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Minister to Luxembourg Perle Mesta told a Saturday Review of Literature reporter that she liked to have an Air Force band at her G.I. parties. "Those cute things, just 19 or 20, away from home . . . They're just so cunning. They're Perle this and Perle that. Then they'll look shy at me and say, 'Would it be good manners if I used this fork?' " She hoped, Perle added, that people no longer considered her frivolous. "They've changed a little, don't you think? They thought I was just a partygiver . .. Well, I'll tell you, I'm just the hardest-working girl you know."
On his recent European jaunt, said Bernard Baruch, he had spent two days visiting Old Friend Winston Churchill, who "talks about nothing but horses. He can't hear any better than I can, but he won't wear an ear machine." Another conversation was reported by James Eldridge of the American Association for the United Nations, just back in Chicago from London. Curious to know what political party Churchill would have chosen had he been an American, Eldridge dropped a leading remark: "I believe you're Tory enough that you'd be a Midwest Republican." "Well," answered Churchill, "you don't think I'd be as bad as Mr. Taft, do you?"
Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh declined with "deep regret" an invitation from New York's Official Greeter Grover Whalen to visit the city on their fall tour. Meanwhile, the duke was busy boning up on Canadian history and making speeches at home (see SCIENCE). He also found time to attend a London Variety Club luncheon at which he was given a life membership certificate (putting him on equal footing with Harry Truman) and hailed as "Brother Barker." As just plain "Papa," he joined his wife on the lawn of Clarence House, their London home, to give photographers a homey picture of royal family life with Prince Charles and Princess Anne, who is one year old this week, in the crawling stage and the proud possessor of six teeth.
Sunlight & Shadow
The Washington State Bonus Bureau announced that it had passed out $64 million in bonus checks to 191,560 World War II veterans. Among them: General Mark Clark, who claimed residence as owner of a summer home on Puget Sound's Camano Island. Because of length of service (four years overseas), General Clark got close to the state maximum, $675.
Devadas Gandhi, editor of the Hindustan Times, arrived in Manhattan looking for motion pictures of his late father Mohandas Gandhi. His project: a series of film biographies. Profits, if any, will go to ease the lot of India's lepers.
After a skittish mare kicked Oregon's Republican Maverick Wayne Morse smack in the mouth at the Orkney Springs, Va. horse show, Washington reporters called at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md. to see how the Senator was feeling, got their answer in a written note: "I have learned to roll with political kicks and punches, but I haven't learned how to absorb the kick of a horse yet."