Speaking Up

Lady Astor, the House of Commons' uppity, downright, Virginia-born viscountess, vowed that not even V-E day would wean her from teetotalism: "Sometimes I am tempted, but I do not fall."

Arturo Toscanini, rejecting a "loving appeal" for his return to Milan and its La Scala Opera, broadcast an unminced reply: "I shall be happy to return among you as a citizen of a free Italy, but not as a subject of the degenerate king and the princes of the House of Savoy. ... All the vestiges of a past of ignominy and treachery must disappear."

Fiorello H. LaGuardia, 62, for twelve years New York City's loud and able mayor, finally announced that he did not choose to run for a fourth term--despite his personal conviction that he could "run on a laundry ticket and beat these political bums any time" (in the words of the late Al Smith).

Erich Maria Remarque, 47, popular recorder of World War I's German disillusionment (All Quiet on the Western Front), faced the end of World War II in better spirits. Writing his fifth novel in Manhattan while awaiting his final U.S. citizenship papers, he said: "I am no more German. Even when I dream, it is about America, and when I swear ... it is American."

Mrs. Theodore Gilmore Bilbo, who has been "dabbling in real estate" since she became the ex-wife of Mississippi's loud-mouthed senator, went to court for messing around with an old Southern accentuation. Seeking to evict a tenant of her Jackson, Miss, duplex, she said: "No damyankee is going to ruin . .. my house." Said the judge, dismissing the indignant tenant's charge of disorderly conduct: according to Southern usage, Mrs. Bilbo was "not cursing."

Carrying On

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., after guiding his destroyer escort through a two-hour hunt for a slippery Jap sub marine, wound up with a kill which Rear Admiral Russell S. Berkey described as "one of the most efficiently conducted anti-submarine operations within my knowledge." The Admiral recommended Lieut. Commander Roosevelt for the Legion of Merit.

Owen J. Roberts, last pre-New Deal Associate Supreme Court Justice and leading dissenter, became eligible--but not ready--for retirement at full pay ($20,000) on his 70th birthday. Proud of his record of not missing a session in more than ten years, he hoped not to miss any for a few years more.

King Farouk, touched by a story in a Cairo newspaper, did his bit toward a serviceman's rehabilitation. The story: Scottish sapper David Bell, sightless and handless since a booby-trap explosion near El Alamein in 1942, hoped to start life anew with a tobacco shop in his hometown, Edinburgh. Farouk's bit: he sent Bell 25,000 choice Egyptian cigarets with which to set up shop.

George Szell (pronounced Sell), choosy Czecho-Hungarian conductor and a Hitler-hating refugee, was unable to conduct the touring Metropolitan Opera's performance of Die Meistersinger in Chicago. He had German measles.

Eric Johnston, shining knight of capitalism, who has broken many a conservative precedent with his middle-of-the-open-road tactics, broke another: he was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Cashing In

Viacheslav Mlkhailovich Molotov, thoroughly occupied with the trials & tribulations of San Francisco, decided against enhancing his educational prestige (St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute) with an honorary Doctor of Law degree from the University of California. It would not, he said, be "in accordance with the policies of the Soviet Union." Other big names at San Francisco accepted the honor: U.S.'s Edward R. Stettinius Jr. (University of Virginia), Britain's Anthony Eden (Oxford, A.B.), China's T. V. Soong (Harvard, A.B.), France's Georges Bidault (Ecole Normale Superieure, Agrege d'histoire), South Africa's Jan Christian Smuts (Victoria, A.B.), Mexico's Ezequiel Padilla (University of Mexico, LL.B.).

Sergeant Bill Mauldin, whose sharp-edged Stars & Stripes cartoons "Up Front With Mauldin" are favorite G.I. reportage, was awarded $500 by Columbia University's School of Journalism Pulitzer Prize Committee--for distinguished cartooning in 1944. Example cited: a grimy, weary G.I. shepherding three grimy, weary prisoners of war through the rain, and captioned "Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners." Other $500 Pulitzer Prizewinners:

James B. Reston, New York Times roving correspondent, for his news dispatches and articles on Dumbarton Oaks;

Harold V. ("Hal") Boyle, Associated Press correspondent and columnist, for his chronicling of the human side of war;

Joe Rosenthal, Associated Press photographer, for his quick-famed shot of marines raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima;

John Mersey, LIFE editor, for his novel, A Bell for Adano;

Mary Chase, for her hit play, Harvey, about a dipsomaniac's imaginary rabbit.

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