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Senator Etienne Clementel, one-time French Finance Minister: "President Doumergue last week officially opened a complete exhibition of my paintings at the Bernheim Galleries in Paris. I said I was nervous about the attitude of the critics, although Winston Churchill, Britain's finance minister, who is also a painter, would not have been. I have been devoted to painting since childhood, but my mother discouraged that career for me, and I went into finance and politics."*
Sir Robert Baden-Powell: "While South African Boy Scouts were acclaiming me at Johannesburg, Transvaal, last week, as the founder of their movement, I collapsed. Said Lady Baden-Powell to newsgatherers: 'Sir Robert is just worn out. There is nothing organically wrong with him.' "
Gustaf Adolf, Crown Prince of Sweden: "Crown Princess Louise and I learned while proceeding from Japan to India last week that our villa at Sofiero in the Duchy of Scania was entered recently by burglars who found that we had cannily removed to storage everything of value."
Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of the onetime War Kaiser: "Vera Cruz, Mexico, welcomed me last week when I arrived there on what I called entirely a personal pleasure trip. Commentators recalled that in 1902 I toured the U. S., amid enormous crowds, from whose frenzy of cordiality I was ably protected by Rear Admiral Robley D. ("Fighting Bob") Evans, my personal friend and official escort. To
Admiral Evans I once said 'What an extraordinary way of entertaining one's guest—sit him down and make speeches at him.' In Boston, I humorously suggested shooting a particularly windy speaker. In Chicago, I was guarded by eight policemen, dressed both night and day in evening clothes, including silk hats. Perhaps never before or since has U. S. society been so excitedly adulatory."
Erich Ludendorff, semi-Napoleonic Prussian war lord: " 'Amazing!' commented the Press last week on the details just revealed, by Dr. Edward Hjelf, onetime Finnish Minister to Berlin, of my escape from Germany in 1918, just before the revolution. Dr. Hjelf said that I, fearing for my life, appealed to him, through the Finnish Foreign Office, for protection. He went on to state that he secured for me a diplomatic passport in the name of one Ernest Lindstrom, Counselor of the Ministry. Another Finnish diplomat, named Lindblom, had just died, but few knew it, and Dr. Hjelf, saying he knew the passport name of Lindstrom would certainly be mistaken for Lindblom, calmly relates that he dressed me in business suit, felt hat, colored glasses, to look like Lindblom, and that I shaved my mustache to facilitate the transformation. Thus attired I am reported to have motored to the border in a diplomatic car, and to have expressed pleasure to Dr. Hjelf that it did not fly the red flag, emblem of Finland at that time. As is known, I did flee to Finland at the date in question, afterward proceeding to Sweden. As is also known, General von Hindenburg, my colleague, remained behind, though equally in danger, manfully cheering and bracing the army in the trying Armistice days."