National Affairs: Pardon

Dr. Francis E. Townsend, as he arrived in Washington last week to "clean up this contempt business"—i. e., to serve a 30-day sentence for having walked out on a Congressional committee trying to investigate his $200-per-month pension plan, in May 1936—seemed almost eager to get behind bars. He was planning, he said, to work on his autobiography during his incarceration. He scoffed at efforts on the part of Senator William G. McAdoo, who in the past had made no secret of his scorn of Planner Townsend, to get him pardoned.

But just as Planner Townsend was about to give himself into the hands of a U. S. Marshal to begin his term, word came that Franklin Roosevelt had lent a sympathetic ear to Senator McAdoo, had pardoned Planner Townsend. Apparently not in the least crestfallen at losing a month's privacy and martyrdom, Dr. Townsend said: "It is complete vindication and an act of contrition on the part of Congress."