National Affairs: Prodigious Protocol

George Thomas Summerlin, 67, an urbane West Pointer from Louisiana who rolls his own cigarets, rested last week in Washington after mighty labors. So did Colonel Edward W. Starling. The former as chief of the State Department's Division of Protocol, the latter as chief of the White House detail of Secret Service, are explicitly responsible for the safety of Their Majesties George VI & Elizabeth during their visit to the U. S. this week.

Mr. Summerlin's responsibilities begin when the royal train crosses the international boundary from Canada shortly before midnight Wednesday. They continue until the visitors recross the boundary early Monday morning, except for such time as Their Majesties are in the company of President Roosevelt. Then Colonel Starling takes over.

Messrs. Starling & Summerlin caused the channel leading in to the wharf at Mount Vernon to be dragged for possible obstructions when the yacht Potomac takes the King there to pay homage to George Washington. Secret Service men combed the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, interviewing shopkeepers and householders along the line of the arriving procession, and 50,000 soldiers, sailors, marines, Washington police and firemen were told off to wall the streets. The destroyer Warrington was chosen by the Navy to convey Their Majesties from Sandy Hook to the Battery after detraining at Red Bank on their way from Washington to the New York World's Fair.

And 1,001 other preparatory details. Protocol finally determined that Chief Justice Hughes (if well enough to attend) would rank British Ambassador Sir Ronald Lindsay at the President's State dinner, since the King would then represent himself. Mrs. Henrietta Nesbit, the White Housekeeper, noticed that Their Majesties ate a lot of strawberries in Canada, ordered a supply. Fields, the White House butler, decided to use the new F. D. R. china (white Lenox with cobalt & gold bands). He put polishers on the state service whose gold plating was begun under President Harrison, continued under McKinley, finished under Coolidge.

Mrs. Roosevelt learned that His Majesty likes a down puff at the foot of his bed, but Her Majesty does not. She equipped their beds in the White House with new springs & mattresses on the advice of her sons that the old ones were rock hard. She worried about the water being turned on in Mr. Roosevelt's "dream cottage" at Hyde Park, where royalty would picnic Sunday. Princess Te Ata, a Choctaw-Chickasaw half-breed from Oklahoma, was engaged to tell Indian tales at the Hyde Park hot-dog fest. Her newspaper syndicate announced that she would describe Their Majesties' doings in her column My Day. She added Kate Smith and a cowboy-song singer named Alan Lomax to her team of Lawrence Tibbett and Marian Anderson for the musicale after the State Dinner. Gifts received for Their Majesties (newspaper clippings, photographs, U. S. flags, etc. etc.) had to be returned.