The Daily Alaska empire., 1945-04-24
By Katherine B. Pinkham

SAN FRANCISCO-Wne the late President Roosevelt was asked why the Big Three selected San Fran cisco for the United Nations -Secur- ity Conference, he merely said it seemed like pretty good place.
 And San Francisco, all abustle, ready to entertain A guest nations, agrees. It is proud and beautiful city.
 MT. Roosevelt didn't say why it seemed pretty good place to him and Messrs. Churchill and Stalin, but San Franciscans suspect the many charms of the City of St. Francis had only little to do with it, just as overcrowded wartime liv ing conditions here had no discour- aging effect. More important items, perhaps, were geography and the war Secretary of State Stettinius, who was also at Yalta, said it was because San Francisco is ''at the crossroads of the eastern and wes- tern world"
 Certainly the Golden Gate looks out upon as wide-spreading view of the late Mir. Wilkes one world as statesmen could have chosen. Around the shores of the vast Pac- fife live half the people of the earth.
 San Francisco, as chief embark ation port for the Pacific war, will lend unique emphasis to the scope of that bitter struggle. The visitors will see many evidences of the mass ed might funneling through the Golden Gate channel, and brush shoulders with bronzed young men in blue and khaki fresh from combat in campaigns 6,00o miles away.
 AS backdrop for the conference, San Francisco can scarcely fail to provide superb setting. Still to be found, despite wartime curfews and restrictions, are the attractions of it's cosmopolitan air, gay caberets, picturesque Chinatown, fishermens wharf, foreign cooking, fine shops, art galleries, fresh sea winds and dazzling sunshine (which seems all the brighter after intermittent fogs) a fine harbor and natural views of sweeping beauty.
 Reminders of the city's colorful history still are visible. The first structure built by white men here is preserved-the adobe shelter at the Presidio put up for the little Spanish garrison in 1776 and guard ed by bronze cannon 250 years old. Almost as old is Mission Dolores, founded in '76, but rebuilt a few years later, sixth in the chain estab- lished by the Franciscan fathers.
 Early explorers missed finding San Francisco Bay, as Sir Francis Drake did in 1879, when he anchored The Golden Hind few miles north of it, leaving metal plate claiming the land lin the name of Herr Majesty Gleen Elizabeth" About ten years ago the plate turned up not far from his anchorage.
 At Portsmouth Square, where men were lynched in the rowdy, bawdy days of the Gold Rush, is monu- ment to the gentle Robert Louis Stevenson, who like Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Rudyard Kipling and many others, helped to link the city's fabulous name to literary his tory. Across the bay ill Oakland is Johnny Heinholds waterfront saloon, where his son still has table Jack London used to read and write on.
 The Post Office building shows cracks suffered in the 1906 quake and fire But much earlier, the city's wooden structures burned down six times before the gold-mad citizenry took time to organize proper fire protection.
 The windy. western city is perch ed, compactly on precipitous hills of a blunt -nosed peninsula form ing the south portal of the land- locked bay It is about seven miles across each way, and of the 100000 people living there, nearly l50,00O are foreign-born or of Oriental ex.' traction. More than 100000 live iri the bay metropolitan area, within committing range.
 !. From Mob Hill, once home of the bonanza kings and now the site of several large hotels where confer: