THE PRESIDENCY: Smiling Sphinx

Off the train popped Joe Kennedy, face red as ever, to race through the echoing grand concourse of Washington's Union Station. His Mayfair chums would have been horrified, for it was breakfast time and spectacled Mr. Kennedy was still wearing last night's evening clothes.

Unimportant to Joe Kennedy was his garb: Important was the bulging briefcase he clutched in one freckled hand — the fruit of a year's diplomatic ferreting in London's Whitehall by the U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. After a quick change Mr. Kennedy zipped to the White House. It was before 10 a. m., when Franklin Roosevelt goes to the Executive Office. Bobbing in his blue uniform, 68-year-old Negro Butler Charles Green grinned a welcome, threw open both White House doors to grinning Mr. Kennedy.

Out of Joe Kennedy's overstuffed briefcase came for Mr. Roosevelt's inspection stacks of reports "too confidential for the cables." In them, some said, was a basis for a U. S. move toward international peace. Stuff & guff, said others; in the Kennedy dossiers was proof there will be no international peace soon.* Only sure fact was that Mr. Kennedy likes to spend December in Florida.

Pessimistic was Diplomat Kennedy: ". . . Continuation of the war will be catastrophic for the political, social and economic life of the peoples of the world." Prophetic was Politician Kennedy: "The problems that are going to affect the people of the United States ... are already so great and becoming greater by the war that they should be handled by a man it won't take two years to educate. . . .

"President Roosevelt's policy is to keep us out of war, and war . . . would bring to this country chaos beyond anybody's dream. This . . . overshadows any possible objection to a third term."

The Franklin Roosevelt Joe Kennedy saw last week was not the fractious, irritated, harried man who sat at the same cluttered desk last summer. A remarkable change has come over the President: once again he is relaxed, confident, charming. Gone is his captious attitude to the U. S. press. Old Mark Sullivan, dean of Washington columnists, noted the change a month ago, hopefully analyzed the President's bubbly jocularity as a signal he has decided not to run again.

On the other hand :

> Franklin Roosevelt had a long talk with Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas few days back. Its gist, as freely reported in inner circles: That the President solemnly told Mr. Douglas that he was the Crown Prince & Heir Apparent to the New Deal but that his election in 1940 is an impracticable dream.*

> Many times in recent weeks, in talking to callers, the President has listed all 1940 Democratic aspirants, then damned them all with faint praise. For example: To many a caller Franklin Roosevelt has indicated that Cordell Hull is completely acceptable to him as the best 1940 compromise. But he also expressed fears that Mr. Hull is too old, and too much of a worrier.

> The mutual dislike between Mr. Roosevelt and Vice President Garner has now reached the point where each hates the other's guts. Said Mr. Roosevelt last week to one visitor: "Old John is the best candidate the Republicans have."