Excerpts of the President's News Conference

I don't think the death of General Wood will make any difference about the administration of the insular affairs.

I didn't intend to indicate the other day that I had reached any settled conclusion as to where the Insular Bureau ought to be placed, if it is taken out of the War Department. I suggested that my offhand thought was that the Department of the Interior would seem to be the natural department for it to go to. I haven't felt, though, that there was much disposition on the part of Congress to make a change. General Wood suggested when he was here the setting up of an entirely new department in which all those things would be gathered. I haven't liked the idea of establishing a new department. As the conference knows, I have been rather more interested in the consolidation of departments already established than of establishing any new ones. Congress has set up and I have signed some bills for new commissions and so on, as there didn't seem to be any other way to do. I have done it regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is established you find that it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk with people that I appoint to commissions and tell them that I would like to have them go on to the various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind.