Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Washington Di9est> Presidential Inaugurations Are Mostly Circumstantial By BAUKHAGE Sews Analyst and Commentator. WASHINGTON.—“The King is dead, long live the King.” Thus the ancient rite proclaimed a new sovereign who “by the grace of God” must take up the scepter. At once a hundred pairs of hands are busy preparing for the coronation. Courtiers and commoners, the noble masters and mistresses of cere mony, seamstresses and workmen, knights and stable boys, each trained to his task begin their work for the great event. Form and program may differ, but where kings and emperors reign, fee ceremony, according to the stern law ol tradition, seldom varies in any felt the smallest degree. BACKHAGB Only a cataclysm can effect a* Change. I heard about my first cor onation when I was 12 years old. I remember it for two reasons, one being the fact that it almost didn’t come off. On the very eve of the eeremonial day, the heir to the throne fell ill. All celebration was called off. And then on the day after the event was to have taken place, as the na tion waited anxi- iously to hear the fate of its sov- ereign-to-b^. a shocking and ludi crous thing occurred. One of the country’s leading news papers came out with a report of fee coronation, mentioning even Minor details just as if it occurred (end just as it did oocur later). This journalistic faux-pas was forgotten by most people outside at the profession, but I was to be reminded of it when I went to work on a rival newspaper in London many years later and beard the tale retold as a grim warning to pressmen and jour nalists. The editor of the erring journal didn’t think he was taking much of a chance. He knew the corona tion program never varied from the neign of one sovereign to another. Up until that time, I suppose, no English king had ever been rash enough to become ill and change fee program. As a matter of fact, 1 didn't take fee warning seriously. Later I was able to insert much color in my report of the wedding of a royal German princess by the simple ex pedient of translating a story of the ■uptial ceremonies of her brother which had appeared in a Berlin newspaper some years before. But no one could attempt to write ■p the inauguration of an American President from the account of a previous ceremony. A mere two eenturies is short enough in a na tion's history, to be sure, but many feanges have taken place in our habits and customs since George Washington took over the presiden tial oath of office. It is sair that George Wash- bigton never considered himself America’s first President, never referred to himself or was re ferred to by his contemporaries as such, since jthers served be fore bin under the first consti tution. The United States was already a nation, recognized as such by the presence of foreign ambassadors on \pril 30, 1789, fee day Washington took the •ath of office. The position of the previous “presidents” was largely honorary and not filled by popular vote, and when the day came to invest Wash ington with the new powers, there was no precedent, no set of rules to follow. New York was the capital, and General Washington set out' from Mount Vernon to New York on the long journey which turned out to he a spontaneous tour of triumph with a reception at every city along fee way. There was no dearth of ideas as to the social program. A flower-be decked barge, accompanied by a whole flotilla of private craft, car ried the President-Elect across the Hudson, and he was wined and dined and welcomed 1 with gaily- bedizened guards of honor sur- founding him. But when it came to the actual •sremony, a deadlock occurred. The senate argued for an hour as to whether it should receive the new chief executive seated or whether fee members should rise. Indeed, feey might be jalking still if the house of representatives had not suddenly appeared. Washington then entered the building with due pomp and finally wa ■ led to an out door balcony where the crowds of Broad street witnessed his oath. That part of the ceremony— fee taking of the oath out of doors — is now an established precedent, although it was ei ther forgotten or ignored until dames Monroe’s day. The cham ber of the senate or the house where it took place until Mon roe’s time was. however, usual ly open to as many of the pub- ■c as could find room. Circumstance has contributed to ooriations in the program. Besides fee moving of the capital in the •arty days, there have been fee cases of death in office. Five times a President has taken the oath with out the usual ceremony for this rea son. President William Henry Har rison came into office as a hardy military hero, and, scorning a car riage, rode bare-headed to the Cap itol on horseback. A month later be died. Vice-President John Tyler was in Williamsburg and did not reach Washington until two days after the appointed date. Tyler took the oath on April 6, 1841, in Brown’s hotel in fee presence of members of fee cabinet. The next emergency installation took place when Andrew Johnson took the oath in fee Kirkwood