"Names make news." Last week these made this news:

To scotch rumors buzzing in the world press last week, this unprecedented announcement was made at Rome's Palazzo Venezia, thick-walled executive sanctum of the Dictator: "Her Excellency Donna Rachele Mussolini, wife of II Capo del Governo, is not with child."

One autumn day in 1933, shortly after she sued Harold Fowler McCormick for $1,500,000 for breach of promise, Mrs. Rhoda Tanner Doubleday was standing on the practice tee of the Valley Club at Santa Clara, Calif. Few feet away, she claims, Major Max Fleischmann, chairman of Standard Brands' finance committee, was booming out his opinion of her and her suit. Halting a No. 3 iron in midair, Mrs. Doubleday pricked up her ears, listened, flushed, stormed off the tee. Last week, with the McCormick suit settled for $65,000, she turned on Major Fleischmann. Suing in Manhattan for slander, she told what she overheard: "On the practice tee, Major Fleischmann, in a loud voice, stated . . .: 'What do you think of our blackmailing tart? No lady ever brings a suit for breach of promise. Only a chorus girl does this'". Argued Mrs. Doubleday: "This statement was intended to impute unchastity to me. . . . I am of good family. . . . I have entertained the Prince of Wales. . . ." For the "dastardly slander" she asked $100,000.

In London a solemn convention of British church musicians was admonished by the Most Rev. William Temple, Archbishop of York, to stop ending hymns with "Amen." Said the beefy, chuckling Archbishop: "I would plead that we should get out of the evil habit. If the tune is a good one, it comes to an end by itself. To put an 'Amen' afterward is redundant--I think it is rather a bore."

Early Sunday morning a buoyant, almost jovial, man stepped off the 20th Century Limited in New York's Grand Central Terminal, consented to be photographed, refused to be interviewed, hurried through the almost deserted lobby. A handful of commuters recognized Herbert Hoover, clapped, cheered. On his first visit East since he left the White House, Citizen Hoover came to attend his first meeting as a director of New York Life Insurance Co.*

Paris newshawks learned that the bodies of Pierre Curie (d. 1906) and his wife Marie Sklodowska Curie (d. 1934)) co-discoverers of radium, will soon be removed from their crypt outside Paris, placed in the Pantheon.

On a busy Broadway corner, one Walter King was picked up by a Manhattan detective who accused him vaguely of swindling "a professor who wrote a lot of books." The professor was Duke University's famed psychologist William McDougall./- Last time Professor McDougall saw King was one autumn day in 1933. That day he gave King and a companion $10,550 in the morning, $10,000 more in the afternoon, for "royalty rights'' to oil fields in Iowa.

Furious Mrs. George W. J. Bissell, widow of Pittsburgh's Stoveman Bissell, whose California vacation was spoiled by news that her home, heirlooms and art collection had gone up in smoke, dispatched a letter to the Pittsburgh city council: "I have just been informed . . . that the fire department had come to the fire with insufficient hose to reach the plug, and that by the time they had sent about the city to collect ample hose it was too late. My family had paid taxes on that house for 50 years to procure fire protection, yet in the only fire we have had, your department, through inexcusable carelessness, was unable to protect me. What redress will the city offer me in the way of freedom from further taxes to offset this calamity which has happened to me? I would like your reply before I take the matter to court!"

One hundred and ten years old, by her own well-authenticated account, is Dr-Marie Charlotte deGolier Davenport, perennial lecturer on How to Keep Happy, who boarded a train in Philadelphia, stepped spryly off in Manhattan. Unperturbed by the fact that she had no money, Dr. Davenport made herself at home on a piano stool in the sitting room of the Travelers Aid Society. When newshawks arrived, she spun around on the stool to play a tune called "Dance of London" which she had composed that morning. Then up she jumped, threw a kiss toward the ceiling, cried: "I'm in a different world when you people are not here. I go upstairs and read Spinoza's Moral Ethics. There is a book! I also read Aristotle but he is too much like this Franklin Roosevelt. . . . Do you know Goethe? Do you know Spinoza? Can you speak German? Bah! None of you is educated."

Perched on the edge of a sofa, Dr. Davenport told of her childhood as the daughter of a Russian prince, her study of dietetics at Heidelberg at the age of 81, her invalid husband (age, 67), and her eleven sons (ages, 73 to 93) who, she thinks, are now in Russia. Said she: "I want to go on another lecture tour. But I need a business manager. They had better not let me handle money because I give it away. I don't want it as long as I have my cigarets."

"This is going to be no hippodrome," announced Justice Salvatore A. Cotillo of the New York State Supreme Court, when Hubert Prior ("Rudy") Vallee and his estranged wife Fay Webb Vallee appeared in the Justice's Manhattan courtroom. Crooner Vallee & wife were there to settle a three-year legal wrangle, determine whether Mrs. Vallee's weekly allowance should be upped. Chief issues: 1) What is Rudy's income? 2) Was Rudy unfaithful to Fay? 3) Was Fay unfaithful to Rudy?

Rudy took the stand first thing, swore he could not estimate his annual income within $100,000. Next day both sides called accountants who testified that his income was $155,000 in 1932, dropped to $93,000 in 1933, rose to $121,000 last year. Mrs. Vallee's best witness was her father, Police Chief Clarence E. Webb of Sacramento, Calif., who accused Rudy of teaching Fay to drink. Soon all issues were forgotten in a noisy, three-sided squabble among the opposing lawyers and Justice Cotillo. Climax came when Rudy, enraged by one of his wife's lawyers, struck a fighting pose, threatened to scuffle. Abruptly, Justice Cotillo closed the trial, retired to ponder.

With the Duke of Gloucester, third son of George V, aboard, the cruiser Australia was steaming through the Pacific toward the Panama Canal. One day out of Samoa, it picked up a message from Radioactor Phillips Lord ("Seth Parker") that his round-the-world schooner Seth Parker was encountering gales and rough seas, needed help. Turning about, the Australia sped 300 miles off its course, overhauled the Seth Parker in a smooth sea, steamed off again. Back on its course, the Australia received a second message: SOS and a tale of fresh storms. Back it sped and, while the British Admiralty raised an eyebrow, plucked off nine of the fourteen passengers, stood by until a U. S. Navy collier should arrive and give the well-weathered, well-publicized Seth Parker a tow to port.

*Washington chitchats printed last week that Citizen Hoover wanted the chairmanship of the Red Cross, was too disgruntled to visit Washington after it was given to Admiral Grayson.

/-To prove Lamarck's theory of acquired characteristics, Professor McDougall once trained and observed 37 generations of rats.

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