Dreams to Dream

Lady Montgomery, 79-year-old mother of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, predicted that the war in Europe would be over by March 23, and what's more--reported London's Evening Standard--she "has written to the Field Marshal to make sure her forecast is fulfilled."

Samuel Goldwyn, famed as Hollywood's greatest Malaprop, arrived in England on a special mission for FEA, spent a day among the Oxfordons as the guest of Balliol's dean. To students he made a promise: "For years I have been known for saying 'include me out,' but ... I am giving it up forever. From now on let me say: 'Oxford . . . include me in.' "

General Joseph ("Vinegar Joe") Stilwell, battlewise commander of the Army Ground Forces and a veteran infantryman who has six medals and four campaign ribbons but rarely wears any, admitted that there was "just one medal" he would like to wear. "I have never been able to get it," he said. "I envy the infantrymen who have. . . ." The medal: Expert Rifleman.

Workers at War

Madeleine Carroll, who gave up Hollywood glamor in 1942--at the same time that her husband, ex-Cinemactor Stirling Hayden, joined the Marines--and has served overseas with a Red Cross nursing unit, decided to quit the screen for keeps. She explained that she would continue with the Red Cross until after the war, then planned to care for the 200 homeless children she has sheltered at her home outside Paris. British-born, beauteous Madeleine vowed that it "is to them and them alone that I will devote myself," added that she had always been "at heart more French than English."

Princess Elizabeth was commissioned an honorary second subaltern in the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service--Britain's WAC), started full-time training in southern England.

Authors in Action

John Dos Passos, novelist (Manhattan Transfer, Big Money) turned LIFE war correspondent in the Philippines, was reported knocked cold, gashed in the head, given a black eye and slight concussion when hit on the head by the wingtip of a landing Piper Cub plane. Correspondent Dos Passos merely noted that he suffered "a nasty little accident (almost got my block knocked off by a plane)."

Lillian Hellman, tart-tongued problematic playwright, home from a four-month visit in the U.S.S.R., brought a startlingly simple solution to a major postwar problem: at the front she said she met "high-ranking Red Army men" who asked her what the U.S. is going to do about Argentina. When she countered, "What is Russia going to do about Franco?", the officers told her they would handle fascism in Europe, hoped the U.S. would do the same on this side of the world. Although Miss Hellman did not get to see Stalin, she did become one of the very few to receive regrets from him: "Very sorry . . . but too busy with the Poles." Playwright Hellman, who spoke no Russian when she left on her trip but came back with a few words, declared that she had "nothing but contempt for people who go to Russia . . . stay six weeks without even speaking the language," and come back authorities.

James Thurber, whose satirist's stock in trade is cartoons and essays on inhibited males and uninhibited females, received proposals of marriage from two Smith College seniors. They wrote "the funniest man in the world" that if he was not available they would like to marry his sons. Grey-haired, badger-faced Humorist Thurber, 50, wrote back: "I always reply ... to girls who want to marry me or my sons. Unhappily . . . I am married and am much too old for you anyway. My only child is a daughter of 14. She lives in, of all places, Amherst. No doubt the boys who want to marry her will never go to the trouble of writing me. ... I wish I had a couple of sons . . . but it's much too late to do anything about it now"

Raymond Clapper, plainspeaking, widely read, plain man's columnist who was killed in a plane crash during the invasion of the Marshalls a year ago, was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart by the U.S. Navy, which cited him as a "brilliant journalist" who died in "gallant company and in a worthy cause."

Food for Thought

Albert Einstein, for his scientific skepticism in scoffing at the notion that eggs stand on end in China on the first day of the Chinese spring (TIME, Feb. 12) was taken to task by Chen Kuo-fu, head of China's radio network, who told Einstein off as follows: the first day of spring in China begins when the surface of the sun toward the earth is largest, thus attracting the eggs to stand on end. Chen Kuo-fu added that he believed the sun was not round, asked Einstein to "look into the matter."

Frances Alda, plump, redhaired, old-time Metropolitan Opera diva who retired in 1929, was charged in Manhattan's Yorkville Court with swiping 300 red ration points from her ex-cook, Mrs. Barbara Neill. Cook Neill, who worked only one month for Mme. Alda, claimed that she had handed over her ration books to her employer when she started, got back the books minus 300 points (a normal six-months' supply) when she was dismissed. Mme. Alda's attorney called the charges "fantastic," declared: "Even if Mme. Alda could settle this case for $50, she would spend thousands ... to prove its falsity." Said Cook Neill: "I want my stamps. . . . Mrs. Alda is no lady."

Harry Hopkins, long plagued by illness (a gastrointestinal -ailment), went straight to the Mayo Clinic after returning from the Crimea Comerence. The Clinic announced that he had "a slight recurrence of a nutritional condition."

Germans on Germany

Emil Ludwig, German-born biographer (Napoleon, Bismarck, Roosevelt) now living in Los Angeles, prophesied the postwar German attitude: "Germans again will try to avoid responsibility like a rich man's mistress when he has lost all his money. They will cry, pointing at Hitler: 'He seduced me.' "

Thomas Mann, German author in ex, ile who last year became a U.S. citizen, wrote an article for the liberal monthly, Free World, also prophesied a black future for Germans in general, for German writers in particular: "To be a German author --what will that be? Back of every sentence ... in our language stands a broken . . . burnt-out people, bewildered about itself and its history . . . the fearful accumulation of hatred round about will not permit it to emerge from its boundaries--a people that can never show its face again."

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