His 86th birthday found Author W. Somerset Maugham in Bangkok and in the middle of his leisurely "farewell tour" of the Far East. To gratify a U.S. newsman's request, the Old Party issued a handwritten statement addressed to America. It went, in part: "Thank you for all the kindness that I have received at your hands since I first came to America 50 years ago . . . I have an idea that in two or three hundred years English will be the universal language, spoken all over the world. Of course, it won't be the English we speak now; it will probably be even more strange than the language of Chaucer is to us now . . . I like to think it is just possible then, in the far distant future, that some old scholar, rummaging about old papers in the Library of Congress, will come across a passage which stated that a long-forgotten English author had . . . in 1960 expressed his earnest hope that the ties between his own country and the United States would become ever and ever closer."
Leaving Sant Ignazio Church in downtown Rome, popular, jovial Pope John XXIII, 78, waved off his chauffeur, strolled some 300 yds. to the Capranica Seminary, where he was to speak to some young priests. It was his longest walk outside the Vatican since his elevation to the Papacy. Feeling much like a young priest himself, His Holiness observed: "Our legs can still bear us, and this is the best way to move. But on foot, in an automobile or in the air, the important thing is to go forward—wherever the Lord wants us."
In the study of his home in Berkeley, Calif., snow-topped Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, soon to be 75, leafed through some historic papers dating from the days when he commanded the U.S. Pacific Fleet in World War II. But he made it clear that he was just browsing and not afflicted by any passion to pen his memoirs, as so many of his comrades-in-arms have done. Such books, said he, brim with "many critical remarks and self-praise at the expense of others. Any memoirs I wrote could not add historically to what has been written."
More willing to go along with a cultural gag as he mellows, India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, 70, allowed himself to be turbaned and accoutered with a ceremonial sword and shield in order to get into the spirit of a war dance performed by Bombay visitors. Peace Lover Nehru seemed to be mildly amused by the belligerent ritual, part of a celebration that drew dancing troupes from all over India for observance of Republic Day.