A Sad, Sad Story

New York City's Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia had dreamed of marching to glory as a brigadier general. Last week he discovered that he was merely an expendable. When word got around that little Butch was going to North Africa, men uprose on Capitol Hill to thunder: "Political generals!" Forthwith Fiorello was dumped overboard by the President, a casualty of Franklin Roosevelt's new policy of appeasing Congress.

The Mayor's melancholy little flirtation with glory exactly followed the pattern of other recent Presidential appointments gone wrong. First his Army job was announced, unofficially but thoroughly, by Presidential Secretary Steve Early. The protests were then carefully weighed, the chances of Senate confirmation found wanting. Franklin Roosevelt then gaily told a press conference he had no intention whatever of making the Mayor a general.

This still left a loophole for the duck-bottomed little Mayor: he could become a colonel without Senate confirmation. New howls were heard. Forthwith Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson announced that the Mayor was rendering such useful service in New York that, etc., etc.

The Mayor tucked in his disappointment, said merely: "I will carry on."

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