While vacationing in Michigan, Mayor John H. Levi of Miami Beach, Fla., was laid low with neuritis, appealed to a clinic. Prescription: go to Miami Beach and lie in the sun.

The unhappy ending to a 20-year-old story was written when a 13-man military court found World War I's slickest draft-dodger, pudgy Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, guilty of wartime desertion, sent him back to his Army cell on Governor's Island in New York Bay. Vainly had Bergdoll tried to invoke the statute of limitations as a peacetime fugitive by testifying that, while everybody thought he was still in Germany, he had twice returned to U. S. jurisdiction, had twice hidden in his Philadelphia home (once for four years), since his escape in 1920. But the court pointed out that he had escaped while the U. S. was technically at war, and there is no statute of limitations on wartime deserters. The court gave him three years at hard labor, to be added to his old five-year sentence for draft evasion. If he behaves, with deductions for the six months he has already served, Prisoner 289 will be free by December 1944.

Crack British flyer Amy Johnson, who angrily enlisted as a lorry driver when the Civil Air Guard turned her down as an aviatrix, was fined 10s. in a Cardiff, South Wales, court for driving without a license, -L-3 for not stopping when ordered, -L-2 for careless driving, 178. 6d. for not observing blackout headlight restrictions. Total fine: $25.50. The arresting constable complained that Amy used her nails on him, but she held her fingers up to the judge, said, "You can see I haven't got the kind of nails which scratch." To the officer's accusation that she cursed him, she replied: "I'm sorry about the language but I work with pilots and say 'damn' like an adjective."

The 70-ton, 26-knot motor yacht Q. E. D., streamlined startler designed by and built for Dutch Airman Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker in his slickest airflow style, sank in the Hudson River near Yonkers, N. Y. Honeymooning on the borrowed boat were a bride and groom of five hours, friends of Fokker, when a fire started in an ornamental fireplace in an after cabin, spread quickly, driving honeymooners and crew overboard. At the launching a year ago, Designer Fokker mused: "I hope it will be obsolete within two years. . . . That is good. That is progress. Today there are too many yachts that outlive their owners. . . ."

Informed that a spy was taking pictures of the plant, Watertown, Mass, police sped to the U. S. Army's Watertown Arsenal. There beside the railroad tracks, Graflex in hand, was Lucius Beebe, who elaborately explained that he was waiting for Boston & Albany's 601 to come by so that he could take its picture for his forthcoming book on American railroading.*

Irene Castle McLaughlin, longtime plaintiff in a divorce suit against Major Frederic McLaughlin, petitioned that their daughter Barbara, 14, be removed from Ferry Hall school in Lake Forest, Ill. (Alma Mater of Jean Harlow), transferred to an eastern school. She testified: "I visited Ferry Hall last spring and was disappointed by the class of girls there. Some of them dyed their hair. . . . One day recently, I asked Barbara to come and see me and she said she couldn't because they were going to have steak for dinner." Steak or no steak, the court ruled that Barbara should stay at Ferry Hall.

Biggest social blow-off in London since the war began was the wedding of Winston Churchill's big blond son Randolph, 28, to the Hon. Pamela Digby, 19, eldest daughter of horsy Edward Kenelm Digby, Baron Digby. During the service Winston wept, but as he left the Queen Anne style St. John's church in Smith Square he beamed with Alfred Duff Cooper as the crowds, still exuberant over the debate on Lloyd George's speech the day before (see p. 36), howled "Good old Duff! Good old Churchill!" Press photographers had a field day as Randolph, ex-Hearst newspaperman, now a subaltern with a mechanized unit, stood smiling with his blue-frocked bride. The ceremony was followed by a large buffet luncheon party at Admiralty House, complete with dukes and duchesses, where Winston downed two goblets of champagne, munched ice cream, commented lugubriously: "We must eat, we must eat."

*His first, High Iron, was published last year (TIME, Oct. 31).

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