Presumed Dead. Leslie Howard (neStainer), 50, genteel stage & screen favorite; in a Lisbon-to-London transport plane downed by the Nazis (see p. 30).

Died on Duty. Major Kermit Roosevelt, 53, second son of T. R. ; of unrevealed causes; in Alaska. He served with the British as a captain in World War I, transferred in 1918 to the U.S. artillery in France. After the war he entered shipping, in spite of many hunting trips in Asia rose to vice president of International Mercantile Marine. A frequent tripper to England, he looked more English than the English in his British Army uniform in World War II, changed it temporarily for that of a Finnish colonel in command of international volunteers. Plagued by dysentery in Egypt, he resigned his British rank of major in 1941, next year accepted a U.S. Army assignment to Alaska.

Died. Georges Mandel, 58, longtime French politico. Minister of the Interior in World War II; of undisclosed causes; in prison, somewhere in Germany. Born Jereboam Rothschild (no kin to the financiers), he was Clemenceau's trouble-shooter in World War I held other portfolios before joining Paul Reynaud's doomed cabinet in May 1940.

Died. Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, 60, deliverer of the Dionne quintuplets; of pneumonia; in North Bay, Ont. At 4:30 a.m. on May 28, 1934, on his 1,400th maternity call, the short, bespectacled doctor stepped into an unpainted Ontario farm house, worked over Mrs. Dionne for an hour, baptized her five newborn girls against their anticipated deaths, then began to realize that he had made medical history. Son of a small-town doctor, he had nearly missed his M.D. at the University of Toronto in 1907, had treated the prolific French of the Callander region for 24 winters. A legal guardian of the fabulous five for five years, he resigned in 1939 over Papa "Dionne's dissatisfaction with their lack of "family life."

Died. The Right Rev. James Edward Freeman, 76, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C.. since 1923; of a heart attack; in Washington. For 15 years an accountant for the New York Central Railroad, he took orders when he was 29.

As Bishop of Washington, he seized on 40-year-old plans for an American "West-minster Abbey," raised funds to complete enough of the Washington Cathedral to open it for public worship in 1932.

Died. Dr. William Francis Magie, 84, notable fixture of Princeton's physics department for 50 years; after long illness; in Princeton, NJ. Valedictorian of Woodrow Wilson's class ('79), he was a member of the original Daily Princetonian board.

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