"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:
The State Department forwarded to U. S. consuls abroad a demand by the Woman Patriot Corp. (a Mrs. Randolph Frothingham of Brookline, Mass. president) that Albert Einstein be barred from the U. S. because he is "affiliated with more anarchist and Communist groups than Josef Stalin himself.'' Said Professor Einstein, in Germany:
"Never before has any attempt of mine at an approach to the beautiful sex met with such an energetic rebuff; even should perchance such have ever been the case, then certainly not by so many all at once.
"But aren't they perfectly right, these watchful citizenesses? Why should one admit to one's presence one who devours hardboiled capitalists with the same appetite and relish as once upon a time the ogre Minotaurus in Crete devoured luscious Greek maidens—a person who, in addition, is so vulgar as to oppose every war, except the inevitable one with his own wife? "Give heed, therefore, to the sage patriotic dear ladies and remember that the capitol of mighty Rome was at one time saved by the cackling of her faithful geese." When he went to the U. S. consulate in Berlin for his visa, Dr. Einstein's tone changed after answering several questions. "I am not going because I desire to visit somebody but because I have been invited'' (to teach at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N. J.).
Consul: "Are you a Communist or an Anarchist?"
Einstein: "What is this, an inquisition? I don't propose to answer such silly questions. ... If I am to enter your country as a suspect, I don't want to go at all."
At home again, he said he would cancel his Princeton engagement if the visa was not issued in 24 hours.
"Wouldn't it be funny if they wouldn't let me in? Why, the whole world would laugh at America."
The visa was granted.
In Detroit, Dr. Roy Donaldson McClure, who operated last fortnight on Henry Ford, marveled at his patient's youth and recuperative powers; revealed he was out of bed for a few moments the day following his operation; said his malady (gangrenous appendix strangulated in the hernial sac) was the first of its kind among 191,000 Henry Ford Hospital patients, one of 20 in medical history. Patient Ford sat up; invited newsmen in; announced for next year "something really new in automobiles"; denied he would sell Ford stock to the public or retire.
Exploded Canada's rich, pious, bachelor Premier Richard Bedford Bennett when Halifax newshawks on the S. S. Georgic's gangplank asked if he were contemplating marriage: "The impertinence of the Press is amazing! Only a few days ago a newspaperman rang me up while I was at breakfast to ask me whether it was true I had been married that morning. Does it look as if I had been married, when I am sailing for England?''
Boston police sought the confidence man who sold Mrs. Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre, daughter of Woodrow Wilson, wife of Harvard Law's Professor Francis Bowes Sayre, a $25 ticket to a non-existent "Democratic Victory Banquet."