Blum! Blum! Blum!

"Blum, you're a jolly good fellow!

"BLUM, YOU'RE A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW!

"BLUM, YOU'RE A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW!

"THAT, nobody can deny!"

Ralph D. Blumenfeld sat down, flushed, last week at a banquet in London, when the above quoted chorus was chanted heartily by five British Cabinet ministers,* several earls, a great many editors, and Michael Arlen.

A quaint feature of the banquet was that, although Mr. Blumenfeld was born in the U. S., not one-tenth of 1% of his fellow countrymen have the slighest idea who he is. Londoners know that "Blum" has been editor of the Daily Express since 1904. He came to London from Manhattan in 1887 under orders from the late famed James Gordon Bennett to report Queen Victoria's first Jubilee. British tradition insists that "Blum has been in London ever since"; but that is an error. Actually he was Superintendent of the New York Herald in 1894; and not until the new century opened did he become News Editor of The London Daily Mail.

Since then Mr. Blumenfeld has become, if not a "power," at least a virile, pungent force in Fleet Street, which he described, last week, as "that street of golden adventure which has been so long my home."

During the banquet a telephone connected with Manhattan rang; and Chancellor Churchill answered it:

"Hello New York," he said, "this is Churchill. You have a message for Blumenfeld? Will put him on to speak for himself."

Nominally the banquet was "to celebrate the completion of Blum's 40 years in Fleet Street."

*Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Spencer Churchill, Secretary of State for India the Earl of Birkenhead, Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Air Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, War Secretary Rt. Hon. Sir Laming Worthington-Evans.