The air suddenly feels like spring. Soft, damp and somewhat gray is this day, but somehow you feel even though winter may make sallies, she has retreated and is on her northward journey! I could not resist going out in my own car for a little while this morning to drive down along the Potomac and to have a look at the ice which is melting. Everywhere people are wondering how much harm will now be done as the ice goes out of all our rivers and the snow melts. Though I was only out for three-quarters of an hour, I will have to confess to a real Wanderlust, as I came back and parked my car I suddenly had a desire for picnic baskets and the open road and miles of country where nobody would care what you were doing.

If we still have to have dust storms, I am rather glad that they are not coming now while Congress is still in session for it seems to me a good thing for us all over the country to realize that these dust storms are not local problems. They affect the country as a whole and the results can no more be confined to one locality than can the cure be undertaken by any particular group of states. Land use is becoming more and more a general national interest and should be as much a study in the cities as in the country. For with the proper use of land, many of our greatest troubles—dust storms, floods, over-production of this and that, would at least be measurably controlled.

Two friends came to lunch and since then a succession of visitors. First a man who had said he wanted to give me some information but who really wanted to get back to work! Then a very keen young woman wanting to talk housing. Her general observations on the situation interested me greatly for of her type good public servants are made. Finally two ladies came to ask me to come to a political study group sometime in May—a nonpartisan organization that hears both sides of every question. An amount of tolerance which is not often attained by groups of either men or women and which ought certainly to be encouraged.