hotel a few hours after Abraham Lincoln had died from an assassin’s bullet. The first time that a President was sworn in away from Washington since it had become the nation's capital was when Vice-President Chester Arthur took the oath in his own home in New York City shortly after the news came of President James Garfield’s death at Long Beach. When President William McKin ley was shot at the Pan-American exposition, Vice-President Theodore Koosevelt hurried to Buffalo in time to take the oath in the home of Ans- ley Wilcox on the same day fee President expired. And most df us are familiar with the scene in the little Northampton home where by lamplight a father, as the witness ing notary, took the oath of his son, and Calvin Coolidge succeed ed Warren Harding who had passed away a few hours before in a San Francisco hotel. When Franklin Roosevelt died at Warm Springs in 1945, Harry Truman took the oath in the White House executive wing. This was “public’* In the sense that the door to the little office was open, and photographers and newsmen, this one among them, looked over each other’s heads from the crowded cor ridors. Some Variation* Took Place Another circumstance has affect ed the procedure of the accession to office. Because of the variability of the calendar, March fourth has four times fallen on Sunday. Until Wood- row Wilson took the oath on Sun day, March 4. 1917, in the Presi dent’s room in the Capitol, no Presi dent had ventured to keep the law and violate the Sabbath. President Monroe on succeeding himself had announced simply that he would take the oath on Monday, March 5. In 1849, the same thing occurred in’ the case of President Zachary Taylor. But for some rea son, President Rutherford Hayes ac tually became President before his time. He was secretly sworn in on Saturday, the third, the ceremony being repeated on the fifth in public. For some years it has been eonsidered necessary for an out going President, if there Is one, to take part in the ceremony. His presence has been as much expected in the carriage or au tomobile which carries both men to the Capitol as the Presi dent-Elect. This was not always so, and both the Adamses made it a point to absent themselves, the former leaving the city be fore the ceremony, and the oth er taking a horseback ride at the moment when the guns boomed out the salute to his bitterly-hated opponent. Perhaps the inaugural day first began to take on its present com plexion with the advent of Presi dent James Madison. People thronged into the capital and the first inaugural bail was held. Presi dent Monroe, who followed him. gave us another precedent — the presence of the marine band. But it was left to Martin Van Buren to bear a unique honor. He was the first American-bom citizen to hold that office. Up until his time the Presidents were all former British subjects. Because of the war and a desire to emphasize the ‘‘fourth-term’’ as little as possible, fee 1945 inaugura tion ceremonies of Franklin D. Roosevelt took place on the White House portico instead of on a plat form on the east front of the Capitol building which is now accepted as the usual location. No outgoing President will ride with Harry Truman this year, but one ex-President may attend the ceremonies. The warm feeling which exists between the former small-town boy from Missouri and the wealthy retired engineer will undoubtedly assure Herbert Hoover a place of honor if he wishes to accept lb UJ&xikltf. (Pix&u/UL • IDAHO'S BEN HURS D EEP in eastern Idaho where the gem state rubs bor-v ders with the Teton country of Wyoming is the homey town of Driggs, a right friendly little place until snow tucks in the mountain valley for the winter. Then things begin to hum at his home of the All-Amer ica Cutter Racing association where good horseflesh and two-runner sleighs team together during January and February to revive an old sport for spectators across eastern Idaho and western Wyoming. The picture to the 'eft is of Donna Kempton, queen of the 1948 Driggs cutter races, holding the sorrel team of Ken Johnson, also of Driggs. This team is one of the tops in the field of some 40 annual entries in the cutter circuit. Racing enthusiasts, after ransacking every old barn and warehouse in the area in search of oldtime cutters, have begun building their own. The new model shown in the circle is from Jackson Hole, Wyo. To the left is an old cutter (foreground) ahead by a nose of the newer chariot-style type. Top-flight cutters make the quarter-mile dash in 22 to 23 sec onds. Oldtimers in the neighborhood have been herd ing these snow sulkies around for the last 20 years, but it wasn't until just four years ago that cutter racing was formally organized. Teams of two horses always are used. Horsemen claim a winter on the cutter circuit is good for a horse jaded from too long on a track. HOW IS YOUR 'A' PITCH? If It isn’t one thing it’s another. Now the United Nations is asked to call an international conference on the "A” pitch. This is not a southpaw baseball maneuver. The “A” pitch is the basic pitch in music, and