Died. Colonel John W. (William) Thomason Jr., 51, dashing Leatherneck litterateur; after a brief illness; in San Diego, Calif. A drawling, deadpan Texan, onetime reporter, as a 2nd Lieut. he snatched from Soissons, St. Mihiel, the Meuse-Argonne and Belleau Wood three decorations--as well as the hard-boiled anecdotes and swirling, on-the-spot sketches which first appeared as a book in his best-selling Fix Bayonets (1926). A decade ago he summed up his attitude toward Japan's early conquest in China with the prediction that he would die as a Marine Corps Brigadier General--leading a Chinese beachhead attack against the Japs. At his death he was serving in the Amphibious Training Command.

Died. Hendrik Willem van Loon, 62, merchant prince of literary popularizers ; of a heart attack ; in Old Greenwich, Conn. The pleasure-loving, 290-lb., 6 ft. 3 in. Cornellman ('05) was successively a Washington reporter, Belgian and Russian correspondent, European graduate student, U.S. college professor (Antioch, 1922-23), associate editor of the Baltimore Sun (1923-24). He discovered his talent for the affable packaging of intellectual pabulum with his Story of Mankind (1921). With a roughage of Dutch wit, a vitamin-content of "human-interest background," and doodled-over with his own pen-&-ink sketches, his The Story of the Bible, The Arts, Van Loon's Lives sold 6,000,000 in his lifetime.

Died. Irvin S. (Shewsbury) Cobb, 67, famed humorist; of dropsy; in Manhattan. Kentuckian Cobb, Paducah's favorite son, was culled from daily journalism by the Saturday Evening Post's late George Horace Lorimer, capped his career with ten years (1922-32) as a Hearst Cosmopolitan dependable. He wrote his biographical Exit Laughing in 1941, after facing Hollywood cameras in several cinecures. After his death appeared a long valedictory Cobb had written a few months before. Cobb admirers thought it had elements of a classic. Excerpts : "When convenience suits, I ask that the plain canister--nothing fancy there, please--containing my ashes shall be taken to Paducah, and that at the proper planting season a hole shall be dug in our family lot or elsewhere at Oak Grove and a dogwood tree planted there and the ashes strewn in the hole to fertilize the tree roots. Should the tree live, that will be monument enough for me. . . .

"As an aside I might add that my notion of an ideal religion would combine the dignity and the beauty of the Romanist ritual with certain other ingredients: the good taste and the ability of the Unitarians and Episcopalians--a trait not too common to some of the evangelical groups--to mind their own business. I'm proud that I never set myself up to be my brother's keeper, having been sufficiently occupied by the job of being my own keeper. To these add the noble ethics and the splendid tolerance expressed in reformed Judaism; the study of independence and the good business principles of the Mormons; the gentle humility and ordered humanity of the Quakers, plus the militant zeal and unselfish devotion of those shock troops of the Lord--the Salvation Army, who fight in the trenches of sin's no-man's land to reclaim the tortured souls and clothe the naked bodies of those whom the rest of a snobbish world forgot.

"If, based on this combination, there was a determination to practice the sectless preachments and the teachings of Jesus Christ, who was the first true gentleman of recorded history and the greatest gentleman that ever lived, I might not have joined the fold, but certainly I'd have stood on the side lines and cheered for it.

"By the way, have you ever noticed that in time of war not the most passionate partisan dares to ask the Prince of Peace to bless his bloody arms and forward his bloody deeds ? He invokes the aid of the god of unjustified battles as created by the ancient Hebrews.

"All Hitler needed to do was to let his whiskers sprout and sit on a nest of thunderbolts and naked swords, thinking of plague and pestilence and rapine and slaughter and slavery for the vanquished, to be a fit understudy for the vengeful, murderous Jehovah of the forepart of the Old Testament.

"For brother Joe Stalin, our present beloved ally and, secretly, the everlasting enemy of our institutions, the job would be easier. He already has the whiskers. (One advantage of dying is that it affords a fellow opportunity to say a lot of things that have been curdling in his system all these years. Frankly. I'm enjoying myself.)"

Died. Joseph C. (Crosby) Lincoln, 73, folksy, voluminous Cape Cod-born Cape Cod novelist; of a heart ailment; in Winter Park, Fla. Apple-cheeked son and grandson of sea captains, between his first novel (Cap'n Eri, 1904) and his last (The Bradshaws of Harniss, 1943), he usually summered on the Cape, wintered elsewhere, stub-penciled more than a book a year.

Died. Louis Bamberger, 88, Newark's philanthropic department storekeeper, in South Orange, N.J. When the small, self-made millionaire sold out to Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co. in 1929 his store's annual sales had reached $40,000,000, his farewell gifts to 235 veteran employes totaled more than $1,000,000. In 1930 Bachelor Bamberger (and his sister, Mrs. Felix Fuld) gave Educator Abraham Flexner $5,000,000 to found Princeton's famed Institute For Advanced Study.

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