Late last week the White House stirred with sudden, mysterious activity. President Hoover had not been back 30 minutes from his Mid-West trip (see p. ioj before Secretary of State Stimson hurried in to see him. Soon a presidential message to Utah's Senator Reed Smoot in Salt Lake City started the Finance Committee Chairman at top speed to Washington. Connecticut's Representative Tilson, House floor leader, was asked to the White House for the night. Pennsylvania's Senator Reed was asked to report for breakfast next morning. Virginia's Senator Glass hustled up from his Lynchburg home to answer a Hoover summons. Massachusetts' Representative Treadway had to leave an Amherst alumni banquet because his President wanted him quickly in Washington. Acting Secretary of the Treasury Mills kept popping in and out of the President's office every few minutes. President Hoover talked over long-distance telephone with Senator Borah in Idaho, Senator Robinson in Arkansas, Representative Hawley in Oregon. Senator Vandenberg of Michigan, junketing in Canada, received a call from the White House in a Toronto drug store. Other Senators and Representatives, Republican and Democratic, trooped into the White House to confer with the President, trooped out again nodding their heads in silent approval. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon was reached by telephone in England for a long talk with the President.
Out of the commotion came word, vague at first, that President Hoover had started to Do Something about the worldwide Depression of which he had spoken so often, from which he had just again appealed in his Mid-Western speeches. For weeks he had been mulling over the situation. Germany, he knew, was in desperate straits. Ambassador Sackett had lately been home with first-hand reports and descriptions. Ambassadors Gibson and Dawes on recent White House visits had told of the bog into which Europe's economy, weighted by Germany, was sinking. Senator Morrow, just back from Germany, had brought word of the fear of an armed uprising there. The President had been reading in the newspapers of Chancellor Briining's visit to Prime Minister MacDonald at "Chequers" to seek relief from"Reparations (TIME, June 15). U. S. bankers with five billion dollars invested in Europe had long been prodding the White House to ACT, to avert Germany's economic and perhaps political collapse. Since June i, $250,000,000 in gold reserves had fled from the Reichsbank.