Staggering Dot

The portly kiosk women of Warsaw, genial news venders, beamed red and perspiring last week in their little booths, changed many a hastily proffered zloty, sold twice their usual quota of newspapers.

Boulevardeurs discussed the news over cafe tables placed beneath the lime-trees of the broad Ujazdowska Aleja. Polish Jews rubbed expectant palms over their newspapers in the tumbledown Stare Miasto quarter. Money was coming to Poland, the headlines told, much money, three hundred millions of dollars.

This sum was announced as the staggering marriage dot of the daughter of Henry Ford. She, tender, susceptible, had yielded to the suit of Count Alexander Skrzynski (6 ft. 3 in.), onetime Premier of Poland (TIME, May 3) who visited here last year (TIME, July 27). Miss Ford would bring to Poland enough gold to send the zloty zooming up to par. . . .

For a day all Warsaw basked in the roseate dreams beloved of Poles. Then the U. S. Consulate at Warsaw announced that Henry Ford has no daughter. . . .

Warsaw editors, resourceful, instantly covered their booming blunder. It was not the daughter of Henry Ford, they said, but his granddaughter, Josephine, who was engaged to marry Count Skrzynski. Warsavians, remembering the flight of the Josephine Ford over the Pole (TIME, May 17), accepted this new rumor, beamed anew. . . .

Not for several days were two facts placed in juxtaposition: Josephine is 3; Alexander Skrzynski is 42.