"Are You a Parasite?"

On the problem of Washington's grotesque wartime crowding, President Roosevelt gave his press conference a half-serious suggestion: if the "parasites" would leave-those who had 20-room houses on swank Massachusetts Avenue,* those who were in Washington only for social reasons, those who had no real wartime duties--there would be a lot more room.

Yes, said the President, warming to the idea, it would be a good thing to make such people uncomfortable; if he were a newsman he would run a big headline:

ARE YOU A PARASITE?

There may be, undoubtedly are, a few people of the kind the President described. But few Washingtonians could visualize them. Who, if he did not have to, would voluntarily live in the city that is now the most overcrowded and least comfortable in the U.S.?

But old foes of bureaucracy and overcentralization promptly answered the President's carefree blast. The New York Herald Tribune demanded that the first parasites to go be the Government's 2,895 full-time and 31,618 part-time pressagents. The Washington News composed new lyrics to Maryland! My Maryland, to be sung by parasites marching out of town:

I do not work for NYA--

Parasite! Just parasite!

I do not work for FLA--

Parasite! Just parasite!

I only work for Mister Joe,

We get none of this Guv'mint dough,

We only pay the taxes--so--

We're parasites! Just parasites!

Summarized the Washington Post, in the guise of a taxi driver's opinion: "As I get it they want room for more clerks to do the work the clerks they have got ain't doing."

War-crowded Washington set a different bee buzzing in the bonnet of Indiana's Representative Earl Wilson. He thought there ought to be a 10 p.m. curfew to help Heaven protect the Government working girl. The girls all said that Heaven was plenty of protection, thank you very much.

P:"No Congressman can tell me when I should go to bed," said a young lady from Tennessee.

P:"Why should I go to bed at 10 o'clock?" said a Federal Security secretary. "I'm healthy."

P:Snapped another: "Is Congressman Wilson going to come around and tuck us in?"

*Although Washington has many a sumptuous private residence, few of them are now on Massachusetts Avenue, where in the space of a few blocks stand 14 embassies and legations. Notable remaining Massachusetts Avenue mansions: the unused town house of Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, the four-story house of the President's fifth cousin Alice Longworth, the red-brick mansion of the famed Misses Patten, who once entertained the Prince of Wales, the King of Belgium.

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