Talking about his graduation next June from Amherst and the end of his IIS student deferment, David Eisenhower let drop the fact that he had been advised to take his military service in the Navy instead of the Army. And who in the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower was responsible for that bit of treachery? "My grandfather," answered David. Then he hastened to explain that he really has not made up his mind; he is considering a career as a lawyer, and that was why Ike advised the Navy. An Army man, after all, ought to make the service his life.

. . .

In 1968, the Duke of Cornwall's properties (including 57,000 acres of farm land) earned him $528,000, and the net this year should be at least as great. But now the Duke is also the Prince of Wales, a title that carries a certain noblesse oblige. So Charles has asked that half his ducal revenues be turned over to the government. "He felt he wanted to make a gesture of this sort," said a palace spokesman. But the troubled Exchequer will get no great boost from the gift, which comes on Nov. 14, Charles' 21st birthday. While Charles was a minor, most of the ducal income was used to help pay Queen Elizabeth's annual salary of $1,140,000. Now the treasury must make up the difference.

. . .

As Britain's most uninhibited critic, the old man has taken savage swipes at the royal family, the Anglican Church, even Winston Churchill--and now the subject is sex. On the eve of Edinburgh's International Festival of the Arts, which was to offer plays featuring a homosexual embrace, two topless actresses and a sketch about the genitals of primitive man. Malcolm Muggeridge was moved to take the pulpit at St. Giles' Cathedral and inveigh against such "illiterate filth." "Have what passed for being art forms ever before been so drenched and impregnated with erotic obsessions, so insanely preoccupied with our animal nature and its appetites?" demanded Muggeridge. "Let a collection of yahoos but take off their clothes, cavort about the stage and yell obscenities and a great breakthrough in dramatic art is announced and applauded." Britain's Minister for the Arts, Jennie Lee, was not impressed. "Nonsense," she said. "The new must by its nature include things which are not acceptable to everyone."

. . .

She has announced her retirement two times in the last two years, and each time she has obviously meant it. But somehow it never lasted very long. This time the bait is a play written by her late husband, and a part she claims was modeled after her mother. How could Helen Hayes say no? So she will be back on Broadway Oct. 18, playing the "small but juicy" part of Mrs. Grant in the revival of the 1928 comedy The Front Page. Miss Hayes said that her husband, Charles MacArthur (who collaborated with Ben Hecht on the script), created Mrs. Grant as an uncomplimentary portrait of her mother during their courtship in 1928. "There's a line in the play 'I have three tickets to New York for me, my girl and her goddam ma,' " she recalled. "That was my Charley speaking from his heart."

. . .

Washington Lawyer Clark Clifford is no novice at dealing with Presidents. Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson have all relied on his discreet and diplomatic talents. Still, Clifford may well have had his finest hour when he prepared the present military budget while serving as L.B.J.'s Secretary of Defense. As one Pentagon official tells the story, an aide hurried into Clifford's office with the glad news that the year's budget would be $1 billion less than anticipated, and suggested that the Secretary call the President. "He certainly will be pleased," the aide said. In his most urbane accents, Clifford answered: "No, I'm not going to call the President. Because if I do, he will tell me to cut $2 billion. No, I'm going to wait for the President to call me, and then I am going to tell him we can cut only $500 million. Then we'll be all right." And that, says Clifford's aide, was exactly the way it went.

. . .

Sixty years ago last week, Sigmund Freud paid his only visit to the U.S. to deliver a series of five lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. The $750 fee was a great help to the hard-pressed doctor, and the warm reception, he later noted, "encouraged my self-respect in every way." Now a collection of 13 letters discovered in the basement of Clark's library indicates that Freud kept up a correspondence with the university's president, Psychologist G. Stanley Hall. The letters abound with expressions of gratitude and courtesy. But one with a sharper tone replied to Hall's suggestion that Prize Disciple Carl Jung's bitter split with Freud was a classic case of adolescent rebellion. "If the real facts were more familiar to you," Freud wrote, "you would very likely not have thought that there was again a case where a father did not let his sons develop, but you would have seen that the sons wished to eliminate their father, as in ancient times."

"Jackie," he complained, "you won't believe it, but she has locked me out. On my own ship!" She had indeed, and there was nothing Aristotle Onassis could do about it. It happened last spring, according to the clan, while Rose Kennedy was on an Easter holiday cruise aboard the Onassis yacht Christina. The voyage had barely begun when the Mediterranean weather turned bad; Mrs. Kennedy retired to her cabin and stayed there. Several times in the next few days, a solicitous Onassis looked in on her, but always found her asleep. Finally, on the fourth day out, she emerged on deck, still looking a bit queasy. "I hope you're feeling better," said Onassis; then he mentioned that he had checked on her a couple of times. The Kennedy eyebrows arched. "You mean you actually came into my stateroom?" He nodded. This time Mrs. Kennedy retired to her cabin with a vengeance, and the door remained locked for the rest of the voyage--even when Ari tried to enter to apologize.

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