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Show WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON (Consolidated Features WNU Service.) VIEW YORK. In 1918, there was -L a tall, gangling young man in charge of a crew of men who were making lewisite gas, in a hide-out -, i ie . near Cleve-Chemtcal Cleve-Chemtcal Expert land A vet. Speaks Softly, So eran officer at i n wr advised him Nothing Blows Up t0 give or. ders in a low tone of voice and speak slowly and cautiously. There were human and chemical tensions there, intermingling, and a sharp word might twitch a workman's nerve and cause trouble. That might have been good training for a college president-to-be. At any rate, they made Dr. James Bryant Conant presi-' presi-' dent of Harvard, in 1936. He has continued to speak softly and to get results without anything blowing np, and now President Roosevelt picks him to head a scientific mission to Britain. He was a major in the newly organized or-ganized chemical warfare service in the days when he was making lew-' isite gas. Within a few years of the day when he took his Harvard doctorate, in 1917, he was famed here and abroad as one of the world's leading research chemists. If our leasing and lending includes specialized brains, we could not have sent a scientist more competent compe-tent to devise defenses against gas attack, or, perhaps to solve some new Nazi chemical ruthlessness, of which, it is reported, the British war office has evidence. He is a pioneer and expert in gas warfare and defense, but he hates war and as an educator has worked diligently to out-mode out-mode and banish forever his war gases. He hastened to enlist en-list when we entered the World war. A friend persuaded him that he would be much more useful in gas research for the bureau of mines. From this bureau bu-reau he later was transferred to the chemical warfare service. He is an Alpinist, still climbing mountains at the age of 48. In 1937, he scaled North Palisade mountain in the California Sierra, a hazardous climb of 14,254 feet. During Dur-ing the previous winter, he had broken bro-ken his collar-bone while skiing. He is blue-eyed, with rather severe pedagogical ped-agogical spectacles, which make him look scientific, and a warm, ready smile which makes him look human. His father was a photo-engraver of Dorchester, Mass. There was some sniffing among the Brahmins when the professor of chemistry became president of Harvard. But Charles W. Eliot had been a professor pro-fessor of chemistry and had scored heavily in the humanities as did Dr. Conant. So there was precedent prece-dent for that appointment, but possibly pos-sibly not for his present appointment. appoint-ment. The tradition of the absent-minded absent-minded professor fades in an era of highly specialized knowledge. PERHAPS more than any other one man, Sir Robert Brooke-Pop-ham saw the need for wings over the British empire and worked hard British Far East Air Chief Took a As command- w w a i er-in-chief in Long View Ahead the Far East today, with tension mounting hourly on land and sea, he may take credit for strengthening air defenses to the farthest outpost of Britain's dominions. domin-ions. He attended Sandhurst and entered en-tered the army. He was at the front in France from the first to the last gunshot. Twenty years ago he began campaigning and agitating for an empire matrix of commercial commer-cial and military airlines, predicting pre-dicting an hour of peril when only such unity and co-operation of scattered air forces could hold the empire together. He was one of the originators of the British commonwealth air training train-ing plan; established the Royal Air Force college In London and became commandant of the Imperial Im-perial Defense college. He built Canada's S600.000.000 empire air force which just now is greatly strengthening Britain's hopes with its 40.000 students and its daily yield of skilled fliers for the defense of Britain. A lean, hard man of clipped, astringent speech, comparable only to a blow-torch in his powers of concentration, con-centration, he is in his general makeup make-up a planned personality. He is 63 years old, hard as nails and as whippy as a pole-vaulter. He was born Robert Moore, the son of a country clergyman. For reasons of his own. he was not satisfied to be Robert Moore. Characteristically, Characteristical-ly, he did something about it. He procured royal dispensation to become be-come Robert Brookc-Pcpham. Then, j possibly in some pattern of numerology, numer-ology, c?me a career to fit the name. |