Prophecies

Admiral William ("Bull") Halsey publicly approved the Navy's policy of not bombing Tokyo's Imperial Palace--where Emperor Hirohito may still be taking exercise on his shining white steed. The Admiral's reason: "As a matter of fact, I hope they don't kill that white horse. I want to ride it."

Lilly Dache, dashing Manhattan milliner, came out with a "Yalta Turban" two days after the Crimea Conference. Purely by chance, she explained, pictures of costumes worn in the Black Sea area, had caught her fancy before the site of the Big-Three conference was announced.

Artie Shaw, grand-opera-tempered jazz maestro, who once called his jazz fans "morons," gave up all hope for U.S. jazz: "[It] is a dying duck that needs artificial respiration. All this shrieking, screaming and swooning will kill jazz."

Families

Princess Elizabeth, 18, came down with mumps, just after Princess Margaret Rose, 15, had recovered from them.

Eleanor Roosevelt, objecting to a proposal by Presidential assistant Jonathan Daniels for a national Old Maid's Day, said that she was also against "Mother's Day, Father's Day . . . and days for this and that and everything." Since "they are all aimed at honoring the family," she offered a suggestion of her own: "I think they . . . ought to be lumped together as a sort of 'Family Day' when we could remind people of parents' duties to children and vice versa." In her newspaper column, she offered a quick glimpse at Roosevelt family life: "Certainly in . . . our large family there is never a dearth of conversation! I am not sure that it is always pleasant, but . . . it is always stimulating. . . ."

Projects

John Elliott Rankin, Mississippi's demagogic champion of white supremacy, asked Congress to change its custom of calling the nine women members of the House "gentlewomen," instead proposed that they be called "ladies." Quoting dictionary definitions, Gentleman Rankin said: "The term 'gentlewoman' puts the ladies one social step below the 'gentleman' of the House . . . I for one recognize no social distinction."

Wendell Lewis Willkie, on what would have been his 53rd birthday, was posthumously honored by Freedom House, liberal, non-political educational organization, which officially announced a campaign to raise $250,000 for the purchase of a nine-story Manhattan building (occupied for 26 years by the old New York Club), planned to dedicate it as the Wendell L. Willkie Memorial Building on the first anniversary of his death, Oct. 8.

Charles Chaplin, relaxing between trials on paternity charges brought by Joan Berry, found himself in the headlines again: a bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate directing the Attorney General to find out whether the British-born actor could be deported as an undesirable alien on charges of immorality. The bill's sponsor: North Dakota's lone wolf Senator William Langer, who had been charged with "moral turpitude" but was acquitted before being officially seated in the Senate in 1942.

Fighters

George Washington, who was first in war, peace and the hearts of his countrymen, was also first to endow a U.S. college with a sizable gift of securities. Washington and Lee University, reporting on the 100 shares of James River Navigation Co. stock (total par value: $20,000) which Washington got from a grateful State of Virginia and passed on in 1796 to Liberty Hall Academy (later renamed for him and General Robert E. Lee), said that it had yielded an average 6% from 1802 until 1892, when Virginia retired the stock at $500 a share. The University, having reinvested the money, figured that the Washington dividends now add up to $400,000.

Lieut. Will Rogers Jr., son of the late great humorist, and a Congressman from California who quit politics for war, was promoted to first lieutenant and awarded the Bronze Star for "heroism" in leading a patrol during the Battle of the Bulge.

Lieut. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., late Navy flier son of the ex-Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for "extraordinary heroism and courage" as a bomber pilot in his last flight over Europe last August.

Tommy Farr, battle-scarred, iron-jawed, onetime British heavyweight boxing champion, who stayed on his feet for 15 rough-house rounds with Joe Louis in 1937 got smacked with a $45 fine in a British court for breaking the nose of a naval cadet in a pub brawl. Farr pleaded self-defense, said the cadet had referred to him as a "third-rate fighting punk."

First Lieut. Christopher Kilmer, 27-year-old son of the late Soldier-Poet Joyce Kilmer (Trees), and a veteran of the Pacific and Italy, turned up on the Alsace front, some 200 miles from the 'Marne battleground where his father was killed in World War I. He admitted that he too had tried his hand at poetry. Sample:

If I die here I want my friends to take what they can use,

Map case, protractor, odds and ends, and my enormous shoes;

But send my boy my souvenirs, my ribbon and my pay,

Tell him I'm sorry for the years I've been away.

Send Bert my photograph and book, my billfold and my ring,

Please God, don't let her feel or look hurt by my vanishing.

Bonnie Clare McNair, granddaughter of the late Lieut. General Lesley McNair, who was killed in action in Normandy last July, proudly wore two new decorations--the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star--posthumously awarded to her father, the late Colonel Douglas McNair, who was killed in action on Guam, twelve days after his father's death.

Histrionics

Katharine Cornell, back from a smash six-months tour of European battlefronts in her oldtime hit, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, cited some play-acting lines which used to leave Broadway cold but panicked her homesick G.I. audiences: 1) "Italy is a greatly overrated country filled with nothing but heaps of rubbish, dust, flies, stenches and beggars"; 2) "I should be more than willing to give up soldiering to take up some money-making business." Leading Man Brian Aherne reported that when he kissed Actress Cornell on stage, one enthusiastic soldier shouted: "Oh, pass it around, mister, pass it around."

Errol Flynn, who uses up some of his excess energy on the tennis court and is rated one of Hollywood's best players, teamed with tennis' hardy perennial, Big Bill Tilden, in a Manhattan charity tennis program (on an armory canvas-covered floor) before a crowd of 5,000. Cheered to the rafters by women spectators whenever he made a good shot, Player Flynn made so few that even Tilden could not bail him out.

Joshua Abraham Norton, self-proclaimed "Norton I, Emperor of the U.S. and Protector of Mexico," who high-handedly "ruled" San Francisco from 1857 to 1880, was honored posthumously by an exhibition of pictures and mementos at San Francisco's De Young Museum. An English-born merchant who got peculiar notions after losing his fortune, Norton I paraded San Francisco's sidewalks daily with an entourage of two dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, issued flowery royal edicts which were solemnly printed in the newspapers. Banks cashed his small, worthless checks, restaurant owners bowed and fed him, the Central Pacific Railroad gave him a lifetime pass, whimsical San Franciscans took his imperial bank notes bearing 7% interest. When he died, 10,000 sentimentally loyal "subjects" turned up at the funeral which cost them a reputed $10,000.

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