John Bull

Admiral Sir Charles Bullen commanded H. M. S. Britannia at the Battle of Trafalgar and had a son named Richard Edward. Richard grew up to be a captain in the Royal Navy and had a son named Percy Sutherland. Percy grew up to be a newspaperman to beget five children and fill three inches each in the British Who's Who and Who's Who in America. Last week Percy Sutherland Bullen, 66, found himself being interviewed by newshawks in Manhattan. Reason: After 50 years with newspapers, 40 years with the London Daily Telegraph, 30 years as its U. S. correspondent, he was quitting work.

Looking, talking and acting like a benevolent John Bull, Percy Bullen was the dean of British correspondents in the U. S. In 30 years he produced some 11,000,000 words of copy--"more," he proudly observes, "than in the Encyclopedia Britannica." His professional routine was more pleasant than that of the average newshawk. His office was above his apartment in a penthouse a few doors off lower Fifth Avenue. There every morning he would digest the daily newspapers arranged for him by a secretary. He might go out to luncheon with a banker, or speed to Washington for a White House press conference. In the afternoon, working in shirt-sleeves and puffing a pipe, he would write his daily 1,200 word dispatch in longhand. His secretary would pick up a private telephone to Western Union to put it on the cables.

Proud of Britain, fond of the U. S., Reporter Bullen found time and energy to be an indefatigable organizer of hands-across-the-sea movements. He started the American Shakespeare Foundation, helped the late Otto H. Kahn raise $1,000,000 to rebuild the Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. He raised $300,000 for destitute Belgians, $5,000 for a memorial to Antarctic Explorer Scott, $15,000 "to provide pensions for necessitous grandnieces" of Charles Dickens. He organized the League of Remembrance of the U. S., to join with Great Britain in observing a two-minute silence at 11 a. m. on Armistice Day. He founded the namesake Towns movement to bring together U. S. and British towns of like names. His medals, decorations, citations, scrolls and memorials would fill a trunk.

With a pension from the Telegraph, Percy Bullen last week looked forward with relish to being able to "develop the lost art of thinking" on his Ossining, N. Y. farm.

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