"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:
In a grubby street in Lodz, Poland, Lord Beaverbrook's stunt-loving London Daily Express tracked down a grey-bearded rabbi, proved that the rabbi was brother to Russia's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Maximovitch Litvinoff. For 100 zlotys ($1,900) Rabbi Yankel Vallach talked. His brother, said he, was born Meyer Moses Vallach, was a pious Jew until Tsarist police clapped him into jail. There he met Bolsheviks Kamenev and Zinoviev, turned Communist, atheist. Released, he was made the fat-salaried manager of a sugar factory. He almost forgot his Communism but police jailed him again for helping his old friends. After that he met Lenin and Trotsky, directed Russian terrorists from England until the Revolution.
Last time Rabbi Vallach saw his brother was when Maxim-Moses' train passed through Bialystok, their birthplace, once part of Russia, now in Poland. Related the rabbi: "I shouted 'Meyer, Meyer.' He looked out of his carriage. At first he did not know me. . . . Then he stepped on the platform and we walked up and down. . . . We talked of our other brothers. He gave me a cigar. And all the time his guards were following. . . ." Last year Rabbi Vallach; ill, wrote to Maxim-Moses for money. Back came a reply from Litvinoffs secretary: "According to ... the Soviet Constitution money may not be sent outside Russia, and Comrade Minister Litvinoff will not break the law."
The London Daily Express, enterprising stunter (see above), invited its readers to state what people they liked to read about most (and least). Public Bore No. 1 was George Bernard Shaw. After him in order of boredom:
Amy Johnson Mollison
Sir Oswald Mosley James Ramsay MacDonald
Greta Garbo
Adolf Hitler
Leslie Hore-Belisha
Lady Astor
Douglas Fairbanks
Max Baer
The Mdivanis
No. 1 Public Favorite was David Lloyd George; No. 2, Winston Churchill; No. 3, William Maxwell Aitken, Baron Beaverbrook, tireless, hard-driving master of the Express.
Twice in seven months the Duke of Manchester's erratic second son has set out to join the French Foreign Legion. The first time, last summer, he got as far as the Dunkirk recruiting office before changing his mind, decided to open a hot-dog stand at Maidenhead. "I am Lord Edward Montagu. I want to enlist," he announced again last week to a Paris recruiting officer. The officer took his application, which asked assignment to the aviation service, gave him a 5-franc piece. Lest Lord Edward turn back, his sister, Lady Louise, put him on a train with soap and toothbrush. In barracks at Toul, between a pair of Saar refugees he fell downstairs, dislocated a rib.
To Pittsburgh one morning went eagle-nosed Major-General Smedley Darlington ("Old Gimlet Eye") Butler, to speak at a banquet.* That same day Jimmy ("Schnozzle") Durante was appearing at a Pittsburgh theatre. Stepping off his train, General Butler thrust his head forward in characteristic pose, stomped down the platform. Loiterers, mistaking him for the well-publicized Durante, began to cheer. That evening nosey Comedian Durante turned up at the banquet where nosey General Butler was speaking. A cameraman snapped them nose to nose.