People, Jun. 24, 1940

Indomitable Fred Snite Jr., U. S. Invalid No. 1, who traveled in his iron lung from China to the U. S., from the U. S. to France and back, who married and is now an expectant father, was reported taking a short totter each day round his room.

Toronto-born Cinemactress Mary Pickford sent a $2,000 gold mesh evening bag to Canada’s Citizens Committee for Troops in Training, to be raffled off for soldiers’ equipment.

Canceled by King George VI was the honorary commandership of the Order of the British Empire awarded in 1929 to Norwegian Major Vidkun Quisling.

Gnarled Philadelphia Publisher Moe Annenberg, 62, after settling for $9,500,000 civil suits for a hash of income-tax evasions, left Federal Court in Chicago, where he had pleaded guilty to one count of the same criminal charges, posed with unusual affability for what he called a “different”‘ picture.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Jerry Sadler announced a plan for setting the Rio Grande on fire, to protect the U. S. against invasion from Mexico: “If only 20 wells would turn oil into the Rio Grande and the oil was then set afire, it would be impossible for any invading army to cross.”

In his latest book (Science and Everyday Life) British Biologist J. B. S. Haldane, now editor of London’s Daily Worker, told how to cure gastritis: “I had it for about 15 years until I read Lenin and other writers, who showed me what was wrong with our society. . . . Since then I have needed no magnesia.”

Bespectacled Spinster Margaret Wilson, talented daughter of the late President Woodrow Wilson, donned the voluminous white robes of a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, sought refuge from the world in the Brahmin retreat at Pondichery, India.

In Montevideo, Uruguay, when a boxer failed to appear at a charity boxing match for the Allied Red Cross, tall, grey-haired British Ambassador E. Millington-Drake shed coat but not tie, put on the gloves, sparred a few rounds with Señor J. Ambrosini.

Out of her “voluntary retirement” ex-Cinemactress Shirley Temple, 11, emerged as guest of honor at the commencement ball of the California Military Academy, danced, as demure as dimity, with her escort, Cadet Raymond Berlinger (see cut}.

In India, whither she had gone to form “a centre of scientific researches in what is commonly known as education,” Signorina Maria Montessori, 69, pioneer woman educator and founder of the famed Montessori (progressive kindergarten) method, was interned as an enemy alien. Mohandas K. Gandhi asked for her release, guaranteed “her good conduct.”

With many of its principal actors fighting in France, the Oberammergau Passion Play (given once a decade) was canceled for the third time*since its inauguration in 1634. Not yet drafted was its Christus, long-haired, bearded Woodcarver Alois Lang, 49, too old for active service.

Hoary Indian Poet & Mystic Sir Rabindranath Tagore, 79, cabled President Roosevelt his hope that the U. S., as “the last refuge of spiritual man,” would “not fail in her mission to stand against the universal disaster that appears so imminent.”

To New York the Atlantic Clipper brought King’s Messenger John Roland Robinson, M. P., bound from Downing Street to the British Embassy in Washington. Firmly tied to his wrist, Messenger Robinson carried a sealed canvas dispatch bag, hole-studded to insure immediate sinking if thrown overboard in case of capture or plane wreck.

Exiled German Biographer Emil Ludwig (The Nile, Cleopatra) told Manhattan newshawks that he thought things looked bad for Germany. Said he: “Germany will run out of material and will have no money with which to replenish her armaments. Mussolini’s aid will not be sufficient. . . .”

In Rome, Ga., workmen began dismantling a statue of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus—gift of Mussolini.

Capitalizing on that great trade festival, Father’s Day, the Institute of American Meat Packers dispatched tenderly aged, three-inch-thick porterhouse steaks to famed fathers. The Institute kept secret the identity of all but one of the recipients: Callander, Ontario’s Oliva Dionne, world’s No. 1 father.

Quipped Hearstian Humorist Arthur (“Bugs”) Baer: “Our military preparedness in the last 20 years consisted mostly of shooting breakfast food out of guns.”

*Other cancellations: 1870 (Franco-Prussian War), 1920 (after World War I).