Had they been interviewed, some people who figured in last week's news might have related certain of their doings as follows:

Hendrik Willem van Loon, cartoonist-historian : "In Berlin, where I was last week endeavoring to sell the German rights to my picture-history America, I announced: 'Europe is poor, her art and literature are bunk and all she is thinking of is three square meals and a suit of clothes. . . . Europe thinks we have some magic formula. It is really only that we live and let live, whereas Europe lives and lets starve. . . . Europeans only read about Ford, Rockefeller, Edison, portable tea-tables, shoes and jazz records, and are convinced Americans do not have to work to enjoy life. They are densely ignorant of our writers, but have profound respect for a Vanderbilt. Europe has copied our worst things-- the ugly stupidity of our iron civilization. She is sacrificing her originality to wear clothes like an inhabitant of the gopher prairies, to make Unter den Linden look like Main Street and elect a Babbitt Mayor of the Rue de la Paix. The English language is revered over here as Latin was in the Middle Ages. . . . America must not grow too proud. After all, we are a great country, but not a great people. And everything was there to make America a great country, so God did it, not ourselves.' "

Gene Tunney, champion heavyweight pugilist of the world: "I was called "high hat" again last week. This time it was in an editorial in the New York World, after a report that I had declined to dine with Jack Dempsey on the grounds that appearances might be compromised if we became too friendly. The editorial said: 'Somebody ought to take this Mr. Tunney aside and explain to him just what the heavyweight championship of the world really is. It is not, as he seems to think, an ex-officio position in the Boy Scout movement. . . . It is, in fact, nothing but a title to designate the incumbent Heavy Socker; it calls for nothing whatever; being won and not conferred, it entails no special responsibility.' "

Mayor Bertha Knight Landes of Seattle: "Last week I paused, before signing an ordinance creating the job of 'bull cook' at a municipal hydro-electric work camp, to remark: 'It seems that the [City] Council could have adopted a title suggesting some degree of dignity, if not culture.' I then signed the ordinance but oldtime Seattlites wondered what I would have done with documents giving other campworkers their vernacular titles, such as 'chokerman,' 'bucker,' 'king rider,' 'faller,' 'hocker,' 'teeter,' 'punk.' "

Gertrude Ederle, channel swimmer: "Last week, after undressing in an ambulance, I swam to and fro in the Trinity River, seven miles from Dallas, Tex., peering and feeling unsuccessfully underwater for two corpses, the bodies of 18-year-old Dallas boys, Clifford Stockton and Lee Harris, whose boat had capsized. This information reached the public through the press agent of the vaudeville troupe with which I am barnstorming."

Eugene G. Grace, President, Bethlehem Steel Corp.: "At the annual meeting of my company's stock-holders last week, Richard A. Jones, retired Manhattan businessman, refused to vote for the re-election of Director Alvin Untermyer, son of Lawyer Samuel Untermyer, declaring that Samuel Untermyer gave comfort to 'undesirable Reds' and was 'a man of Bolshevist leanings,' and that the son could not 'escape adopting the same policies.' I answered that Alvin Untermyer was a substantial stockholder, as was his father, that he had served on the board three years, and was a constructive director whose opinions were 'valued.' "

Robert Tyre Jones Jr., famed golfer: "As a law school freshman at Emory University, I have pored long over my law books. Last week, when the mid-term examination marks were posted, my name led all the rest. My marks were: A in torts (the only A in the class); A in contracts (the first A made in two years); B in public utilities and B in pleading (only two marks were better) ; C in property (highest mark in the class). It was pointed out that few of my classmates had had my opportunities. Before attending Emory Law School I studied at Georgia Tech and Harvard Law School. It was also recalled that during four years of high school my grades were high enough to excuse me from all term-end examinations."