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.
Busch Flayed
Sirs:
Since you found it advisable to print the letter of Karl Busch in your issue of Dec. 14, perhaps you will be kind enough to allow me space to voice my vehement protest.
I cannot understand why you published the sentiments expressed in that letter. That you should soil the "nonsectarian, nonpartisan" pages of TIME with the "German Kultur" of Karl Busch is beyond the comprehension of any right-thinking American. It might be well to assure Busch that none of us wish to share German glory. He is apparently unable to understand that any real man will give honor where honor is due. We all respect men of the type of Baron Richthofen even though we cannot always respect the cause to which they devote themselves.
It seems to me that Busch might better go to Germany, where he need not come in contact with sportsmen, "you English and Americans," and where he may steep himself in German mioht.
He is exactly the sort of man we do not need, do not want and can well do without. It would be a great satisfaction to me if all aliens with the sentiments of Busch were deported forthwith.
C. W. NICHOLS North Wilmington, Del.
Sirs:
The stupidly arrogant . . . letter signed Karl Busch which appears in your Dec. 14 issue, p. 2, fills me with a passionate desire to see its author violently thrown out of this country and forever barred from reentering. To twist a genuine tribute to Baron von Richthofen into a gratuitous insult to the American nation while enjoying its privileges as a resident is unforgettable and unforgivable. I would like to know Mr. Busch's street address. The American Legion and others might be interested.
LAURENCE W. BABBAGE Bloomfield, N. J.
Sirs:
I believe that the first letter in the Dec. 14 issue is the most significant of the many which you have published. After the fourth re-reading of it I have classified it as a true index to the mental condition that threw the world into a war.
MAJOR W. B. LOUGHBOROUGH Fort Sam Houston, Tex.
Minister Lincoln
Sirs:
May I call your attention to a statement in your issue of Dec. 7 under POLITICAL NOTES--"Il Penseroso," where you say of Mr. Robert Todd Lincoln, "In 1889 President Harrison sent him to London as Am- bassador." If my recollection is correct the first Ambassador sent to a regular diplomatic post of the U. S. abroad was Thomas P. Bayard of my native state of Delaware who was sent to the Court of St. James's by President Cleveland after the latter became President for his second term in 1898. Mr. Bayard had as you know been Cleveland's Secretary of State during his first term, 1885 to 1889, and as a fitting honor for him after Mr. Cleveland again became President he was made our first Ambassador to England. It is also in my mind in this connection that going abroad with my father in 1889 when the latter was on a diplomatic mission to Germany he called when passing through London at the American Legation in London to pay his respects to Mr. Lincoln, the American Minister.
D. M. BATES Philadelphia, Pa.
Seattle's Cost
Sirs:
Your Dec. 7 issue, p. 34, reproduced figures by the National Industrial Conference Board, captioned "Living Costs." We now have an admission from this Conference Board that its figures do not mean the cost of living but the standard of living. The Conference Board admits that it made" no effort to take a given number of commodities and show what they cost in the various cities, and they now acknowledge "that the figures were based on actual expenditure of wage earners' families, ' irrespective of what they got for their money."
Instead of broadcasting to the country that Seattle, Detroit, Jacksonville, Cleveland and San Francisco were the "most expensive cities," the National Industrial Conference Board should have told what their figures really showed, namely--an index of prosperity and purchasing power in communities rather than cost of living. The United States Labor Bureau 1924 figures of comparative increases in living costs since 1913 show Seattle's increase was 6% less than the average for the United States. On p. 182 of the National Industrial Conference Board's booklet--Cost of Living--figures show Seattle fourth lowest city of 40 cities used for comparative purposes in food costs.
CHRISTY THOMAS
Executive Secretary Seattle Chamber of Commerce Seattle, Wash.
