Lady of Locarno

Last week death came to Nobel Prize Winner Sir Austen Chamberlain's widow," the Lady of Locarno." Ivy Muriel, Lady Chamberlain, may be remembered longest because one day in Switzerland she gave what cables called "the world's most im portant picnic." This was at Locarno in 1925. Those tireless peace men, Aristide Briand and Austen Chamberlain, were trying to per suade the Republic of Germany to enter the League of Nations and make a final peace pact. The Republic had its finger in its mouth. Then Mrs. Austen Chamberlain, her husband's ablest helper, rose to the emergency. She chartered a small yacht, stocked it with international delicacies, and during one long afternoon the plenipotentiaries of Britain, Germany and France relaxed on the placid bosom of Lake Maggiore.

After the picnic the Locarno chill thawed into the mellow "Spirit of Locarno." A peace pact was initialed, with Benito Mussolini rushing up to sign at the last moment. Amid worldwide optimistic hopes for a New Era, too little attention was paid to what such then uncensored German papers as the famed Berliner Tage-blatt had to say: "Germany, which two years ago was isolated . . . has . . . become a factor of might once more."

All the Chamberlain family's peace and appeasement efforts were frustrated in the end, but when "the Lady of Locarno" died last week one of her most prized possessions was still the gold pen with which the Locarno Pact was signed. > Two other ladies of Great Britain made news last week:

Mrs. Beatrice Clough Rathbone, a young Boston socialite who spent much of her youth in China, was about to join Lady Astor in the House of Commons as its second U. S.-born female M.P.

Mrs. Rathbone was "adopted unanimously and unopposed" by the constituency of her late husband, Flying Officer John Rankin Rathbone, who in 1939 was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply. Twelve other women are M.P.s: three, like Mrs. Rathbone, succeeded their husbands.

Lady Howard of Effingham, who was born in Hungary and spent most of her youth in Budapest, was suddenly "detained" by Scotland Yard under the Defense of the Realm Act. Britons were relieved to know that her blue-blooded husband, Lord Howard of Effingham, has long been separated from her.

Unlike her fellow Hungarian, Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenbourg-Schillingsfurst, whose deportation from the U. S. is imminent, Lady Howard worked tirelessly after break of World War II knitting comforts for sailors, organizing bridge-party drives to buy Spitfire planes for the defense of Britain. Said estranged Lord Howard: "Lady Howard has done nothing but help people and work for people. . . . There is no one more English than she is. ... Whether she has any political interests I don't know."P: The Rome radio took quick advantage of the fact that British officials kept secret the reason for the arrest. Purporting to give the secret away, the Fascist announcer said: "Lady Howard . . . was interned because she illustrated to Wendell Willkie the real situation prevailing in Britain." Said Wendell Willkie: "I didn't even know there was such a person."

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