Evening star., 1925-04-08
WASHINGTON OBSERVATIONS
BY FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE.

President Coolidge has determined
to become "Silent Cal' on the two
outstanding foreign affairs of the
hour-allied indebtedness and a dis
armament conference. His views on
both subjects have been so distorted,
misinterpreted and generally mis-
understood that, until there Is some-
thing definite to announce, Mr.. Cool
idge will not discuss either of those
questions. International relations are
so sensitive a plant that the Presi-
dents decision is wise in the extreme.
Crises have been created by prema-
ture or unprecedented. reflection of
a governments policy. The danger
in the case of the President of the
United States is always an acute one.
He talks to the press, but the press
may not quote him. The result is that
correspondents are required to give
their own third person reproduction
of what the President said. Inevi-
tably he is interpreted differently by
different men. Within the present
month Mr.. Coolidge was actually put
in the guise of threatening a certain
power with drastic debt measures II
1t did not reveal enthusiasm for his
disarmament conference. Nothing
said at the White House, of course,
remotely justified such a eonstruc-
ton of the Presidents general OBJ
servations about loans Of American
capital abroad. ss.
* X = 4
More by accident than by design,
one of Attorney General Sargents
first appointments at the Department
of Justice Is that of a fellow Ver-
nonter and old friend, Luther c.
White. Mr.. White has been made di-
rector of Federal prisons, to succeed
Heber H. Votaw. who was a brother
in law of President Harding. White
was in the department before Sargent
became it's chief, having been in
charge of the duck milT' at At
lanta Penitentiary, where all the
duck used in the Navy and the postal
service is manufactured. His record
in that job having proved to be so
eminently satisfactory, White be-
came in the new Attorney Generals
estimation, the logical candidate for
the prison dictatorship. They're tell
ing good story about him when he
heard that his friend Sargent was
going to succeed Harlan Fiske Stone.
People kept on referring to the big
Vermonter as John Sargent" Where
upon White allowed sif no one up
there, when, he knew him, ever
dreamt of calling him anything ex-
cept "Gari'-which is short for the
Attorney Generals middle name of
Garibaldi.
j: !: X X
Nearly all of the Easter vacation
throngs that stream through the
White House to shake hands with Mr..
Coolidge want to have a peep in the
cabinet room. A privileged few
realize the ambition. One Of the
things they're always most interest
ed in is the order in which the mem
hers of the cabinet are seated. The
criss-cross system prevails. At the
Presidents right Is the Secretary of
States place. At his left is the Sec
retary. Of the Treasury Then follow,
in the order of their creation in the
earliest hours Of the Republic, the
various other chiefs of executive de-
partments. Next to the Secretary of
the Treasury comes the Secretary Of
War. Across from him, next ranking
in antiquity, is the Attorney General.
Then the Postmaster General and. fol-
lowing him in. rank, the Secretary of
the Navy. The chiefs OF the Interior.
Agriculture, Commerce and Labor
departments are seated, Ia the order
manned, one across from another. A