The Roosevelt Week

With half the nation up to its ears in politics, Franklin Roosevelt last week played his familiar double role: half chief of the Democratic Party, half Chief Executive. As a partyman he flared angrily at Congressman Dies for embarrassing faithful Frank Murphy's re-election campaign in Michigan (see p. 8); sent a message to Minnesota to help Governor Elmer Benson (Farmer-Labor) stem the onslaught of Liberal Republican Harold Stassen (see p. 10), another to Pennsylvania to help George Earle toward the Senate, another to California to help Sheridan Downey; interviewed a series of political callers including dark-skinned Publisher Robert Lee Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier, supposed mentor of Pennsylvania's Negro vote.*

As Chief Executive, Franklin Roosevelt let it be intimated at the White House that, with business improving, higher taxes might not be needed to "balance the Budget by 1941"--a point of view which cynics thought might be revised after election.

Meanwhile, if Ambassador Joe Kennedy's speech in London last fortnight led anyone to think that President Roosevelt approved a do-nothing policy regarding foreign militarists and their designs, the President last week made his position clear by a series of performances:

1) At press conference he envisioned raising the U. S. air forces far above the strength now planned to perhaps 7,000 fighting planes, for which skilled mechanics must be trained (but not by militarizing the CCC).

2) To Secretary of the Navy Swanson he addressed a Navy Day letter declaring: ''The fleet must be ready."

3) He let Secretary of State Hull send a stiff note to Japan warning that U. S. trade in conquered China must not be impaired (see p. 11).

4) To the New York Herald Tribune's Forum on Current Problems he spoke by radio. Said he:

''It is becoming increasingly clear that peace by fear has no higher or more enduring quality than peace by the sword. . . .

"Yet we have consistently pointed out that neither we, nor any nation, will accept disarmament while neighbor nations arm to the teeth. If there is not general disarmament we ourselves must continue to arm. It is a step we do not like to take, and do not wish to take.

"We still insist that an armament race among nations is absurd unless new territories or new controls are coveted. We are entitled, I think, to greater reassurance than can be given by words: the kind of proof which can be given, for example, by actual discussions, leading to actual disarmament. Not otherwise can we be relieved of the necessity of increasing our own military and naval establishment."

5) Two days after the naval review, he visited Bolling Field with Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison, inspected every type of Army plane there stationed and also the latest Naval equipment at nearby Anacostia. From his car the President watched mechanics demonstrate the marvels of folding wings, retractable pontoons, etc.

> It was the turn last week of Joseph B. Keenan, first Assistant to the Attorney General and a political specialist in the Janizariat, to repeat what has become the official story about a Third Term: that Franklin Roosevelt would run again "if needed." The Keenan version: "Americans can be of good cheer, for I am sure if the occasion arises where any star of liberal leadership becomes dimmed, we can rely upon that one great American to continue the battle. . . . He will not see the humane policies which he has instituted perish."

> White House Physician Ross McIntire issued a bulletin on the Roosevelt health: "Weight constant at 188, muscle tone perfect, blood pressure better than normal."

> After his fact-finding board on railroad wages reported to him that a pay-cut at this time was unjustified, the President saw railroad executives, promised to support railroad legislation to find other means of saving the roads from ruin (see p. 51).

* After talking with President Roosevelt, uppity Publisher Vann repeated from the White House steps his advice to Pennsylvania Negroes to elect a Republican Governor (TIME, Oct. 31 ).

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