THE PRESIDENCY: The Coolidge Week: Oct. 17, 1927

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¶The White House breakfast season was inaugurated when 16 tried and true Republicans trooped into the family dining-room behind President Coolidge at eight o'clock to eat cantaloupe, oatmeal, bacon, eggs, hot cakes, maple syrup, sausage, toast, and take their choice of milk, tea or coffee. The President talked with vim about business and weather conditions, G.O.P. prospects and the World's Series. Most of the guests were members of the Republican National Committee and Chairman William Morgan Butler thereof sat on the right hand of the President. But "Coolidge for 1928" talk was conspicuously suppressed.

¶" A caller next morning left on a White House table some large fans illuminated with the President's portrait and the bold lettering: "Choose Coolidge." ( A White House houseguest of the week was Dwight Whitney Morrow, who required little entertaining so busy was he calling around in officialdom to learn all he could about his new post of U. S. Ambassador to Mexico. Mr. Morrow took his oath, talked much with the President, heard that he was praised when his predecessor, James Rockwell Sheffield, called on his host.

¶ Other callers of the week were Senator David A. Reed of Pennsylvania, to urge the appointment of Lawyer David E. Kaufman of Philadelphia as U. S. Minister to Egypt; the new Chilean Ambassador, Dr. Carlos Davila, to present credentials; Senators Charles Curtis of Kansas and Tasker L. Oddie of Nevada, and Governor Wallace Rider Farrington of Hawaii, to pay respects; Chairman Martin B. Madden of the House Appropriations Committee to talk flood control.

¶ The President having signified his willingness to receive them, President Manuel Quezon of the Philippine Senate and his fellow zealot for Philippine independence, Senator Sergio Osmena, started from Manila with an entourage to call at the White House. ( President & Mrs. Coolidge quietly celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary. Perhaps they read in the current issue of the ever-embattled Nation the following tirade about their 21-year-old son: "Who is John Coolidge? To what public office has he ever been elected or appointed? All we know about John is that he is a student in Amherst College and happens to be a son of the President of the United States. And yet we read that he has arrived in Amherst for his senior year 'accompanied by a young secret-service man.' In the name of Beelzebub, why? We heard first of this secret-service man last year and hoped by now that he had been returned to some legitimate work— or is there such an army of these men that no legitimate work can be found for them all? We can't think of a shadow of a reason why John should need a watchdog or, if he does, why Calvin Coolidge shouldn't pay for it out of his own pocket as any other father would. Are we to wind up by charging the American people for a nurse for Calvin Coolidge's fourth cousin's baby girl Gwendolen or a veterinary for his wife's great aunt's pet poodle Trixie?"