It was only a probing action, but it shook the very foundations of the fortress. Since 1907, the Oak Room of Manhattan's venerable Plaza Hotel has been an all-male bastion for three hours every weekday at lunchtime. Until last week, that is, when 15 members of the National Organization for Women, led by that superfeminist Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique), 47, demanded entrance on the ground that their civil rights were being violated. Five of the ladies actually managed to brush by a Plaza assistant manager and the maitre d' to capture a center table. But then they came up against the main line of resistance; the waiters studiously ignored their repeated cries for service, and the ladies were eventually forced to fall back. "This is the only kind of discrimination that's considered moral--or, if you will, a joke," fumed Mrs. Friedan. But she has not given up. She and the NOW girls have begun planning similar raids in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

"Violence is the worst thing we can think of," Muhammad All, otherwise known as Cassius Marcellus Clay, cautioned delegates to a National Conference of Black Students in Minneapolis. "It's like a bull running into a locomotive: you can admire the bull for his courage, but he'll still end up splattered all over the track." Strange words indeed from a man who used to make his living with his fists--but Ali, undefeated but defrocked heavyweight champion, was not pulling any punches on the race question. On the contrary. "By nature, blacks and whites are enemies," he insisted, urging separatism within America. "We want land. We want factories. We want stores. We must control our own destiny."

It started out as a droning House of Commons debate on the automatic right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's . House of Lords. But the argument quickly picked up steam when the talk turned to bastardy among the bluebloods. There are 25 dukes, and, said Labor M.P. William Hamilton, more than a few of them trace their lineage back to "those royal romances which always seemed to involve births on the wrong side of the blanket." As Hamilton figures it, the Duke of St. Albans, the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Richmond and the Duke of Buccleuch are descended from Charles II's twelve bastard children. There was some grumbling that Hamilton was being unfair to illegitimate children of the past. Responded the M.P.: "I am objecting to illegitimate children having the right, by virtue of being illegitimate, of going into the Lords."

They were playing the name game in New York's Pennsylvania Station, and Mrs. Charles Percy was trying to wrangle her way onto a jampacked Washington-bound train. Sorry, said the ticket clerk, the train is full. Up to the window stepped Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who modestly identified himself and asked for a ticket. "I don't care who you are, mister," snapped the clerk, "this train has been booked solid for three days." Enter Senator Edward Kennedy and Wife Joan. Ted hardly got past "I'm Senator Kennedy and I'd like ..." when the clerk produced not two but four tickets for the whole group. Noted Washington Post Columnist Maxine Cheshire, who reported the scene, "It just proves that the name Kennedy can take you almost anywhere you want to go."

Sixty-five years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt was asked by a concerned friend: "Can't you control your daughter?" Replied Teddy: "I can either run the country or control Alice--not both." Last week Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the indomitable "Princess Alice" of the T.R. era, turned 85. She is still splendidly uncontrolled, and refers to herself as a "withered Twiggy," a "likable old hag" or "one of those Roosevelt show-offs." Other times she settles for "a combination of Marie Dressier and Phyllis Diller." At her birthday party in Washington, where the guests included President and Mrs. Nixon, at their first private party outside the White House since the inauguration, she regaled the group with memories of the day she moved out of the mansion. As her parents drove her away in an open surrey, she recalled, she mimicked her father's rotund successor, William Howard Taft. She made what she thought were "horrible, fat, ogre faces" at the crowds, while calling "This, darlings, is what's coming after you."

The officials who took a look at 20th Century-Fox's movie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, before it was screened for Queen Mother Elizabeth, professed to be shocked. That ten-second bit in which two of Miss Brodie's girls get a glimpse of a drawing of a completely nude male would have to go. The decision brought hoots of derision from London's press. Said the Daily Mirror: "The Queen Mother has two grown daughters and a clutch of grandchildren. She was married to a sailor. One of her sons-in-law was also a sailor. And sailors, according to popular legend, are salty characters who know all about life."

They might not make it as stand-up comics on the nightclub circuit, but the two gals were good for a few guffaws at the Women's National Press Club in Washington. "My telephone hasn't rung for three weeks," moaned Liz Carpenter, formerly Lady Bird's gag-a-minute press secretary. "I almost tackle the postman. These days I not only open those invitations to art exhibits at the Corcoran --I even go to them." Next came Gerry Van der Heuvel, Pat Nixon's press secretary, who remarked wryly that following Liz was like "trying to follow the Apollo 8 flight with a kite." But never fear--she got off the ground by pointing out that the first thing Pat was going to do up in the family quarters of the White House was "paper over all those enlistment posters for the Alamo."

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