"Names make news." Last week the following names made the following news:

Louis Cartier of Paris, red .cheeked and affable, visited in Manhattan his brother Pierre with whom he conducts the international jewelry firm of Cartiers. Dangling a model of the Kohinoor, he said: "The great diamonds of the world are vanishing. There are only ten of the first class between 100 and 200 carats and no more than 250 of the second class between 50 and 100 carats. There are many, many more prospective purchasers than that."

Edward Stephen Harkness, Manhattan financier, presented last week to the Library of Congress a large collection of 16th Century manuscripts concerning the conquest of Mexico and Peru by Cortez, Pizarro and their successors. The documents included a bill of sale of Alvarado's armada to Pizarro and Almagro for 100,000 gold pesos; also, the Cabildo book of the City of the Frontier of the Chachapoyas telling of the assassination of Pizarro by Almagro.

Harry Payne Whitney, financier, sportsman, offered last week to give $750,000 to the American Museum of Natural History for the construction of a new wing to house collections of bird life, if and when New York City contributes an equal sum.

Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney (nee Gertrude Vanderbilt), sculptress, returned to Manhattan on the storm-battered Paris, after working for two months on a statue of Christopher Columbus, 100 feet high, for the Port of Palos, Spain.

Lucius Nathan Littauer was born in Stump City, in upstate New York, in 1859. Twenty-six years later Stump City was named Gloversville, because of the gloves that the Littauers, father and son, made there. Now Son Littauer, resembling "Old Paul'' von Hindenburg in a quiet way, is retired and lives in Manhattan or at Premium Point, New Rochelle, N. Y. He often goes back to Gloversville, where everybody knows him and likes to say hello to him.

Last fortnight, Son Littauer made the crowning gift of a long series of philanthropies. He gave $1,000,000, promised more, to a foundation bearing his name, in "the cause of better understanding among all mankind," and for "altruistic activities of every nature, charitable, humanitarian, educational, religious and communal. . . ."

Fridtjof Nansen, 67, explorer, Rector of St. Andrews, High Commissioner of the League of Nations for relief work in Russia, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1922), arrived in Manhattan last week to raise $500,000 for a flight to the North Pole in the Graf Zeppelin with Dr. Hugo von Eckener, in 1930. "Arctic research will be the prime consideration," said Dr. Nansen. When only 26, he achieved the first crossing of Greenland. In 1892, he tried to reach the North Pole in a peculiar, round-shaped boat named Fram; three years later he was crossing the ice on foot to the highest latitude then attained; a year later he was picked up by the Jackson- Harmsworth expedition. Recently, he has been more famed as a diplomat and relief expert--half Viking, half Herbert Hoover.