Dr. Hermann Zeissl, head of the Austrian delegation to the U. N. cultural organization, charges that almost no country is adhering to the standard pitch as established in 1885 in Vienna. * Maybe at last here is a clue to what’s really wrong with the world! Has man grown careless about his "A” pitch? • Is the warld in fee shape it is in because of Sour NotesT ♦ Is it possible that the cry, “Sound your ‘A’!” brings on trouble all over the earth? * Dr. Zeissl says that the Vienna conference set the standard “A” pitch at 435 cycles a second. Through fee years it has been knocked around like everything else, it appears. Here in America, for instance, 440 cycles is observed in the best circles. In the “Sweet Adeline” and “Since You Were Sweet Sixteen” ... it swerves all over the lot, from as low as 422VJ bid to 500 asked, we hear. • It is declared by Dr. Zeissl that fee original tuning fork used to set fee international “A” pitch and keep the world on key has been preserved in Viehr a. He wants everything reset by it. It is not as ridiculous as it sounds (no pun). Nobody has yet been able to put the finger on what is really disturbing the earth so much. • It might very well be feat trouble wife the “A” pitch is it. Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast, the poet said, but the global musio we have been getting hasn’t been doing the job, obviously. Sav age breast soothing has de clined 76 per cent in the last 10 years, our statistician re ports. • Who can estimate to ! what ex tent defective "A” pitch is respon sible for all that has happened to us since the early thirties? Hitler was a musicker in a small pro vincial way. Maybe he was away off the Vienna standard of 435 cycles to begin with. * This department is for an .n- ternational conference, but fast. The thing must be looked into. How does President Truman stand? Has America an “A” pilch policy? Are we in accord wife England and France and Italy? * It it possible Russia has sabotaged the "A” pitch and is there in a pumpkin shell somewhere some papers feat will show this up? * When Vishinsky, Molotov and Stalin clear their throats and sing "Mi-mi-mi,” are they any where near the same key as the rest of us? Let’s get to the bottom of this. (Provided, of course, it doesn’t cost too much. That’s what we’re afraid of.) We look for a proposal for an American I. A. P. P. C. (International A Pitch Preservation Commission) with unlimited funds. If we can help the world back to the Vienna "A” string standard by discussion, all very well. but. fair warning, no LOANS! Sscretary Royall Disapproves CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENT. BUSINESS & INVEST. OFPQB. Operate Vending Machine*. Small toHUI irwestment. Long profit and work. Start small. Grow. Our booklet. •‘Dollars from Penneys FREE. T. O. Tnomas Co., IttTB Jefferson, Padacafc, Ky. MISCELLANEOUS I T ISN’T being advertised, but one oiesei. foe saw mills: reconditioned high official who frowned on the *lt75"'chrysSr'so*‘h Ta p.. $14S0. •» International model U-2i. ^ 12 months. SIMMONS DIEl EL * MENT CO., Dial 71*1, W/Jterbnrn, S. C. TREE RIPENED ORANGES Picked fresh from the tree and delivered to your door by fast express. $3.00 per bushel express collect. Send your order and check *e K. B. DOWNING. JR. . _ Bex 82$ Wanchnla, Via. THEN AND NOW Benedict Arnold in bis grave Coldly his opinion gave: "They got me swiftly, face to face, Without a pumpkin tn the case! "There was no long drawnout delay— Treason was treason in my l fled, but if l stayed I’ll bet The probers would be prob ing yet!" Dear Hi: Giveaway programs aye just like the old dish nights in theaters. Ex cept that now you get a house to match the dishes! • This morning I greeted my gro cer: "Hello, Mac, what’s up?” He replied: "Everything!” BLUE BARRON. * • • RESPITE The long campaign is over, Done are those trips and drives; The candidates feel better. And, mister, do their wives!!! * • • VASISHISG AMERICANISMS "Here’s two dollars; get yourself something nice for Christmas." • "l want a good tree if it costs as much as a dollar fifty." » I’d like to get ten five-dollar gold pieces." • • • A slot macnine giving hot cof fee has been introduced in the subway but we assume you get the hard roll with Jam in the train doorway as usual. REAL ESTATE—HOUSES FOR SALE New. 2-bedroom house, CBS, modern; near Melbourne; 2 3 acre: $6,900. Or 3-bedroom. 2-story, frame house; express modem: ry, fr _ shrubbery; citrus and ol Adjoining land and grove reasoname Bex 150 STAR ROUTE, Melbonrne. trees. «7J0*- SEEDS, PLANTS, ETC. OUTSTANDING fruit tree, Bhrtfb collec tions to offer at very reasonable pri Free colorful catalog sent upon reqi| Liberal discounts on commercial ‘It’s the Quality That Counts' EMPIRE NURSER Baileytea RSERT A ORCBAM P. O. Bex 100 Buy U. S. Savings mi Promptly Relievos (Rem i csM) CMjf 8 mm for baby’s skle Bk EDspas prosecution of Jap war lords was the top man in\ the army depart- mer.t—Secretary of the Army Ken neth Royall. When Joseph B. Keenan, patri otic attorney who spent two years of his life as war-crimes prose- . .. cutor in Tokyo, reported to Royall r^ened otrus' the other day, the secretary of the picked fresh from my grove andshipped vie army stated flatly that he was dead §5 e dilWe?