Foreign News: Pointed Present

Sir Stafford Cripps, austere president of the Board of Trade, was the prospective recipient of a somewhat pointed Christmas present. In London, one Desmond Leslie had read of the woman who wrote Sir Stafford telling him where he could buy bed sheets (TIME, Dec. 9). So he offered Sir Stafford "something I feel would be much more in your line"—an Indian bed of nails (a present to Leslie from a fakir).

A secretary replied that Sir Stafford "feels he must decline—with thanks."

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