Politics

Winston Churchill, at ease, sunned himself and sketched on the beach at Monte Carlo, said that he would keep on doing it awhile.

Empress Dowager Sadako of Japan ("the Mother of God"), 61, was reported to have moved from Tokyo to Tomoemon Kondo Villa Karuisawa, a mountain resort somewhat nearer Heaven.

Governor Charles C. Gossett of Idaho, still house-hunting eleven months after his election to office, had a bright idea: he appointed a Boise doctor head of a state hospital at Blackfoot, promptly rented the doctor's Boise house.

Haakon VII, 73, King of Norway, was moved to tears at his first meeting in six years with his brother, Christian X of Denmark, planned to remain in Copenhagen for this week's feast of lights on Christian's 75th birthday.

William Z. Foster, new chairman of the revived Communist Party, had a good old-line Communist phrase for U.S. participation in world affairs: "Inherently imperialist."

Herbert Hoover and Charles G. Dawes, grinning together at a Chicago luncheon, made a where-have-I-seen-that-before picture. The ex-Vice-Presidential author of the 1924 Dawes Plan for reparations heard the ex-Presidential World War I debt expert sound some alarms on World War II debts. Hoover doubted that "much, if anything, of our 40 billions of Lend-Lease" would be repaid, but suggested waiting until "five years hence, when the shape of the world is more clear," instead of canceling the debts now. Meantime, he added, "we should demand that all the weapons we have sent on Lend-Lease should be destroyed."

Scholars

Henry L Mencken, now 65 ("an obscene age"), but lacking none of his long time gusto for word-slinging, zipped a few to Earl Wilson, "saloon editor" of the New York Post, who relayed some choice Menckenisms. Samples:

Woodrow Wilson: "a Presbyterian baboon"; Herbert Hoover: "a superior bookkeeper"; Harry Truman: "an 8th Ave. haberdasher"; Douglas MacArthur: "a big show-off"; Henry Mencken: "I guess I'm an old cadaver now."

George Bernard Shaw's advice of the week was that the U.S. should pull out of Japan, letting the threat of atomic bombing do the rest of the job. "Sitting in a country with a pistol in hand will only waste young people's lives," he said. Doubting that this advice would be heeded, he predicted cheerfully, "of course there will be another war."

Sir Alexander Fleming, penicillin's discoverer, presented Pope Pius with a plate for cultivating mold to be used in re searches. In return he received this year's Pontifical Medal (picturing the Good Samaritan), and was eulogized as "a geat benefactor of mankind."

Sports

Byron Nelson, 33, golf's pro of pros, winner of 17 tourneys and $53,200 during the past year, was momentarily stymied in Spokane. Checking in for the Esmeralda Open (which he later won, making it 18 wins and $55,200), he asked for his hotel reservation and was told by the clerk: "I'm afraid not. All our rooms are being reserved for the golfers."

Sergeant Joe Louis received the Legion of Merit medal for treating two million G.I.s to several million dollars worth of his pugilistic skill. Said Major General Clarence H. Kells: "You have made one of the greatest contributions to the reconditioning program for veterans. . . ." Said the laconic champion: "Sir, I am sincerely grateful." (Joe gently chided a youngster who asked him how he licked Max Schmeling: "Remember, little fellow, he beat me too.")

Showfolk

Kay Williams, curvilinear cinema pinup, was sued for $30,000 by her ex-husband, Argentine Playboy "Macoco" (Martin de Alzaga Unzuej. She had promised to remarry him, he said, once she got her mother settled in a home of her own; so he bought a house for mama and a trousseau for Kay. Then, the day after they made a date to set the date, he read in a newspaper that she had just married Sugar Heir Adolph B. Spreckels Jr. (TIME,. Sept. 17). Macoco explained his suit: "It's the principle. ... I do not like being made a sucker of. . . ."

Earl Carroll, showman who went to jail in 1927 for perjury after denying that a naked girl had taken a bath in birthday-party champagne, celebrated his 52nd birthday at his Beverly Hills diggings. A thousand guests watched spotlights play on his swimming pool and on his "most beautiful girls in the world," waded into 40 cases of liquor (only five of champagne).

Adele Astaire, 46, who twinkletoed to fame with brother Fred in many a musi-comedy (Funny Face, The Band Wagon) before she became Lady Charles Cavendish, returned to Manhattan as effervescent as ever after a decade of country gentility in England and Eire. She announced that Fred had decided to quit hoofing after his next picture ("which pleases me, for I want the boy to live awhile"). She thought that U.S. living would put her in better shape: "It is wonderful to see all the lovely girdles. You know our posteriors have spread quite a bit over there."

Warriors

Lieut. Commander Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who topped off his five years in service with combat duty off Okinawa and an assignment to the Naval War College at Newport, changed his mind about making the Navy a career and got his discharge. He announced the purchase of a country house in Republican-voting Woodbury, L.I., not far from the Oyster Bay stamping ground of the other (Theodore) Roosevelts.

Bernt Balchen, 45, beefy, blue-eyed, Norwegian-born pilot who flew Admiral Byrd over the South Pole in 1929 and has logged a record mileage over polar regions, received the Legion of Merit for his aid, last year, in evacuating 2,000 Norwegians from Sweden by air, and for parachuting supplies and espionage agents to the European underground.

Jacob S. Coxey, "General" of the famed tatterdemalion army of unemployed that marched from Ohio on Washington in 1894, still full of fight at 91, gave a Chicago isolationist gathering something to wrestle with: "The Government takes 20% out of your salary to pay you in terest on the 10% you have deducted from your salary to buy bonds. . . . Then they have to tax the people so the Government can pay interest to the banks, so the banks will support Government bonds upon which money is issued."

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