For many years the Major of Engineers assigned to that title with the rank and pay of Colonel has been actually the chief officer of the President’s court, the manager of what might be called his public household. Whenever the President entertains on a grand scale he is obviously in command, directing the ceremonials, superintending the evolutions of his staff of dancing and small-talk army men, overseeing the assiduities of the court retinue of servants. When a new ambassador or other eminent personage, domestic or foreign, arrives, he is the functionary who puts on a gorgeous uniform, drives in state in the President’s carriage to the visitor’s lodgings, escorts him to the President, introduces him, takes him away and escorts him back to his lodgings. Also, he in large measure directs the expenditures from the White House privy purse. The Constitution and the Statute Book make no provision for a Lord Great Chamberlain. But constitutions and institutions are vastly different. Part of the President’s time is given to matters contained or supposed to be contained in the written laws, the larger part to matters set down in the unwritten laws and nowhere else. When we broke away from Europe and European political and social ideas, we did not get rid of those customs for high executive officers which had been established among us by royal colonial governors, although they were simple compared with the growing dimensions of our present-day ceremonial. Thus the unwritten laws say that the President must have a court like a king or other royal reigning person. It must be disguised and modified, but it must be “the real thing” in its essence. A court involves a place to hold it, officers to conduct it, an etiquette to guide it, and money to keep it going. The written laws provide for a Presidential residence--they permit the President to sit rent-free. That provision readily stretches to cover a place to hold the court. Again, the written laws permit the President to detach certain public officers for rather indefinite purposes. There you have a Lord Great Chamberlain and a Lord High Steward, and so forth, provided with comparative ease. As for etiquette, that part of the unwritten law need not be reconciled to written law, because etiquette costs nothing but headaches and heart-burnings--and the only reason for attempting to reconcile written law and unwritten is, of course, the matter of money expense. Finally, the written laws provide, or can be stretched to provide, the money for all the bigger items of court expenses--furnishings and repairs and alterations, linen, china, flowers, cooks, scullions, butlers, coachmen, footmen, door-openers and door-closers, card-carriers, light, heat, everything except what is eaten and drunk. As yet no way has been found to stretch the written law or the good nature of Congress to cover the court appetite. It must be appeased out of the President’s salary.