People: People, Oct. 27, 1947

Attorney General Tom Clark spoke to a gathering of Girl Scouts in Manhattan, let go a fearless generalization. The U.S., declared the Attorney General, “does not give enough emphasis to the importance of girls.”

Jim Farley, ex-Democratic chairman, distributed bitter pills at a Wellesley College anniversary banquet. Because of the “frightful . . . pressure,” reported Farley gravely, “I do not believe any woman is physically and emotionally strong enough to serve out a full presidential term.”

Secretary of State George C. Marshall, making a Founders Day speech at Lafayette College, expressed the conviction that

Congressmen ought to know something about history. If they could be familiarized with the past, declared Marshall, “about three-fourths of the speeches would be eliminated. . . . They would know these speeches had already been said.”

“I think the responsibility of keeping the home full of love and comfort,” said Novelist Hans Habe generously to a woman interviewer, “is at least as great as making a buck.” The author of A Thousand Shall Fall did not mean, he hastened to add, that women should “just stay in the kitchen,” but: “After all, somebody has to bring home the bacon and somebody has to cook it. But it is not a natural man’s nature to bake the bacon.”

Americanism, announced Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in the Nation, is “a great external reality rising up at the entrance to the port of New York . . . and the daily product of anxious liberties. The anguish of the American confronted with Americanism is an ambivalent anguish, as if he were asking, ‘Am I American enough?’ and at the same time, ‘How can I escape from Americanism?’ ”

Work & Play

Frederik of Norway made a fullblown, official state visit to Stockholm, thus giving royalty a fine excuse to dress to the teeth. One result: a news picture of Sweden’s Gustaf and Denmark’s Queen Ingrid which almost played its own champagne waltz (see cut).

The Netherlands’ Princess Juliana had a good excuse for some fancy dressing, too, as she was sworn in to rule during

Wilhelmina’s temporary absence (to do a little resting up). She chose instead to look like any old regular at a ladies’ Thursday morning discussion group (see cut).

Britain’s Princess Margaret Rose went off at 17 on her first official visit without her family (Queen Elizabeth stood at the palace entrance and waved goodbye). The Princess spent four days in Belfast, christened a ship, did fine, got back safe & sound.

Princess Elizabeth and Philip got an official worrier to take care of the grocery bills & so on. Appointed household controller and treasurer: Lieut. General Sir Frederick A. M. Browning, wartime Chief of Staff of the South East Asia Command, husband of Novelist Daphne du Maurier.

Ups & Downs

Gene Kelly, trying out a new dance routine at home, missed his footing, fell, broke his right ankle, had to bow out of Hollywood’s Easter Parade. To help a pal, Fred Astaire, who very loudly removed his dancing shoes last year, happily bounded out of retirement into Kelly’s role. Said bald Hoofer Fred about retirement: “I’ll always talk about it, but I’ll probably never do it.”

Sued, by C.I.O.’s Walter P. Reuther: a new Detroit periodical which he charged linked him with Rabble-Rouser Gerald L. K. Smith. U.A.W. President Reuther figured he had been libeled $500,000 worth.

Absolved of obscenity: Poets Gaius Valerius Catullus and Vincent McHugh; by a grand jury in Manhattan. The jury threw out a suit brought last spring by famed Dirt Chaser John S. Sumner, who had objected to a phallic “Suite from Catullus” in Adaptei McHugh’s book, The Blue Hen’s Chickens, Sumner, who caid he was “not at all surprised,” was now operating his battered old Society for the Suppression of Vice under a slightly more delicate name: the Society to Maintain Public Decency.

Roses All the Way

To the late George Washington Carver, slaveborn agricultural chemist, went the honor of being the second* Negro in U.S. history to appear on a postage stamp.

A slightly larger-than-standard three-center bearing his portrait would be out next January.

To General Dwight D. Eisenhower from King Frederik of Denmark went a bejeweled medal, the country’s highest decoration, seldom given to anyone but princes: the Order of the Knight of the Elephant; from Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands, a bejeweled, gold-sheathed sword whose blade bore the engraved leg end: “. . . in grateful memory of the glorious liberation” (see cut).

To President James Bryant Conant of Harvard, from the University of the State of New York, went his 19th honorary LL.D.

To General John J. Pershing, 87, at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, went a special gold medal (author ized by Congress) for his “heroic achievements and . . . devotion” from one war through the next.

To Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimifz went the honorary rank of chief of the Ottawa Indians of Michigan and the aboriginal monicker Be-Lea-Nage (The Winner). And to the nation from the Admiral went an announcement: he would retire from active duty around the middle of December.

To Poet Robert Lowell, 30, wartime conscientious objector, 1947 Pulitzer Prizewinner, went a Government plum — a year’s pleasant work (at $5,700) as adviser on poetry for the Library of Congress (where his predecessor was 1944 Pulitzer Poet Karl Shapiro).

*First: slaveborn Booker T. Washington.