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Show ' I F. D. R. in Fighting trim I, 1 Health Excellent at He' Enters Last (?) Year 1 uncanny powtr of 'comeback" afttr strain. Day after day, .often until put the midnight hour, ha would take up one department'! de-partment'! request after another, an-other, hla budget ttaft around him, supplemented by represen- j I By PRESTON GROVE WASH INGTON President Roosevelt enters the last year of hla second (and maybe his last) term in booming health and good spirits. Ha has his ups and his downs, although the Incredible burdena of the presidency would keep aa average man mostly down. The most evident reason for his present booming disposition la the positive position he has taken In foreign affairs. He la far from his best when on the defensive. Probably hla all-time all-time "low" In spirits came during dur-ing and after the suprems court . fight of 1937. He likes the fighting side, the aggressive side, rather than the. defensive side. Most men da It Is a military axiom that the soldier on the offensive Is normally nor-mally highest In morale. Just now, President Roosevelt Is on the aggressive on three fronts in foreign affairs, a field in which he la particularly happy In iany event. He Is putting reel heat on Russia by advancing aid to the Finns. He Is widening the "pressure area" around Japan, whose , trade treaty , with us Is about to expire at a time when aha most needs this trade. His "good neighbor" policy just now la moving Into a solid hemispherical front directed at driving the European sea warfare war-fare away from our Atlantic dooryard. Several weeks ago a cold kept him out of the executive office, but he did not avoid much work. He couldn't The foreign situation sit-uation was moving through important im-portant stages. Moreover, he was wrestling with the budget. In connection with the budget his Intimate advisers noted his TODAY Discussing plans for the new budget, tatlves of the departments under consideration. One of them told us that after six hours of late night wrestling " with a budget he wss virtually strapped. The president also I appeared tired when the party broke up after midnight Next morning, so our Informant said, he felt beaten and whipped himself, him-self, but the president was apparently ap-parently fresh as an apple, although al-though he had been going on with auch a schedule for weeks. During such periods of high spirits, he fires his help to a rollicking enthusiasm for new and exciting moves. He can blow a comparatively minor story Into front page proportions. propor-tions. Within the past few days he front-paged a hospital story that was mere peanuts so far as financial outlay was concerned, con-cerned, although the hospital Idea la always a big one, In shy man's country. He didn't miss his usual sense of timing by putting It out almost en Christ-maa Christ-maa eve, when charity sentiments senti-ments are at their peak. He spoke of putting federal money into hospitals in areas which now do not have hospital services, many of them in the south. For auch a hospital as he had in mind, (150,000 would suffice, he said. A hundred auch hospitals would cost only (15,000,000. A dozen cruisers are now on the ways, each costing cost-ing that much or more. The man who succeeds him. In one year or five years from now, will have to eat plenty of vitamins to keep up the pace. . IN 1933 Leaving White House en day baak holiday took effect |