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Another cash-and-carry supermarket is the gracious old Peacock Alley of the Willard Hotel, a broad indoor parade where once world statesmen sat and sized up famed society beauties.

These hotels are not unique. All of Washington’s respectable inns and cocktail bars are plagued with loose ladies; there’s nothing much can be done about it, because the muddled situation of District law and law enforcement makes it impossible for the managements to bounce that sort of undesirables—if they are so regarded. The cops would refuse to eject them for fear of suits; the hotels and saloon-keepers are subject to the same liability. We saw hookers, or busy beavers that looked remarkably like them, speak to strangers in the cocktail lounges of the Statler and Carlton, and we were approached by one in the former place.

The hotel situation is never static. Comes war or emergency and the town is always short on rooms. In times of depression or recession there are too many rooms. When your authors began their regular trips to the city in search of material for this book, Washington had not started to take on its Sino-Korean war dress. We and our money were welcomed with open arms. We spent lavishly throughout the summer at the Carlton, a haunt of New Deal and Labor aristocracy, where John L. Lewis and White House assistant David K. Niles maintain luxurious suites.