PEOPLE

Had they been interviewed, some people who figured in last week's news might have related certain of their doings as follows:

George Bernard Shaw: "Stockholm despatches announce I have just been awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature.* Said I, slyly: 'I suppose it is because I wrote nothing that year.' My secretary believes the prize is for my play, Saint Joan, written in 1923. It is generally assumed that the award is made for my work as dramatist, in which I claim to be the superior of Shakespeare. But I spend more time on the prefaces to my plays than on the plays themselves, and I prefer my reputation as philsopher to that as dramatist. I am, as everyone knows, a vegetarian, and a total abstainer from tobacco, alcohol and soap. To these denials I attribute my present vigor at 70. I am now engaged upon a new play, to be called Vegetariana. For a young girl dying of an obscure malady, doctors prescribe beefsteaks; she does not improve. The doctors prescribe Africa, but with all the comforts of civilization, she does hot improve. There the play ends. Asked what I should do with the money of the award, I observed: 'What I do with the rest of my money, which is none of the public's business.' "

Brander Matthews, Dean of U. S. critics: " 'I don't approve of it,' said I, bluntly last week, referring to the award to Bernard Shaw of the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature. I refused to explain my stand, saying I was 'not looking for publicity.' I noted that Rebecca West, the distinguished English novelist, is reported to have said: 'In England we all feel it is perfectly absurd the Nobel Prize has never been awarded to Thomas Hardy. It is regarded as a grave reflection upon the manner in which the winner is selected. We don't feel it should go to any one else until Hardy has been recognized.' "

William Montgomery McGovern, explorer: "I landed at Boston last week and immediately told the rocking-chair voyagers there the same tales of jungleering that I told last summer upon emerging from the Amazon hinterland (TIME, July 5). I told of civilizations antedating the Incas, of a human race so low that other natives call them animal folk, of finding caterpillars tough eating. At this time I did not stress the fact that I am a Buddhist priest, regularly authenticated in Tibet."

T. A. D. ("Tad") Jones, Yale football coach: "Just before the late Yale-Princeton game, incensed by criticisms of my coaching, I said: 'Those yellowbellies who crucified my brother and Frank Hinkey and Tom Shevlin are not going to crucify me. I was forced into this job. I am willing to be judged by other coaches . . . not by shyster lawyers, poor doctors, dentists, $18-a-week clerks who think they know more football than Roper, Dobie, myself and all the other coaches in the country. Injuries have crippled the team so that at times this season I have been lucky to have four backs who knew the signals to put in.'"

Albert Bushnell Hart, Harvard historian: "I got lost twice last week, on a visit to my home town of Cleveland. Although I still wear my bushy, flowing whiskers, few people recognized me as I wandered about. Both times, however, I was directed back to my room by pleasant girl students at Western Reserve University, which was celebrating its 100th anniversary. I left Cleveland for Harvard in 1876."

Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury: "Word went around last week that I have been quietly financing a campaign to raise a

$15,000,000 pension fund for aged and retired Presbyterian ministers. At the end of a small dinner in Washington where plans for the campaign were discussed, a minister pulled out his pocketbook to contribute his share, only to be told that the dinner and the rest of the expenses were being paid for by me. The Washington Post announced that I had assumed the role of after-dinner speaker at this and many another dinner at which I was not present, and that invariably I made the shortest and best speech of the evening, to wit: 'Give me the check.' "

Cecile Sorel, Countess de Segur, famed Parisienne successeuse pretendue to Sarah Bernhardt: "A room in my Parisian home was recently dedicated to the reception of an altar bearing an immense Greek sarcophagus of creamy marble. Each morning I ascend unclothed this 'Altar of Beauty,' climb into the sarcophagus, turn a small silver valve, and amid the rushing of warm perfumed waters tub myself. Last week this eccentricity was made the basis of an advance publicity campaign heralding my departure for the U. S. to play in Manhattan, Chicago, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia my 'Bernhardt repertoire' of dramas; including, of course, La Dame aux Camelias. The second wave of my publicity barrage was an announcement that I am bringing with me my celebrated bed, a four-poster with perfume burners at the top of each post, which I assert was once the property of Mme. du Barry, favorite of Louis XV. For the delectation of U. S. audiences I shall appear on the stage in this bed with all perfume burners at full blast and chastely covered with a quilt composed of 1,000 ermine pelts. My third wave was the announcement that I am bringing with me 97 dresses, 27 costumes, 15 headdresses, 33 hats, 100 pairs of stockings, 123 pairs of shoes, 70 pairs of gloves, all of which will be inclosed in 127 pieces of baggage."

William B. Leeds, "tin plate" heir: "I am out to make a fortune for myself and for my wife, the onetime Princess Xenia of Greece. That is why, although my father left me $40,000,000, I appeared as a concessionaire at the food show in Grand Central Palace, Manhattan, last week. I was 'showing the public what a good drink is,' a drink I had concocted myself-out of clam juice."

William Williams Keen, surgeon-educator, of Philadelphia: "Irritated by stupid campaigns against vaccination, I wrote last week a letter to the New York Times, in which I said: 'In the U. S. for the seven years from 1919 to 1925 there were 409,639 cases of smallpox. Even granting that the percentage of deaths was very small, there were at least 350,000 or even more cases in which the victims were made repulsive for life by the pitting of their faces and handicapped in both their business and social relations. In addition to this a very considerable number of them have been blinded for life.' "

Sir James Matthew Barrie, anatomist of sentiment: " 'I have lost the use of my right hand,' I announced, in sending to a charity auction the MS. of my play The Old Lady Shows Her Medals. 'At the completion of that play my right hand (probably frightened at the sight of my calligraph) gave out,' said I, 'and I have ever since had to write with my left.' The MS., which fetched $1,025, was auctioned by Major Hon. John Jacob Astor, Chairman of the London Times Publishing Company; and William Harrison, who has been buying up London illustrated newspapers, offered him $25,000,000, 'if you are prepared to include the Times.' Sir Harry Lauder cabled to ask whether medals went with it."

* Established by the will of the late Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-96), Swedish chemist and engineer, in addition to similar prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Peace, without distinction of nationality (TiME, Nov. 30, 1925). Individual awards now total about $35,000 each, and are made annually, provided, 1) the candidates are deserving, and 2) the interest on the invested funds is adequate. The Literature winners include: Sully-Prudhomme (1901, first award made), Kipling (1907), Maeterlink, (1911), Hauptmann (1912), Tagore (1913), Rolland (1915), Anatole France (1921). Yeats (1923) Reymont (1924) and 6 Scandinavians.

* The current U. S. Public Health bulletin records: "For the week ended October 23, 1926, 37 states reported 220 cases of smallpox. Last year for the corresponding week they reported 128 cases."