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The black-tie dinner at Washington's Federal City Club was a farewell affair for Pundit Walter Lippmann, 77, who is leaving the capital after 29 years to write his political columns from New York. It was supposed to be a private affair, and the club's president, Columnist Charles Bartlett, was shocked a few days later to find that the Washington Post had published the text of Lippmann's remarks at the party—a wry goodbye to Washington and a few observations on U.S. foreign policy. "The dignity of the occasion," Bartlett huffily told Post Managing Editor Ben Bradlee, "was marred by your professional zeal." With that, Bradlee and the Post's editor, Russ Wiggins, got huffy themselves and resigned from the club. All of which left Lippmann bewildered, since he had given the Post permission to print his talk in the first place.
The diplomacy involved is a bit delicate, since the U.S. State Department would prefer not to turn the defection into any more of an international flap than it already is. Indeed, at first it seemed that the U.S. had turned down Stalin's daughter Svetlana, 41, when she showed up at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi. Last week, while Svetlana remained in hiding in Switzerland, the State Department clarified its position somewhat by reporting that it had in fact issued her a visa to come to the U.S.; the question of whether she will eventually be granted asylum has been left open. However that turns out, the Kremlin is enraged at the Soviet-embassy people in New Delhi who failed to prevent the defection, is calling some of them home for an explanation.
No sooner had the Theater Atlanta Repertory Company started its run of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra than its Queen of the Nile, Actress Kathryn Loder, took a spill onstage and broke her hand. Her doctors ordered her out of the show, and T.A. Director Jay Broad feared he might have to close the run in his new $1,000,000 house. Then he learned that Negro Actress Diana Sands, 32, was playing Lady Macbeth at nearby Spelman College. Would she fill in? Delighted, said Diana. After four days of rehearsals, she opened as Cleopatra, playing to a near-capacity and fully integrated audience. "I thought it was important to do it," said Diana after receiving a five-minute ovation. "I thought it might be a breakthrough."
Long one of the most dogged congressional critics of the Central Intelligence Agency, Minnesota's Senator Eugene McCarthy, 51, admitted sheepishly to the Women's National Press Club that he now rather hesitates to chastise members of groups bankrolled by the CIA. "I've just found out," he said, "that I'm a member of the board of directors of half a dozen different organizations supported by the CIA."