War Work

In the war world last week millions of big and little men had changed, or planned to change their peace-world jobs. Some of the big ones:

In Hamburg, patriotic Heinrich Hagenbeck, director of one of the world's greatest zoos, announced that the zoo's elephants will soon replace tractors on German farms, that its camels were being trained to pull wagons. All other Hagenbeck animals, except a pair of each species, were being shipped to Russia. Said Herr Hagenbeck, who gave up his car, took a Shetland pony to work: at the war's end Bolsheviks promised to return the animals or replace them with "rare Russian or Asiatic" specimens.

In Nice, dark, scowling Ernst Ruediger Prinz von Starhemberg, ex-Vice Chancellor of Austria, ex-leader of the Austrian Heimwehr, exile, proposed to ask the French Government's permission to recruit an Austrian regiment for service in the French Army. The morale of Austrians who were now forced to fight in German ranks, he added hopefully, "must be low."

Sir Malcolm Campbell, 54, Britain's famed speedboat racer (141.74 miles per hour on Lake Coniston, England) and holder of the world's automobile speed record when it was 301 m.p.h. (present record: 368.85), who organized a motorcycle militia unit of 162 men last March, reported for service at Britain's War Office on a motorcycle.

In Paris, Polish Singer Jan Kiepura tried to enlist in a Polish legion, instead was sent to cheer up U. S. Poles.

As cultivated as a literary salon, France's Ministry of Information this week was jampacked with authors of bestsellers, turning out communiques of cadenced sentences and well-chosen phrases. Handling world-wide radio broadcasts was heavy, bespectacled, sentimental Georges Duhamel, author of The Pasquier Chronicles (TIME, March 21, 1938). In a small office not far from that of Director Jean Hippolyte Giraudoux sat thin, grey-haired Andre Maurois (Ariel, Byron, Disraeli), charged with explaining the value of French culture to the world. In London sat tall, impassive, witty Paul Morand (Open All Night, Closed All Night), professional diplomat acting as liaison officer between the British Ministry of Economic Warfare and the French Blockade Ministry. Pretty, serious, half-Polish Eve Curie (Madame Curie) prepared lectures on scientific subjects for the Information Ministry.

Dropping his role as France's smartest bartender, 45-year-old World War I Veteran Georges Carpentier, who lasted three rounds with Jack Dempsey in Jersey City in 1921, rejoined the air service.

Dropping his vacation on the Riviera, dusky, fortyish Prince Sisowath Moni-vong of Cambodia, small State of south Indo-China, enlisted in the French Army for the duration. Two U. S. aviators disputed priority in enlisting with French forces: Clifford H. de Roode, former pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille, now attached to the First Regiment of Foreign Infantry; and Steele Powers, a 27-year-old Atlanta, Ga. boy, who was accepted immediately, sent to the front, saw action within two weeks.

Continuing her independent attitude toward the war, bone-dry, Virginia-born Lady Astor--who has so far: 1) demanded that boys under 20 be exempt from conscription; 2) seen her four sons (all over 20) join up--this week carried on. She planned to press the British Government to reintroduce the "Dutch Treat" rule of World War I, which, forcing people to buy their own drinks, protected men and women on duty "against hospitality by the public."

Killed in Action. Heinrich von Weizsacker, son of Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, Secretary of State in the German Foreign Ministry, in Poland; Captain Antoni Janusz, 42, winner last year of the James Gordon Bennett Balloon Race, in Poland; Dr. Florence Newsom, British Red Cross worker, in Poland, when her plane was shot down; Prince Oskar of Prussia, 24, Lieutenant of the 51st German Infantry Regiment, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, one of eight Princes of the ex-royal family in active service,*"while leading an attack by his company" in Poland.

*The eight: one of the Kaiser's sons, the late Oskar's father Oskar, and seven grandsons--three sons of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, one of Prince Adalbert, one of the late Prince Joachim, two of Prince Oskar the Elder.

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