AT WHITE HOUSE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 13

AT WHITE HOUSE

PRESIDENT'S COUNSELLOR

Mrs. Hoover, the U.S.A. President's wife, has kept houso literally from China to Peru. Aa a young bride in Tientsin, she endured a frightful siege from bandits intent on torture aud murder. The domestic sido of White Houso costs the United States from first to last about £100,000 a year. Twelve greenhouses force roses and carnations for tho White House balls. Twenty servants aro paid by Congress, and about £5000 a year is allowed for travelling expenses' and. official entertaining. "Our place is only a hut,'' said Mrs. Hoover, laughingly, to an interviewer .recently, "compared to that of Brazil ;and Argentina. Yet this site and its buildings arc assessed for taxes at over £5,000,000!

"There is only one Whito House in our .history. George and Martha Washington selected the site. But they never lived here. Tho first ITirst Lady was Abigail Adams. And how terrified she was, as her coach rumbled through the forests and jungles and swamps of tho raw Federal capital of Napoleon's day!" " '. ■

Mrs. Hoover is an enthusiast about women's education, and resents the "absurd distortion" of the aim and purpose of American girls as portrayed in European newspapers. She points out that at Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley earnest young women -pore over the study of tho, humanities, to which they-now add the science of government and international -law, social ethics, and languages.

"If our girls do smoke and keep late hours," she added,, "they consider their physical fitness more than equal to the test. And when they marry, they do aspire to be partners, in the French sense-^and more.V At White House, Mrs. Hoover is the President's "private secretarj'," and also his counsellor. The | President defers to "Lou" in all things. Law and tradition have it that the President must always go first, but Mr. Hoover has changed tho tradition. . : The same rule is observed in State progress at banquets, and also at receptions at tho famous Red and East Booms, where long ago Abigail Adams hung out her home-washed linen, thinking of her burly husband who had gone to beard King George 111. in St. James's Palace.