THE PRESIDENCY: The Coolidge Week: Nov. 19, 1928

Crates, barrels and boxes—a vanload of them—accompanied Calvin Coolidge to Northampton, Mass., when he went home to vote. In silk topper and wing collar he personally superintended the unloading and disposition of his goods at his house on Massasoit street. It was the visible beginning of the end of his residence at the White House and seemed to indicate where the Coolidges will reside after March 4th. The goods were souvenirs of the past eight years—books, objets d' art, bric-à-brac from all over the world. A favorite article is a chair given by a Hungarian society with heads of Washington and Kossuth carved on the posts.

> President Coolidge had written to British Ambassador Houghton: "I need not tell you how much I shall feel the loss of your services" (TIME, Nov. 12). But that it seemed did not mean that the President accepted the Ambassador's resignation. He was merely acknowledging its receipt. Last week, having failed of election to the Senate from New York and conferred with the President at the White House, Ambassador Houghton announced that he was returning to the Court of St. James's.

> A resignation which President Coolidge did accept was that of Owen J. Roberts, Philadelphia lawyer, as special U. S. counsel in the oil scandals. Lawyer Roberts' business was suffering because the Congressional resolution under which he was appointed forbade him to serve any client whose case had to be taken up with any branch of the government. President Coolidge sympathized and said: "I want to express my gratitude to you on behalf of the government for the fidelity and energy with which you have prosecuted these cases." Actions still pending against Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair and Albert Bacon Fall were to be single-handled by Lawyer Roberts' special colleague lawyer, Atlee Pomerene of Cleveland.

Learned Lawyer Roscoe Pound, dean of Harvard's law school, pounded the administration heavily last week in a speech in Manhattan on its selection of Lawyers Roberts and Pomerene to conduct some of the cases against Fall and Sinclair. The Pound point was that while the Messrs. Roberts and Pomerene are able enough as chancery lawyers and did well in the civil suits against Sinclair, they are no great shakes as criminal lawyers. From the criminal charges against them Sinclair and Fall have after long delays and many a slip comfortably escaped so far. Said Dean Pound: "Did Sinclair keep the same lawyers in the criminal case that he had employed in the chancery proceedings? He has not. He hired the best criminal lawyers he could find. Chancery or civil practice is very widely different from criminal practice. To put two civil lawyers up against a corps of criminal experts spelled defeat for the government from the first, for criminal prosecution is in itself a fine art that can be developed only by long practice."