Inspecting Canadian troops at Aldershot, War Minister Oliver Stanley left his gas mask in his motor, as did the Canadians' commander, Major General Andrew George Lotto McNaughton, and other brass hats. When the gas alarm sounded during a demonstration of trench digging and barbed wire work, Minister Stanley & brass hats complacently watched the soldiers clap on masks as a white cloud rolled across the field. When the cloud reached them, Minister Stanley & brass hats broke for shelter, eyes streaming. The gas was real. "It just goes to show you," observed red-eyed Minister Stanley, "how these men are working . . . under actual war conditions."

To avoid waiting six days for a passenger boat to take him from Guernsey to Alderney (English Channel islands 20 miles apart), a Major L. Palmer mailed himself as a parcel. A buttonhole label announced he was "OHMS"* and paid for.

Although the British post office limits parcels to 15 Ibs., he was delivered four days later under a service "by which a person may be conducted by express messenger to an address or place of interest." Charge: sixpence a mile, plus fare.

Homeward bound from Spain was Flier Harold E. ("Whitey") Dahl, two years and seven months after his plane was shot down behind the Franco lines in the civil war. He became Nationalist Spain's best-known U. S. prisoner when his blonde dancer wife sent her picture with a plea for mercy to Francisco Franco and got the Generalissimo a lot of bad publicity by publishing his reply./- Said Edith Dahl in Philadelphia, where she is doing a Spanish dance number: "Maybe we'll settle down and raise a family." Also looking forward to Dahl's arrival were Los Angeles police, who want him for passing bad checks.

Called to the colors was Prince Fumitaka ("Butch") Konoye. Son of able Prince Konoye, "Butch" captained Princeton's 1937-38 golf team, flunked completely and cheerfully out of college, became dean of a Japanese college in Shanghai. He will serve as a private.

As a change of pace, a picture agency released a photograph of blank-faced Brenda Frazier showing some expression.

Among the baggage of U. S. Minister to Bulgaria George Howard Earle 3rd, when he sails March 9, will be a pinball machine, such as used to be in the executive mansion at Harrisburg, where the Governor (1935-39), during hot conferences, would stride up & down, snap the plunger furiously.

Because the Chinese Government has declared Confucius a national rather than a religious hero, the Vatican gave its missionaries and faithful (3,000,000 Chinese) per mission to join in ceremonial rites honoring the patron saint of China's State religion.

At a University of Cincinnati lecture, John Mason Brown, drama critic of the New York Post, was introduced with flowery praise by English Professor William S. Clark as John Anderson (drama critic of the New York Journal & American). The audience roared when Brown replied: "Of course, I'm really not John Anderson at all; I'm George Bernard Shaw, Mr. O'Neill." At lecture's end Professor Clark, puzzled but persistent, announced that Mr. Anderson would answer questions. Down came the house again when the professor read off the first one: "When is John Mason Brown going to speak?"

* On His Majesty's Service.

/- He closed his letter, with Spanish formality: Su servidor, Q. B. S. P. (your obedient servant, who kisses your feet).

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