THE PRESIDENCY: Active Anniversary

During the first five years of Franklin Roosevelt's regime, he ran the U. S. Government faster and more completely than any President before or since. In the year since the Court fight, the President may have seemed to have slackened his pace because other of the people's representatives have bestirred themselves. But last week, of the 113,014 Federal employes in Washington, he alone made practically all the news. Renewing his contact with the electorate by radio, addressing Congress for the first time on Recession, communicating unconventionally with the House & Senate tax committees, greeting Pan America, appointing a new Red Cross head, Franklin Roosevelt showed a brilliant dash of the old form (see following columns).

April 14 is a sad date in U. S. history: anniversary of 1) the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and 2) the sinking of the Titanic. Auguries and omens are things which Franklin Roosevelt ignores. Last week, he began April 14 by working till 2 145 a. m. preparing the message to Congress. After six hours' sleep, he rose, breakfasted, sent the message to the Capitol, delivered the Pan-American Day speech at the Pan-American Union Building, received six Campfire Girls and a delegation of United Automobile Workers officials, and delivered the fireside chat.

Unabated, the next day he told a press conference that he was planning soon to send the Capitol messages: 1) on removing tax-exemption features from future issues of U. S. bonds and 2) on antimonopoly legislation. Then, having blanketed U. S. front pages by simply making news as completely as any dictator could blanket the columns of a censored press, Franklin Roosevelt polished off his week by attending to his correspondence of some 10,000 letters, watching 30,000 children roll Easter eggs on the White House lawn.