OCR Text |
Show Washington Comment l Peace and politic; strange I bedfellows perhaps were sCresa-j sCresa-j ed in the Yuletide greeting's of j many in Washington's officialdom ! this season. From the White House came the usual conventional cards, black engraved on white, which President and Mrs. Roosevelt Roose-velt have sent each year since their occupancy, but some of the other topflight officials have added add-ed a touch of originality to their greetings. Senator Capper's card bears a picture of the Peace monument that stands before the capitol. Former Attorney General Gen-eral Homier Cumming'.s' greeting has the Andrew Butler etching "Quiet Day" on the front. The Emil Hujas selected a reproduction reproduc-tion of the John B. Johnston's portrait of Andrew Jackson. A motor map directing the way to their new home formed the greeting greet-ing of the Donald Richbergs, and the David Cushman Coyle's included in-cluded the message: "We've planted plant-ed three thousand young 'spruces On an island down in Maine (We think the world will last". From the political camps came some clever cards: John Hamilton's is a picture of a stork delivering- a baby elephant "To Washington 1940". Miss Marion Martin, who directs the destinies of the women's wo-men's division, Republican National Nation-al committee, chose a greeting portraying an elephant carrying a bag full of ballots on the front of the folder, and inside, two "votes" one for a Merry Christmas Christ-mas and one for a Happy New Year. Her rival, Mrs. Thomas McAllister, of the women's division, divi-sion, Democratic National committee, com-mittee, sent a picture of a donkey unfolding a calendar with three wishes": One designates December Decem-ber 25, 1939 and a "Merry Christmas"; Christ-mas"; the next is January 1, 1940, "A Prosperous New Year", and the third November 5, 1940, and "Many Happy Returns". All cute and subtle (?). The 96 senators in our congress are getting a "noiseless" train for Christmas. iAs you may recall, one of the "sights" of Washington Washing-ton is the tiny subway train that transports this aug-ust body of legislators from their off ice building build-ing to the capitol, so that they need never set fcot on our congested con-gested streets, nor wear a hat during their progress. Seems, though, that the two tiny monorail mono-rail cars made a lot of noise and thus grated most horribly on ragged sdtaltiarial nerve-V ' So senate architect, David Lynn, was directed to quiet the cars for the coming session. He called in the American Transit association; engineers studied the situation and recommended (of all things!) Washington's own transit com-lany, com-lany, which pomptly said it had just the thing, having previously used it to "hush" the street cars which disturbed Senator Glass' rest when he used to live at a hotel down on Pennsylvania avenue. ave-nue. The gadget employed is a rubber-saindwich for the wln-uls. It was ordered, workmen got busy, (Continued on last page) M Washington Comment (Continued from first page) and behold! it was ready in time for Christmas. Prom peace and Yuletide cheer, the somber note of the week is the bad case of jitters which shook Washington after the Euro- j pean war carried its naval en-! en-! gagements into our backyard- ' J Twice before, in .merican history j naval warfore between foreign ! powei's has come close to our ' coa.-t and i n the two previous occasions, oc-casions, America herself neutral at fiist became involved bdfore i the w-is closed. So we don't rel- ish the present outlook the least little bit. W'e hope that the third j time will prove the charm and, by j its difference, break the fatal spell. If you've brushed up in your I history lately you will recall that :a general Kur. pean war began in j Europe in 171)3, in which Englanc ' , and France were the major an-! ! tagonists, and that in 17i)S, these United States embarked on an un-! un-! declared naval war with France j that la.stecf until 1801, while later, ! with England, we engaged in the 1 well-known War of 1812. Previous , to our own entrance into the conflict, con-flict, those two nations had preyed on our shipping near ouir ports. Before April, 1917 well, remember remem-ber the British man-of-war which j hovered near our shores despite our protests; and the famous U-53 ; that popped up in Newport with a note from the Kaiser? : ! M |