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In Paris to sop up background about great poets of the past, Poet-Anthologist Louis Untermeyer was in a gloomy mood about the prospects for U.S. poets of the present. "There are only one or two poets, Robert Frost and possibly Ogden Nash, who are making a living out of it," Untermeyer complained to Columnist Art Buchwald. "The rest of us have to teach, write books, compose anthologies ... A poet can't even starve in a garret these days because garrets now are too expensive . . . There is less hospitality for a poet than there ever has been before. The mediums for entertainment are so much faster ... I think there will be fewer poets, but better ones. You're going to have to be extra good to survive."
In Pall Mall, Tenn., World War I Hero Alvin York, still abed from a stroke suffered last year, was struck by a Government claim that he owes $85,442 in income tax on the $134,338 he earned in royalties from the film Sergeant York, based on his life. But the Medal of Honor man who captured 132 German prisoners singlehanded argued that his heroism is a capital asset, claimed the right to pay the straight 26% capital-gains tax rate, just as President Eisenhower did for his World War II memoirs.
Clad in grey mufti and the warm glow that radiates from a consummation long and devoutly wished, Admiral the Earl Mountbatten of Burma ("Dickie" to his friends) appeared at the Admiralty in London and took office as Britain's First Sea Lord. The last First Sea Lord to steer H.M.'s Navy from the green-walled room Mountbatten chose as his office was his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was forced to" resign at the outbreak of World War I, after 45 years of devoted naval service, because of public outcry over his German birth. Though he had openly aspired to the post for a good part of his dashing life as a seagoing navyman, handsome Dickie seemed a bit awed at sitting at last in his late daddy's seat. Said he: "I feel like a new boy at school, somewhat bewildered."