Washington

Jesse Jones got tired of electric shocks in his office, put rubber bonnets on all his doorknobs. >> An airport cab starter threatened to knock Fiorello H. LaGuardia's block off when the New York Mayor parked his car across the taxi line. Fiorello offered to lick any three taxi drivers, was led off gesticulating by airline officials. >> General John J. Pershing, 80, lay ill of age's infirmities in Walter Reed Hospital. >> Eugene Meyer lost his well-kept temper when his plane hit a storm, a tray-bearing stewardess hit the floor, and a chicken leg came to rest on his trim grey head. >> John L Lewis' maid refused to sit in a Jim Crow seat, got arrested, said "Mr. Lewis will fix you for this." >> Representative Clare Hoffman (R., Mich.) asked that "applause" (to his speech) be stricken from the Congressional Record "because there was none." Speaker Sam Rayburn suggested making such omissions permanent and universal. >> Eleanor Roosevelt offered to refund her half of a $1,000 fee (shared by her agent) for speaking at a Burlington, Vt. hospital benefit because the fee wiped out the benefit, but the sponsors declined. >> Franklin D. Roosevelt got a sore throat, cancelled plans to go to the Harvard Commencement this week.

Anne Bullitt, motherless little rich girl who presided as first lady at the gloomy U.S. Embassy in Moscow back in 1934, was introduced to grown-up Washington society last week, will make her formal debut at Philadelphia on the 27th. Heiress to the Philadelphia Bullitt fortune, sophisticated beyond her years from Embassy life with father in Moscow and Paris, "finished" at Foxcroft, she is a dark-haired beauty in her own right.

Warriors & Defenders

Farina, the spindly, pigtailed pickaninny of the old "Our Gang" comedies, turned up in the Army as husky, close-cropped Private Alan Clay Hoskins. >> John Roosevelt, youngest of the President's sons, went on active duty with the Naval Reserve, joined Brothers James, Franklin Jr. and Elliott, in uniform. >> The fabulously wealthy Maharaja of Jaipur, 29, joined the British forces in Egypt as a captain. At home he has a private army of his own, rides in a solid gold-and-silver coach. >> Mrs. Otto H. Kahn made herself useful in Cairo's British canteens. >> Rex Beach (The Spoilers, The Ne'er-do-Well), 63, registered for civilian defense in Florida, said he wanted to fight fires. >> Torchsinger Libby Holman's young second husband, Actor Ralph Holmes, lost his draft appeal. The board decided Libby could support herself if she couldn't get along on her share of the tobacco fortune of her first husband, Smith Reynolds, killed at a party nine years ago.

Novelist Kathleen Norris, First America Firster, hasn't convinced her husband, Novelist Charles G. Norris (Salt, Brass, Bread, Seed). Last week he came out for all-out aid to Britain and an immediate declaration of war.

Blonde, British-born Cinemactress Lilian Harvey, 34, onetime bright star of German films, hobbled off the Atlantic Clipper on crutches, rattling like a busy bar glass with outsize jewels. She couldn't take any money to speak of out of Europe, but on her neck and hands she wore $100,000 worth of diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, topazes.

Spats & Breakdowns

Archduke Otto of Austria was sued for an accounting of Habsburg family funds by his hard-up fifth cousin, Archduke Leopold. >> "Death Valley" Scotty was ordered to turn over 22 1/2% of his mining claims to his old friend and banker, Julian Gerard; but the judge doubted any gold would be found, and did not award Gerard any interest in his protege's three-million-dollar desert castle. >> Historian Harry Elmer Barnes was dropped as a lecturer by Eastern Washington College of Education (Cheney, Wash.) because "during his early years Dr. Barnes was associated with certain movements commonly called radical." >> Alabama's Governor Frank Dixon and wife got out and thumbed a while when their car broke down in.the country; hitchhiked 20 miles on a truck. >> Katharine Cornell, member of Actors Equity (A.F. of L.), was picketed for employing a non-union chauffeur. >> Cinemoguls Louis B. Mayer and Harry M. Warner were cited by California's racing board on charges of doping their race horses with caffeine. They denied the charges, and will appear before the board this week.

"In a sense, I guess we didn't know what we were doing when we built our first plane," said Orville Wright. "We never envisaged the plane as a terrible engine of war. But there will always be someone who will abuse anything."

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