THE PRESIDENCY: Happy Story

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Scripps-Howard Columnist Raymond Clapper last week printed the following story about Franklin Roosevelt. In 1937 the President was so impressed by a cinema short on the late Kamal Ataturk's new Turkey that he dashed off a glowing letter to Kamal Ataturk, noted in passing that he hoped to meet him some day. Astounded Ataturk took this passing note very seriously, had his press print the praises of "revolutionary" Franklin Roosevelt, instructed his minister in Washington to ask the mystified State Department just when the President of the U. S. would arrive.

"I cannot say," reflected Mr. Clapper at the end of his story, "that it adds anything of historic importance . . . but with me it lingers fondly among the trivia of swirling times, with the poignant fragrance of happier days."