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Presidential Cruise

DR. MCINTIRE INSISTS THAT THE PRESIDENT GET AWAY FROM Washington for a complete change at regular intervals. His associates marvel at Mr. Roosevelt's ability at such times to forget the concerns that are ordinarily his. On his recent cruise, his companions often would find him in his quarters, in the middle of the morning, reading a detective story, working with his stamps or just loafing. The business of the day, forwarded by radio from the White House, was dispensed with in not more than half an hour.

The President might sit in the sun alone on the boat deck, and lunch alone in his quarters. In the afternoon there would be fishing. The President's friends brag about his skill at deep-sea fishing and recall how in 1935 he brought in a 237-pound shark, alone, Dr. McIntire says proudly, and without the harness that deep-sea fishermen wear. His shoulder and arm muscles are amazingly well developed.

Besides providing a healthy outing, his cruises renew for the President his strong attachment to the navy. On this latest cruise he carried out the mysterious scouting operations that he hinted at just before embarking. If anything was needed to make the trip perfect it was this last touch, the sense of participation in the actual work of the navy at a time of crisis.

Returning to Washington, he faced his first press conference with the old challenge, his tanned face frequently crinkling into a laugh, his cigarette holder at a jaunty angle. Obviously he was still enjoying his job, taking almost boyish pleasure in the prerogatives of power, in the drama, the excitement and the mystery. One can readily believe that he once said to a friend: "Wouldn't you be President if you could? Wouldn't anybody?"

A Born Showman

AN IMPORTANT ENTRY ON THE ASSET SIDE OF THE PRESIDENT'S political ledger is his flair for the dramatic. He has the actor's sense of a crowd; and here, too, his infirmity has been an advantage. He never walks on the platform as an ordinary man would. The scene is carefully stage-man-aged, of necessity, so that at the climactic moment he appears, as the god from the machine, radiant and smiling. A veteran trouper, he spaces his laughs and knows when to expect the rewarding applause.

But indignant critics who damned him in 1936 for "putting on an act" were mistaken. It is not merely an act. Behind the smooth flow of his public speech is the facile response of a ready emotional apparatus. His critics on the right have damned him, too, for his inconsistency, forgetting that he is a consummate politician who knows very well that consistency is a rare luxury. Consistency in his objectives is what Mr. Roosevelt himself has claimed.

This self-confident cavalier takes ideas, phrases, jokes, even prepared speeches, from the brilliant men around him; his final manuscript may hear the imprint of four or five hands besides his own. He is full of quips and pranks even in a time such as the present. A young New Dealer gets a kidding memorandum about a minor illness that has kept him at home, written in the President's hand and signed "FDR, M.D." In some ways a traditionalist, he yet loves the drama of surprise. He abandoned diplomatic formality and received new envoys in a business suit seated behind his desk, waiving the customary stilted speech of welcome. Often he seems determined to be an impish paradox.

During the September crisis he went for a weekend the Presidential yacht, Potomac, the guests being two elderly friends of his mother from Hyde Park, the brother of one of these ladies, a schoolgirl relative of his wife, her friend and the friend's father. before they returned the President had conversed with each on the subject dearest to his or her heart. One of the guests found himself talking with one of the most influential men in contemporary life, at a moment when the world was in flames, about the respective merits of range and blooded cattle. The tactful host had learned that his guest was rancher from Wyoming.

He enjoys the company of men whose conversation crackles with ideas or glows with wit -- Tommy Corcoran, Justice Frankfurter, Adolf Berle, Archibald MacLeish, Justice Douglas. Glibly he turns from one to another roaming diverse fields of specialized knowledge. Once while discussing the sinking of a foreign merchant vessel the President remarked: "I should say that that occurred very close to such-and-such a rock which at high tide is at least twenty feet out of water." A naval aide ventured that the rock in question was submerged even at low tide. They looked at the charts, and the President was proved correct

The circle of his intimates has remained remarkably constant. Perhaps the dominant figure in his life, his mother, has been at the side of her only child during all the history-making ceremonials in which he has participated. Her charm, her humor, her energy are in this son who was so carefully watched, so carefully reared. They are of the Hudson Valley aristocracy, and in mother and son there is an easy and natural acceptance of a special place in the world.