Governess Flayed
Sirs:
In your issue of TIME, Dec. 7, p. 6, I observe you have given valuable space to an article entitled "In Wyoming," and having to do with Governor Nellie Tayloe Ross. I enclose herewith a clipping of an article given to a newspaper at Laramie, Wyo., over the signature of J. H. Peberdy, Grand Chef de Gare, La Societe des 40 Hommes et 8 Chevaux, Department of Wyoming, American Legion.
Any person making an address on Armistice Day who is so self-centred as to omit even a charitable word for our deceased veterans, is really to be pitied and not to be given valuable publicity, as in TIME.
CHARLES A. MILLS Miami, Fla.
Reisner Flayed
Sirs:
. . . Dr. Christian F. Reisner's designation of Buddhism (Dec. 14 issue) as "a sect that decrees its girl babies be thrown into ash cans" is nothing but calumnious opprobrium and unworthy of a preceptor of Christianity. How unlike the foregoing sentiment is the edict of Gautama Buddha, "A man ought to honor his own faith only; but should never abuse the faith of others."
The Buddha, notwithstanding the diatribe of Dr. Reisner, is no deity but an ideal to which any-man may aspire, and the worship of Buddha is but to keep this ideal vividly before the devout.
Says Mr. H. G. Wells in his Outline of History, "The fundamental teaching of Gautama is beyond all dispute the achievement of one of the most penetrating intelligences the world has ever known."
In the future if theologians feel it incumbent upon them to express an opinion I hope they will do so without insulting the intelligence of those who may, in the perusal of the news, unwittingly come in contact with their utterances.
GEORGE H. BOSCH Brooklyn, N. Y.
Anti-Flay
Sirs:
Why waste the time and space of such a valuable publication as TIME by giving its readers the opportunity of flaying its articles and one another? TIME fills a long felt want on the reading table of the minister, one I might say that has been rather hard to meet.
I am perfectly satisfied with it and consider it the best thing of its kind published. What I cannot use or accept iI let alone.
FRANK A. TINNEY Mendon, Mo.
Knots
Sirs:
In your Dec. 14 issue, you say that the six little girls who made the rug for President Coolidge tied 4,404,247,000 knots in ten months. Assuming that each girl worked every minute of ten hours a day, for ten months, your figures give each girl credit for having tied 1360 (approximately) knots a minute. Really, you know. . . .
ROBERT GREEN Chicago, Ill.
The correct figure was 4,404,247 knots in ten months--not 4,404,247,000.--ED.
Joe Chamberlain
Sirs:
Allow me first of all to call your attention to the admonition so well worded by Josh Billings: "It is better not to know so many things than so many things that are not so."
TIME, Nov. 30 refers to Joe Chamberlain as being Foreign Secretary in Gladstone's cabinet.
Alas! such was not the case. That appointment, if it had ever been made, would have changed the history of the world. Gladstone never was able to estimate Chamberlain's true worth. You will remember that Macaulay writes of Gladstone as one of those "stern and unbending Tories." Macaulay was right. Gladstone was an aristocrat by birth. It was just as true of him as any other human being that "environment will never totally eradicate the taint of heredity."
Gladstone could not and did not overlook the fact that Chamberlain had "come up from trade," while Spencer Compton Cavendish (by courtesy styled the Marquis of Hartington) was a scion of the nobility. And a comparison of the brain power of those two men would be "odorous."
Gladstone gave Chamberlain a little pettifogging job in two cabinets. And Chamberlain resented both appointments. He was fitted to have filled' the highest position in the gift of Gladstone, that is, out- side of an appointment to some legal office. His (Chamberlain's) widow, the present Mrs. W. H. Carnegie, will contribute something on this subject some day.
JOHN M. STANSFIELD
Tampa, Fla.
Poetry
Sirs:
TIME has come to be the one paper I read that is essential to me.
There is just one real lack, to supply which I have to go to the Literary Digest or literary reviews--current poetry. If a column could be given each week to the best of the current poetry, I should rate TIME at 100%.
BARBARA MORE