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Show 7l0wgtm MFRRY-GD-ftOUHD NA A4b pf?Ew Pearson JJU Mjf ROBERT ALLEN Washington, D. C. ROOSEVELT KEPT HIS POKER FACE CHICAGO. There was only one other person present when the President Pres-ident heard the first speech at the convention nominating him for a third term. The visitor was Mrs. Hattle Caraway, Cara-way, Arkansas' witty, motherly U. S. senator, who entered his White House office for a conference just as Mayor Ed Kelly was starting his address of welcome. In this, Kelly declared that he knew Roosevelt did not want to run, but that he should be drafted anyway. The President was getting the speech from a small portable radio on his desk. As Mrs. Caraway entered en-tered he greeted her with a smile, motioned to a chair and toned down the radio. From then on he listened in grave silence. When Kelly declared that Roosevelt had to be drafted to "save the heart of humanity," the President's Presi-dent's face became solemn. Then as Kelly continued, Roosevelt seemed to sink deeper and deeper j into himself. ' Once or twice he glanced at Mrs. Caraway, but his face was inscrut- ( able. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. But as Kelly drew to a close, the President's mood lifted and when the Chicago mayor finished, Roosevelt smiled, threw back his head and said, "Well, the mayor is getting to be quite an orator." That was all. Mrs. Caraway asked no questions about the convention con-vention and the President volunteered volun-teered nothing. Note The day the convention opened, Mrs. Roosevelt told an old i friend that she was reconciled to the President running again. "If he has to do it," she said, "then there i is nothing else to do. I know he doesn't want to run, but there seems to be no alternative." WHITE HOUSE PIPE-LINE From the moment Harry Hopkins landed here last week and that open wire was set up between his suite 308-10 in the Blackstone hotel and the White House, the President has been minutely informed of everything every-thing that has happened. From early ear-ly morning until late at night the wire has buzzed with reports from Washington. Roosevelt leaders have kept him informed of what was being said and rumored in the hotel lobbies. And some of the politicos are in for a shock when they learn that certain cracks they thought they were making in private are tucked away in Roosevelt's retentive memory. mem-ory. Whatever else the third-term organization may have lacked, it was good on "intelligence." Every delegation and headquarters was "covered" by a friendly contact who kept Hopkins and his lieutenants advised ad-vised of inside developments. STAGNANT CONVENTION It was a good thing that they were, too. For with time dragging on their hands, delegates seized every ev-ery rumor and promptly spilled it to the press. If administration leaders could have had their way, they would have condensed the convention into three days and wound it up by Wednesday. Wednes-day. They even discussed doing this, but when it got to Jim Farley he promptly put down his foot. Bent on torcing a roll-call in order to have himself placed in nomination, Jim warned that he would fight any attempt at-tempt to short-circuit the convention. conven-tion. The administrationites couldn't risk an open row, so they had to absorb the opposition's brickbats and make the best of it. But it burned them up, and therare a lot of private scores to be settled later. Note One Roosevelt leader, urging urg-ing Farley to forget his grievances and remain as national chairman, said: "Jim, if you quit, the public will forget all about you in six months." "That's okay with me," shot back Fyley. "When I quit as chairman, I want to be forgotten." In addition to heading the Yankee ball club, Farley also will take an executive position with a nationally known advertising ad-vertising firm. MERRY GO ROUND Chinese Ambassador Hu Shih says blitzkrieg methods won't work in China, "because our spaces are broad and our peoples too many." While Washington warmly debates the question, "Will we or won't we?" the old war-time song, "Mademoiselle "Mademoi-selle From Armentieres," is coming back. A group of 35 Latin American ladies of the diplomatic circle put on white costumes and gather at the Red Cross building to make bandages. Beautiful Mrs. Harry Woodring, who has spent all her life in Massachusetts Massa-chusetts and Washington, is being kidded about going out to live on the prairies of Kansas. But Helen says she loves Kansas, intends to have a swell time and do a lot" of painting there. Washington irony: When the cabinet cabi-net group met to plan for disposal of surpluses of the Western hemisphere, hemi-sphere, the plan's author, Dudley Wood, prepared to leave government service because congress failed to appropriate funds to continue Secretary Secre-tary Hopkins' "brain trust." 5 |