THE PRESIDENCY: The White House Week: Dec. 3, 1923

  • THE PRESIDENCY

    The White House Week

    The business of preparing his message to Congress took up a large part of the President's time. Much of the remainder was spent in a series of conferences with members of Congress who had arrived in the Capital in advance of the opening of Congress. Committee heads and Republican leaders of the Senate and House popped in to explain their plans and discover just what support they might expect from the White House. Multitudinous affairs of this kind kept the President from many other activities.

    ¶ A delegation representing the Federal Council of Churches and headed by George W. Wickersham called at the White House to tell the President that the Protestant Churches of the U. S. favor participation in the World Court. The President was noncommittal in his reply. Announcement was made that the President would decline all invitations which might take him away from Washington before the opening of Congress. Mr. Coolidge's tickets to the West Point-Annapolis football game, in Manhattan (which Mr. Coolidge, as Vice President, attended last year and the year before), were used by Secretary Slemp, who took a number of disabled veterans as his guests.

    ¶ Mr. Coolidge, along with Messrs. William H. Taft and Woodrow Wilson, was made Honorary Governor General of the National Society of Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims; the President donned cap and gown and was initiated into the John Adams Senate, Boston University Chapter, of Delta Theta Phi Law Fraternity at the White House in the presence of 200 members of that organization in similar garments.