^d vU e^i>resi 0 iin'ywh^ln the opposed to war-crimes prosecution. United States upon receipt of yowr check “Suppose something should hap- jp^cfoSEY*, 6 Box r 295, Wanehals, Flerlde pen in Berlin to cause a war,” ar j a gued Royall. “The Russians might I Cl K AIN & .. shoot General Clay as a war criml- ^S^with’ order.^xmSm^TOilect a^Sl nal—if we set this precedent.” zimmerman, Bex 5$i. FinecaaUe. m. “They probably would,” replied Keenan. “Those are the risks that brave men take. “Bat,’’ continaed Keenan, “when a boy of 20 Is taken from his home through no fault of Ids, and put on a transport, and sails up to Okinawa and then is told by his commander to take that Island, though he may not want to go at all and though he knows his chances of coming out alive are almost nil—then I say that fee war lords who start such a war must be punished. “It was no fault of millions of American boys that they had to leave their homes. It was the fault of a little group of men sitting safe ly In Tokyo who decreed that Japan was to rule the Pacific. And when we make an example of them,” concluded Keenan, “there will be less chance of war in the future.” NOTE: Secretary of the Army Royall defended the Nazi saboteurs in court when they were tried as spies during the war. He also has done his best to -discourage the war-crimes trials at Nuremburg.' However, this Is the first time Roy all put himself on recorcLso bluntly regarding a policy which has been officially adopted by the U. S. gov. ernment. U. S. Toys With Peace Recently, a Latin American pres ident who had disbanded his army and announced to the world that his colonels now would become school teachers, appealed to the Pan American union for aid. His country, Costa Rica, had just signed the Pan-American mutual defense pact, a history-making doc ument pledging all Pan-American nations to come to each others’ help —a pact rightfully expected to make the western hemisphere a peaceful model in contrast with cha otic, wam-tom Europe. And having trusted this pact, and disbanded his army, Presidenl[_ Figueres of Costa Rica appealed to fee Pan-American union. For six hours fee union debat ed this emergency call. They discussed, argued, orated. This is Rot unusual. Pan-American meetings always lean heavily on forensics, and it always takes strong leadership from the Unit ed States in consultation with Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexi co and a few others to harness the oratory and arrive at defi nite conclusions. At this meeting, the U. S. A. was represented by charming, ineffectu al Paul Daniels, chief of the Amer ican republics division. Everyone likes Daniels, but Latin American ambassadors aren’t guided by his judgment. He is considered a No. 3 man in a badly muddled state de. partment. Previous Peace Precedents In contrast, here Is how the Unit ed States handled earlier threats of war. 1. WHEN war threatened between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1928, Charles Evans Hughes and Secre tary of State Frank B. Kellogg met all day. Hughes was an ex-secre tary of state, ex-presidential can didate—one of the biggest men in the nation. So was Kellogg. The fact that they dropped everything, concentrated all their time on peace, made a profound impression in Lab in America. 2. WHEN war threatened between Russia and China in Manchuria in 1930, Secretary of State SUmson staged a meeting of every ambas sador and minister at the White House. He used not only the force of his own dynamic personality, but also the prestige of the White House to demand that the two nations cease belligerent moves. He suc ceeded. 3. WHEN various Warlike moves were made between Peru, Colom bia, Venezuela and Central Ameri can countries, Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, a man with great prestige throughout Latin America, acted in person. Peace was too precious. He did not leave matters to subordinates. Yet when* the vital test of the Pan-American >iefense pact came up this weak. Secretary of State Marshall issued no statement from his sick bed. President Truman kept silent, and Acting Secretary Lovett was nowhere to be found. A No. 3 man without even the rank of as sistant secretary represented fee great and powerful U. S. A. No wonder the meeting adjourned with no real result. No wonder Latin America got fee impression feat fee U. S. wasn’t much inter ested in fee defense pact Getting Deaf? ; joy of IMa* Thousands now know these is no < for letting deafness kill the j An amazing new radionict 1 has been perfected in the j Radio laboratories—so simple—so easy to use it can be sent to you for 10-day free trial, e Ready to wear, no individual fit ting necessary. Accepted by the / Medical Association, Council < Medicine. Come out of that silence. Write today for foil Zenith Radio Co—, Hearing sion. Dept. 19 - AT, 5801 Di Chicago 39, Illinois. 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