Senior Shellback

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

"The former pollywog members of the President's party have all survived [their Equator-crossing initiation], but while they are recuperating, this dispatch is being sent not by Mr. [Secretary Steve] Early but by the Senior Shellback himself.

"As soon as the ship's anchor dropped, the President was off in a small boat to survey the island's shores and to fish.

Fish were plentiful--so numerous that he soon laid aside his heavy rod and returned to the shallow waters close ashore in quest of little fish. These ran in unusually large schools and were of many kinds. He used a light rod usually reserved for trout fishing."

Thus one day last week did Franklin Roosevelt, who has often told correspondents what to write, seize an opportunity to report on himself. His cruiser, U. S. S. Houston lay anchored off Albemarle Island, largest of Ecuador's twelve-island Galapagos group.

At Charles Island they took ashore gifts (food, medicine, newspapers, magazines) from the Senior Shellback to Heinz Wittmer & family, Mr. & Mrs. Elmir A. Conway of California and five Ecuadorian Indians who constitute the island's population.

Franklin Roosevelt and his entourage have long excelled at keeping him in the news by tying up his activities to wars, droughts and other Grade A news events. An extreme example of this art was provided by Secretary Early one day when the President himself did nothing of interest at Galapagos. The official news report from the Houston announced that landing parties tried to pump the settlers about Baroness Eloise Wehrborn, the queer German woman who. wearing silk panties and a pearl-handled revolver, sought to "rule" the island several years ago until she and her retinue of young males came to mysterious ends. The settlers would not talk, and the whereabouts of the Baroness have been unknown for four years.

Copy of a higher grade was made at James Island, where historically-minded Franklin Roosevelt, poring over Commander David Porter's Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean (1813), ordered a search (unsuccessful) for the grave of Lieut. John S. Cowan of Porter's frigate Essex, who died there in a pistol duel.

P: The President radioed to Governor Blanton Winship of Puerto Rico his happiness over the latter's escape from assassins' bullets (TIME, Aug. 1).* In Kansas City, Mo., the Secret Service arrested one John Dean, 65, for enclosing clippings of the attempt on Governor Winship's life in a letter to President Roosevelt which said: "Don't you take a chance. I feel that I must come to Washington to kill you for my country is at stake and I love my country passionately."

P: In Washington, William Thomas ("Tom") Marshall, 72, White House librarian since 1899, retired. To the press he described the reading habits of Presidents he had known: McKinley "let Mark Hanna do most of his reading"; Roosevelt I "read about everything worth while . . . history, economics and good fiction"; Taft "had the most legal mind I ever observed." "Some people say Wilson read himself to sleep with detective stories, but I never saw any in his rooms''; Harding read "anything that came along. The wilder and woollier it was, the better. . . ." Coolidge was "a heavy digger after facts"; Hoover favored technical engineering papers; Roosevelt II "collects old English and French books. He shares my love of books and naturally I think he's a great man"

* Paraffin tests last week determined that 13 Nationalistas fired the fusillade--65 to 80 shots--which slew two persons, wounded 32, at last fortnight's Occupation Day in Ponce. Detective Juan Colon shielded Governor Winship's body with his own, but one bullet ripped the Governor's trouser leg. For once U. S. colonial administration rose to the British standard: The Governor snorted: "What damn poor shots they are!"

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