WORLD LEADERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23951, 28 October 1939, Page 18

WORLD LEADERS

WOMEN THEY MARRIED With the exception ot Hen Hitler and M Daladier, most of the other leading figures in the present Internationa 1 drama are married, and an English paper gives brief impressions of the women behind the men whose names are to-day on the world’s tongue. Mr Chamberlain was 42 when he married Annie Vere Cole, of halfEnglish, half-Irish descent. It was Mrs Chamberlain who, when her husband was a “plain business man" in Birmingham suggested that he might stand as a candidate for the City Council, and from that modest beginning he e' entually entered Parliament. Mrs Chamberlain is fond of music, playing the piano well. She is keen photographer, and has even gained an expert knowledge of fishing. In addition, she is an ideal hostess and a skilled cook. Born a peasant, yet lifted by a freak of fate to high station, Donna Rachele Mussolini is still a simple, homely soul who shuns the limelight and, outwardly at ;ny rate, plays a very subordinate role in the Mussolini home. She never entertains and when II Duce finds it necessary to give lavish banquets they are always held in hotels, and his wife is never there Donna Mussolini has no ambitions, and, although she is enormously proud of her husband, she has never given the slightest hint, by word or action, of her approval or disapproval of his choice of career. Five feet eleven inches tall. Mrs Roosevelt, wife of the United States President, is an author whose writings appear in the American papers and are read by millions. Every moment of her day is filled. She received 300,000 letters the first year she was at the White House, and even now receives over 100,000. Like Mrs Chamberlain. Mrs Roosevelt has a practical knowledge of running a home and she, too, is an excellent cook General Goering married Emmy Sonnemann in 1935, when she left the theatre at the height of her fame to become the wife of the man who has played so important a European role in recent years Since then she has taken her full share in the social business of official entertaining. Two more women married to famous men are the wife of Colonel Beck and Frau von Ribbentrop Madame Jadwiga Beck comes of an old Polish family and shares a weakness in her husband’s diplomatic armoury, for, like him, she speaks excellent French and German, but her English is far from perfect