Talks & Travels

Last week Franklin Roosevelt cleared his desk by vetoing the last four bills, all minor, left behind by the 74th Congress,* set off on a month of travels. First lap was a jaunt through Virginia, ending in Washington this week. Later in the week the President planned to turn north, help dedicate New York City's great Triborough Bridge, continue on to Hyde Park for a few days' rest and the annual celebration of the Roosevelt Home Club.

Thence he would put to sea, repeating the lucky pattern of 1932, and cruise up the coast to Campobello Island on a 45-ft. schooner named Sewanna, lately rented by Son James. On July 31 the President planned to have his long-delayed visit with Canada's Governor General, Lord Tweedsmuir, in Quebec.

Washington was grey with rain one morning last week as the Presidential party, including Mrs. Roosevelt, Postmaster General Farley and Secretary Ickes, rolled south by automobile over the magnificent Skyline Drive which skirts Blue Ridge hilltops for 65 miles through Shenandoah National Park. By lunchtime the skies had cleared.

The tourists stopped on a ridge overlooking Civil War battlegrounds, opened picnic hampers, munched while the President, with a cold chicken drumstick for a pointer, discoursed on the tactics of Stonewall Jackson and Phil Sheridan. After lunch he moved on to Big Meadows. Va. and the first chore of his trip, a speech dedicating Shenandoah National Park.

Planned by Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work in 1924, approved by Congress in 1926. created last December by Virginia's gift of 176,000 acres of scenic woodland, and provided with roads, paths and clearings by the Civilian Conservation Corps, Shenandoah will eventually be linked by a 500-mile national parkway to Big Smokies National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee.

Last week, standing before 5,000 auditors on a grassy plateau, his amplified voice echoing down through the valley. President Roosevelt rang the changes on one of his favorite themes-- Conservation--and issued a stout defense of one of his favorite New Deal agencies-- the CCC.

"The creation of this park," cried he, ''is one part of our great program of husbandry-- the joint husbandry of our human resources and our national resources. . The product of the labor of the men of the Civilian Conservation Corps ... is as significant as though instead of working for the Government they had worked in a mill or factory. . . . Our country will need many other young men as they come to manhood for work like this--for other Shenandoahs.

"Is it a dream--will I perhaps be accused of an exaggerated passion for planning if I paint for you a picture? ... In almost every other part of the country there is a similar need for recreational areas . . . roadside camps . . . smell of the woods . . . wind in the trees . . . men and women who every morning and every night can lift up their eyes to Mother Nature. ..." Next day was Independence Day and the President had appropriately chosen as his second goal the home of the Declaration's author. Disappointed were those who expected Franklin Roosevelt again to compare himself with a great Democratic predecessor as he did in unmistakable terms at Washington's Jackson Day dinner last winter (TIME. Jan. 20).

Speaking from the portico of white-pillared Monticello on a hilltop five miles out of Charlottesville, he did not even recall that Thomas Jefferson had been the Founder of the Democratic Party, praised him instead as the champion of freedom. Only the loftiest of allusions to the political present were there in the President's cry of the Founding Fathers: ''Theirs were not the gods of things as they were, but the gods of things as they ought to be. They used new means and new models to build new structures." Nor could any but the rudest lips reproach the admirers of Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson for the cheer they sent up when one declared of the other: ''He was a great gentleman. He was a great commoner. The two are not incompatible."

As the Presidential yacht Potomac drew away from Richmond that afternoon for a cruise to Jamestown before returning to Washington, the shouting crowd on shore turned to Postmaster General Farley, who had been left behind, and demanded a speech. Then came the only crass note in a week-end of unsullied idealism. Bellowed Boss Farley, hands cupped to mouth:

"VOTE THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET!"

*Since taking office, announced the White House, President Roosevelt has vetoed 221 bills, a record surpassed only by Grover Cleveland.

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