Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, inspecting U.S. forces now under his command (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS), visited the U.S. 104th Infantry Division, commanded by battlewise Major General Terry Allen, expressed admiration for the timber-wolfhead insigne worn by the 104th. Allen promptly ripped off his shoulder patch, gave it to besweatered, bereted Monty.

Rorello LaGuardia, Manhattan's hustling, bustling little Mayor, who in eleven years of office has proved a tar baby for nicknames ("Butch," "The Hat," "The Little Flower"), was tagged anew at the opening of an "Eat More Fish" campaign: "The Little Flounder."

Major Richard Ira Bong, snub-nosed, wavy-haired U.S. Ace of Aces (40 Jap planes), returned from the Southwest Pacific, where he had burned up the skies since last September, promptly set off to visit his fiancee, Marge Vattendahl of Superior, Wis., whom he plans to marry on Feb. 10.

Emperor Hirohito of Japan, 44-year-old father of seven (five girls, two boys), was "especially pleased" to hear that his 19-year-old eldest daughter, Princess Shigeko Teru, was expecting a child--which would make Hirohito a grandfather.

Lieut. Will Rogers Jr., son of the late, great humorist, and Congressman from California until he quit politics to go to war, was forced to withdraw his platoon in the face of an enemy attack, but left his regards for the Nazis: on a four-foot sheet of wrapping paper, nailed to a tree in the middle of a road, he printed in big red letters a favorite Nazi slogan: "Beware! We will be back in two weeks with our new secret weapon."

Political Notes

Robert Rice ("Buncombe Bob") Reynolds, pinstriped, pompous politico, retired after twelve years as an isolationist Senator from North Carolina, announced the formation of a new Nationalist Party. Said he: "The Republican Party is dead and cannot be rejuvenated. . . . Neither of the two major political parties is big enough to hold . . . interventionists and noninterventionists, nationalists and internationalists, Communists and anti-Communists."

James Michael Curley, Massachusetts' rough-&-ruddy Irish politico, who has been mayor of staunchly Catholic Boston off & on since 1914, and is again a candidate for the job this year, received his first campaign contribution from two soldiers in the Philippines: 20 pesos, which turned out to be counterfeit.

Eugene Talmadge, tobacco-spittin', suspender-snappin' ex-Governor of Georgia, whose "white supremacy" spiels were his longtime political stock-in-trade, tooted a variation of his old tune in his weekly newspaper, the Statesman, urged Georgia's legislature to repeal the state's $1-a-year poll tax. Said he: "You will get a fairer, expression from the people. . . . There is a great deal of argument that the abolishment of the poll tax would put the Negro to voting . . . such is not the case. The Negroes as a class don't care to vote anyway unless they are encouraged by some communistic element."

Footnotes

Paulette Goddard, long an inspiration for students of anatomy, announced that she and her husband, Burgess Meredith (see below), planned to establish scholarship funds in a number of U.S. colleges and universities. The first scholarship (valued at $10,000) will go to the University of Southern California, to be used for scientific research.

Robert Burns, greatest of Scottish poets, who supposedly drank himself to death (in 1796) when he was only 37, and whose admirers have periodically attempted to redeem his honor, got his bad reputation newly scotched by Dr. Sidney Watson Smith, onetime president of the British Medical Association. In the B.M.A.'s Journal, Dr. Smith presented medical evidence against the "gossip's fable," declared that Burns "suffered and died from subacute infective endocarditis --that microbic inflammation of the heart which usually has a fatal ending in septicaemia."

Ernie Pyle, on his way to report the war in the Pacific, stopped off in Hollywood, posed with his cinema self, bewigged Burgess Meredith, who plays the U.S.'s favorite war correspondent in the forthcoming film, G. I. Joe.

Eleanor Roosevelt was named Woman of the Year by the National Council of Negro Women.

Charles Spencer Chaplin, laid up in his Hollywood home with cuts in his left ankle after kicking in a glass door because he had lost his keys, heard that the paternity suit brought against him by Joan Berry had ended in a mistrial: the jury had deadlocked at 7-to-5 for acquittal (nine votes needed for a verdict). It will be summer before the court can schedule a new trial.

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