Georgia Pique

In Warm Springs, Ga. a reporter asked Franklin Roosevelt whether the report of his three-man railroad committee was on the way. The President asked whether he was supposed to be a clairvoyant. Another questioner asked whether he was pleased by Southern reaction to his Gainesville speech. To this the President, who likes to call Georgia his adopted State, made a reply that only an adopted Georgian would have given: that the only Southerner with whom he had talked was Irvin McDuffie, his Negro valet.

When a President whose good humor is normally as unflagging as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's exhibits the least touch of snappishness, it is major news. Last week, reporters lost no time in guessing that Franklin Roosevelt had finally stopped trying to conceal his serious concern about Depression. Right or wrong, the reporters' guess was reasonable. The Gainesville speech had touched off a selling wave that sent the stock market to new lows. Other business indices showed few signs of improvement.

Franklin Roosevelt's display of pique occurred last week on the first morning of a week-long holiday. Next day in somewhat better humor the President settled down to the tasks of an unusually trying week end. The railroad committee's report arrived and the President studied it at length. He sent to Congress, with a recommendation that it be given "most careful consideration," Hungary's proposal, made last February, to pay off its $1,685,000 Relief Loan in full but without interest. As this week's major move against Depression, the President roundly endorsed a plan proposed by his old adversary, Virginia's Carter Glass, to enlarge the loaning facilities of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In constant touch with Washington by telephone, the President was rewarded finally by a cheering piece of news; that, despite a strong ninth-inning rally by adversaries of his Reorganization Bill, the Senate had finally passed it

P: A Warm Springs visitor was Ambassador to France Bill Bullitt, with whom the President discussed, among other means of improving the personnel of the foreign service, the feasibility of a "West Point" for diplomats.

P: In Warm Springs, the President went swimming in the glass-enclosed pool, drove over the red-clay Georgia roads in a brand-new Ford touring car (license: FDR). In Gainesville, he took his first ride in one of the new cars which he will henceforth use when exhibiting himself to crowds . Specially built 16-cylinder, nine-passenger Cadillacs, they have handles on the windshield for Secret Service men, a stock of tear gas bombs in a compartment behind the driver's seat. Floor space behind the compartment contains plenty of room for the President to lie down in, in case anyone starts shooting at him.

P: Latest addition to the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, of which Franklin Roosevelt is one of the founders, is a small nondenominational chapel which, between five rows of pews and the altar, has a wide floor space in which infantile paralytics who cannot kneel to pray may worship in their wheel chairs. Last week, the President and his party attended dedicatory services conducted by Atlanta's Episcopal Bishop Henry J. Mikell. C. Back from a three-week lecture tour on the West Coast, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs after a plane trip from Seattle via Atlanta.

P: The War Department last year spent $124,500--$96,000 over its appropriation for this purpose--on gunpowder used in salutes to the President and other dignitaries. Paring expenses, the Department last week announced that official salutes henceforth would be fired by inferior powder, thus cutting the cost of a 21-gun salute from $62.37 to $28.35. With cheap powder, according to War Department officials, noise made by salutes will be not "Boom" but "Swoosh."

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