Evening star., 1933-08-16
WASHINGTON OBSERVATIONS
BY FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE.

People are saying that it's more
Roosevelt luck" that intervention in
Cuba was averted at the very hour last
week when it seemed imminent and
inevitable. Jim Farley once recalled
that even Old Sol was on F. D. R S
side in 1882, because it never rained
on a single major Democratic campaign
occasion, especially on any day when
the Governor was the star performer
anywhere. Well, the sunshine certainly
didn't desert the President in Cuba
That circumstance. White House callers
thought, caused the celebrated RoOse-
welt smile to be more eXpansively in
evidence than ever this week. The
President seems to reflect in his de-
meanor that he's had break" and is
grateful and happy over it.
Intervention in Cuba would have
cramped the New Deals style in three
separate and definite directions. First
it would have diverted the attention of
the Government and the country from
the paramount task of national recov-
cry; secondly. Intervention, before the
Job was finished (once before it took
three years., might have cost any
where up to 100000 900, which would
have blown young Mr.. Douglas bal
anced budget full of new holes; and,
finally, longtime psesence of American
forces in Cuba would have seriously
embarrassed the forthcoming Roosevelt
good neighbor" policy toward Latin
AMERICA. All in all. Franklin Roosevelt
feels that August 13-despite the 13-
was his lucky day, for it was then that
President Cespedes took Office at Ha-
vana and definitely obviated the neces-
sity of dispatching an American
expeditionary force to Cuba.
Mrs Mary Hartman Rumsey, chair
man of Gen Johnsons Consumers
Board who's just had a run-in with
Prof. Ogburn of the University of Chi
cago on consumer policy, isn't the only
Hartman mixed up in little N. r. A.
squabble Her banker brother, W.
Averell Hartman, chairman of the
New York State Committee for Re
employment. has been clashing good
naturedly with Grover A. Whalen
chairman of the New York City COM
mittee, over the progress Of the Blue
Eagle drive upstate and in Manhat-
tan Hartman claims that the State
outside the city, with only As per cent
of the population, has rolled up 62 per
cent of the employment registrations
and that Manhattan will have to get
busy If she is not to remain outdis-
tanced. Whalen retorts that "Manhat-
tan has a carburetor that'n develop
500 miles an hour before we're through
as compared to upstate's CO."
X X X
With the now we'll assured success
of the Century of Progress Worlds
| Fair at Chicago, two retired Army En-
gineer officers, both former Washing
tonians, are conspicuously identified
One is Maj. Lenox r. Lohr, general
manager of the fair, who has been ir
May /, 1929 1t was while on active
service in France in 1917 and 1918 that
Mai Lohr attracted the attention OF
Gen. Dawes, who eventually drafted
him for the Century of Progress job
| Maj Lohr's principal coadjutor is Col
j. Franklin Bell, former Engineer Com
missioner of the District of Columbia
| and since 1880 chief of the applied
science and industry division at the
| fair. Harry S. New, commissioner gen,
eral of the United States at Chicago
got a great kick out of q journalistic
reunion there the other day. 1t con-
sisted of newspaper men who covered
the Worlds Columbian Exposition oi
| 1898, where the one-time Hoosier Sen.
ator and former Postmaster Genera
represented his own paper, the In.
dianapolis Journal.
|
At last we have it, or at least thu
writer of a letter to the editor of th'
New York Times thinks he has. N. r
A., he contends, simply means: Nom
mate Roosevelt Again"
X X
L Althouuh he's been on duty here anl,