes. In a bright red sleigh with Daughter Anna by his side and Son-in-law John in a single seat behind, President Roosevelt drove for several miles over the snow-packed roads of the Roosevelt estate, to tea at the cottage near the Val-Kill furniture factory.

P: From Detroit the President received a 12,000-word prepaid telegram of advice, an event sufficiently unusual to be thought worth investigating. In Detroit two Secret Service men questioned the sender, one Christian D. Frederikson:, as to his reasons for spending over $100 on the message. Said Telegrapher Frederikson:

"I am a laboratory worker, but my hobby is government. If you read my telegram you know that I talked about taxation and how it should be applied. I told of new forms of taxation. The telegram--well, I knew he would read that. I didn't want any secretaries throwing a letter away. The money doesn't matter. I have no family. My duty is to my country."

P: Congress made up to Franklin Roosevelt for the powers of which the Supreme Court stripped him by declaring the oil control section of the Recovery Act unconstitutional (TIME. Jan. 14). Instead of his former "authorization" to forbid the shipment of hot oil in interstate commerce, he was directly ordered by law to confiscate any oil so shipped unless he found available supplies inadequate to meet demand.

* At Yale last week Alpha Delta Phi, unable to compete with the College Plan, voted to turn in its charter, sell its $175,000 house and disband.

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