THE PRESIDENCY: Defiance

The electorate's failure to support President Hoover last month was widely blamed on his adoption of policies recommended by his G. O. P. advisers. He was said to give too ready an ear to mandates of the politicians. Last week, however, this same President turned around and spoke out twice for himself. He defied the American Federation of Labor (2,933,545 votes) by appointing his friend William Nuckles Doak to be Secretary of Labor. Secondly he defied Senate Floorleader Watson and many a Republican of importance by announcing that he would soon submit to the Senate for ratification the protocols calling for U. S. entrance into the World Court.

Submission of the World Court protocols would have been useless had not elder Statesman Elihu Root last year gone as President Hoover's unofficial representative to Geneva. There he rephrased the U. S. Senate's objectionable "Reservation V" so that it fell more politely and acceptably upon foreign ears. The paraphrase since has become famed as "The Root Formula." It will be submitted by the President to the Senate in lieu of "Reservation V." It amounts to this: Whenever the World Court, with the U. S. as a member, is asked to opine on any question, let the U. S. State Department be previously informed. If the question is not one on which the State Department wishes to debate, let every effort be expended by the Court to frame it in acceptable form. If this prove impossible, let there be no imputation of unfriendliness when the U. S. "naturally" withdraws from the Court.

The League of Nations' Committee on the Court, anxious to have even temporary U. S. participation, approved the Root Formula eagerly (TIME, April 1 1929). But Senate diehard opponents of the Court hoped the President would keep the matter on his desk for a long time. Last week Floorleader Watson said he would support everything else the President had proposed, but would fight entering the Court as he had fought it since "before he (Mr. Hoover) was even Secretary of Commerce." Senator Moses of New Hampshire, perhaps meaning to give notice of a "concealed" filibuster against ratification, quoted the Bible: "Moses said: Lord, I have but a feeble voice, let my brother Aaron speak."

Other Presidential acts of the week were:

¶ Declaring: "The Federal Government is assisting local authorities to overcome a hideous gangster. . . . But I get no satisfaction from the reflection that the only way this can be done is for the Federal Government to convict men for failing to pay income taxes on the financial product of crime. . . . Every single State has ample laws that cover such criminality. What is needed is more enforcement of those laws."

¶ Receiving the famed Indian poet, Sir Rabindranath Tagore. ¶ Announcing that the Treasury Department regulation against imports of convict-made goods was not intended to start a trade conflict with Russia. ¶ Conferring at the White House with Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, Democratic Senate floor leader, concerning expeditious passage of relief and appropriations.