People: Debits & Credits

Admiral William F. Halsey, whose foot and mouth seem to have a dreadful affinity, appeared to be stuck for life with his equestrian boast (that he would ride the Emperor's white horse down the streets of Tokyo): he got a white wooden mount in Manhattan from members of the Military Order of the World Wars. Day before, Gossipist Leonard Lyons quoted his latest blurt, apropos the atomic bomb—that he would have preferred to lick Japan without it, conceded that it "did one good thing, though. It meant 100,000 dead Japs we'll never have to worry about."

Joe E. Brown, canyon-mouthed cine-comic, followed Charles A. Lindbergh (TIME, Dec. 10) into the spotlight as a civilian Jap-shooter. In direct violation of the Hague Convention, U.S.O. Trouper Brown, whose son was killed in the war, rode a tank last summer in the attack on Bamban in northern Luzon, popped out with a carbine, blazed away, was credited with killing two Japs.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann's son Manfred was left $500 by an 85-year-old New Jersey spinster who didn't know him but pitied him for being "handicapped" and wanted to help him in "his unequal struggle for existence." The twelve-year-old son of the Lindbergh kidnapper was last in the public eye in 1940, when he got $15,000 in Rochester, N.Y. for accident injuries. His benefactress also left $3,000 "for the care and protection of cats."