POLITICAL NOTE: Modern Mercury

(See front cover)

Best skit in Washington's famed Gridiron Club show this winter was laid on cloud-bedecked Mt. Olympus (a setting borrowed from Lunt & Fontanne's successful play, Amphitryon 38). In it Mercury reported to Jupiter on the affairs of the Earth below, and Jupiter told Mercury how he ran Olympus. Excerpt:

Jupiter: Never admit a mistake, son, or you won't be a god any longer.

Mercury: But don't you ever make mistakes, poppa?

Jupiter: Yes—and some of them get confirmed by the Senate.

To some of the audience who glanced from the stage to the face of the most distinguished spectator it seemed that Franklin Roosevelt was obviously displeased by this reference to the vulnerability of some of his appointees—such as Associate Justice Hugo Black. But the President could not resent the keen analogy to the relations between himself and his son James, who might well be a modern-day Mercury using a White House Packard for his winged heels.

As a messenger plying between Olympus and the World Below, James Roosevelt last week rounded out his fourth month of heavy duty. To observers reflecting on the position of the President's most intimate observer, it seemed that 30-year-old Son Jimmy had found himself after several false starts, had proved himself indispensable to the ablest politician in the U. S., and in so doing had, at the age of 30, already lived one of the most remarkable careers in U. S. public life.

Boy, James Roosevelt was born in a house in Manhattan at No. 125 East 36th Street, six months after his father graduated from. Columbia University's Law School, but his earliest memories are of Albany when his father was the State Senator from Hyde Park. James had not long toddled around Albany with his English nurse (his chief interest then was learning the names of all the local fire horses) before he was whisked off to Washington for seven years of the Wilson Administration.

In Washington, where his handsome young father was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, young James found plenty of excitement. On one alarming occasion officers searched hours for him, while he was gaily riding through the countryside on the back of a motorcycle behind Crown Prince (now King) Leopold of Belgium.

On another, he was upstairs at home asleep when the house of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was blown up (two men were blown to bits and the Roosevelt house next door was partly wrecked by the blast). Says James: "I remember it so well because Mother rushed home and gave me hell for being out of bed." Searching among the ruins of the Attorney General's house next morning, 12-year-old James found a human collar bone. He brought it home and put it on the table. "It almost spoiled the family's breakfast" he recalls.

When James was packed off to swank Groton School in 1920 Father was hopelessly stumping the country as Democratic nominee for the Vice-Presidency. By the time James had made the football team as left tackle, Father was apparently bedridden for life with infantile paralysis.