Brother Act

One of the better-informed Washington columns before the war was "Capital Parade," put out by Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner. It was so filled with the imminence of the U.S. going to war that its authors finally followed their noses: Alsop joined the Navy, Kintner the Army. Kintner, who became a lieutenant colonel, is now out of the Army and a vice president of American Broadcasting Co.

Last week the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate, his old boss, announced that Joe Alsop, now 35, of Groton and Harvard, and distant cousin of the late Franklin Roosevelt, would start a new column, beginning Jan. 1. His partner: his 32-year-old brother Stewart, Yale '36, who before the war was an editor for Doubleday, Doran.

The brothers had seen more of World War II than most men their ages. Joe resigned from the Navy in August 1941, joined Major General Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers staff as a civilian. Captured by the Japanese at Hong Kong, he posed as a working newsman, got himself repatriated on the Gripsholm. Then he rejoined Chennault as an Air Forces lieu tenant, was made a captain before the war's end. Brother Stewart, turned down by the U.S. Army because of high blood pressure, enlisted in the British Army, fought with the 16th Rifles in Africa and Italy as a machine-gun platoon commander. After the British gave him a captain's commission, the U.S. Army wanted him. He parachuted behind the German lines, fought with the French Maquis.

The brothers Alsop plan to send each other abroad for three months out of every year, to keep their worldly touch.

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