Herewith are excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain either supplementary to or corrective of news previously published in TIME.
Name
Sirs:
May I suggest you add good manners to the list of virtues you may possess?
The "Attorney of the Iowa Farm Bureau" (p. 5, Nov. 9) has a name, strangely enough. It is J. G. Mitchell. There is something to the fact that many men value the names they bear more than the offices they fill.
LUCY DRAKE MITCHELL
Des Moines, la.
"Unfair to Women"
Sirs:
You are unfair to women! On p. 33 of your issue of Sept. 28, you say that a woman cannot run as fast as a man because of the shape of her pelvis. Is this news? If you are going to state a fact as old as humanity you might at least state it without bias. I refer you to any competent medical authority for information as to what would happen to humanity if the female pelvis were of the same form as the male. The ways of the Creator are not the piddling ways of TIME.
In your issue of Oct. 5 on p. 30, you call Miss Ruth Gillette a "freak" because she flies a racing airplane. Think of what would happen to humanity if all women spent their time flying racing airplanes. I suppose that is what you want.
On p. 9 of your Nov. 16 issue, you say that "women are often amusing conversationalists, particularly when stimulated by a masculine audience." What man is a competent judge of that? It is the first principle of justice that an interested party cannot fairly judge. And since there are only men and women in this world I think you ought to leave such a subject out altogether.
MRS. MAX LEVY
Hoboken, N. J.
Pandarus
Sirs:
I must object to your loose and inexact use of the word "pander" in your issue of Sept. 21, in which you refer to "Thomas Cook & Son, and other panders of rubber-neckery."
Thomas Cook & Son, from whom I personally have had the most excellent service in many parts of the world, are not "panders": they are "agents."
The term "pander," as you should have recalled, is derived from the proper name "Pandarus." Need I add that Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare all represent Pandarus, a son of Lycaon and leader of the Lycians in the Trojan war, as an unmitigated pimp, who procured Cressida for the dissolute Troilus? To a scholarly mind your use of pander in place of "agent" and without the connotation of lasciviousness is intolerably careless. Thomas Cook & Son are no more panders than is a magazine such as TIME. Neither attains to the requisite taint of immorality.
I salute you, gentlemen, from this balmy archipelago. . . .
DR. HORACE PARKER
Saluafata, Upolu, Samoa.
Webster's New International Dictionary says that as a verb "pander" may mean "to cater," which is about the sense in which it was used in the passage cited. As a noun Webster says it may mean "an intermediary; an interagent," but adds that this meaning is "rare-ED.
"Fairyland"
Sirs:
On a small bronze plate beside a doorway on upper Fifth Avenue [Manhattan], one may read the name Colgate & Co. This doorway leads to the new Colgate Salon and Showrooms, opened last spring, and to step through it is to step straight into fairyland--at least that is what those who visit it assure us. The Salon is the work of Howard Greenley, famous architect, and contains a complete display of Colgate products.
What is all this leading to?
Why, just that we feel the Colgate Salon is an interesting bit of New York, and worthy of a visit by anyone who loves the beautiful and unusual.
We extend a cordial invitation to any representative of the TIME Magazine to stop in at 581 Fifth Ave., wander through the softly lighted rooms, and see how fine toilet articles look "at home."
COLGATE & Co.
New York, N. Y.
None Was Present
Sirs:
How have the mighty fallen and the inerrant promulgated untruth! So will it ever be with those who accept uncritically the offerings of the newspaper press.
TIME of Nov. 9, p. 29, credits President Hibben of Princeton, Lowell of Harvard, Farrand of Cornell, Kinley of Illinois and Chase of North Carolina with the elevating experience of seeing Yale outmarch the Army. No one of them was present! Verbum sap!
JAMES R. ANGELL
Office of the President
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.
TIME'S football critic, who was present at the game, did not see Presidents Hibben, Lowell, Farrand, Kinley and Chase sitting in their seats, and failed to verify an unofficial report that they were present. He deserves a thoroughgoing rebuke.--ED.
Praise
Sirs:
I want to express the appreciation many of us here feel for your way of editing the news. You treat affairs like an artist. . . . The dailies dump the news. We scan their columns and wait for TIME to tell. For you present affairs in a way that arouses interest, even causes emotion. Then your English is so finished! It reminds me personally of what Anatole France recounts of Denon and Louis XV: "When anything happened, the monarch would say, 'Tell us about it, Denon.' "
CHARLES J. WOODBURY
Oakland, Calif.
Praise
Sirs:
Just a line of commendation on the constant and evident improvement you are making in each edition of your publication.
I read it regularly and I feel lost without it. I know that it summarizes for me the important things in world news happenings, and covers many items that are omitted from the daily newspapers which I regularly enjoy. I like particularly the pertinent way in which every important event is handled. I think you are serving a great purpose, and I have heard this same opinion expressed by many other Detroit business men.
HOMER GUCK
Detroit, Mich.
"Posthumously"
Sirs:
In TIME of Nov. 2, p. 11, it is stated that "Henry Cabot Lodge . . . last week posthumously published a book, The Senate and the League of Nations." A child born after the father's death is a posthumous child. A book published after the author's death is correctly termed a posthumous publication. The word "posthumously" does not appear in the Standard Dictionary. If it be correct to use the adverb, it is clear that one who is dead cannot do a thing posthumously, and it seems equally clear that a person living cannot do a thing posthumously. Henry Cabot Lodge might have arranged for the posthumous publication of a book, but he could not posthumously publish a book. As one before death cannot do a thing posthumously, and as a living person cannot do a thing posthumously, there would seem to be no warrant for the adverb "posthumously."
W. P. JOHNSON
Red Bluff, Calif.
If the subscriber had looked a little further in the Standard Dictionary, he would have seen "posthumously." In the Standard Dictionary in the office of TIME, "posthumously" is given among the variations of "posthumous." In Murray's Oxford Dicionary (advance volumes), "posthumously" is defined as "after death of father or author." The illustration given is, "The 'Register' was posthumously published from his MS. collection in 1728."--ED.