Letters
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.
Krishnamurti
Sirs:
The article in TIME, Jan. 4, 1926, p. 23, entitled " At Madras" is just a little inaccurate in facts and wholly inappropriate in tone. I count on your exceptional courage in printing corrections to set your readers right.
Dr. Besant when 60 was scarcely "young to Theosophy," as she joined the Theosophical Society in 1889 when she was 42. Mr. Krishnamurti may be "an old story" but he can scarcely be said to "titillate sewing circles." It might interest you to know that men like Bernard Shaw, James Montgomery Flagg and George Lansbury be said to have appointed persons to be apostles, any more than John the Baptist appointed Jesus to be the Christ. You cannot appoint a sunrise nor stop it, though you can throw dust in people's eyes so they can't see it.
Have great religious teachers come in the past-Roman world to intervene in its Hebraic orthodoxy and Roman materialism ? If so, would He work through the consciousness and personality of a Kellogg, a Coolidge, a Lloyd George or a Baldwin, or through some gentle, strong person fit to express the power of the " strong Son of God, immortal love" ? If the latter, why not a person born of the gentle, intelligent, clean, ascetic Brahmin stock? For if He came as a Protestant, would Catholics accept? If as a Catholic, would Christian Scientists? When last time He came, the Christ worked through a disciple but the Imperial Roman business men ignored Him and the orthodox Jewish theologians murdered Him. I suggest that TIME wait a little time before it rouse the cheap jibes of the spiritually starved world.
FRITZ KUNZ
National Representative
The Order of the Star in the East
Hollywood, Calif.
Sirs:
My attention has been drawn to several most serious errors which appear in your issue of Jan. 4, pp. 23 and 24. These are of such a nature as to cast most serious discredit upon the Order of the Star in the East, Dr. Annie Besant, Mr. Krishnamurti and myself....
To say that Dr. Besant in 1908 carried Mr. Krishnamurti from India to her English home is without foundation. Dr. Besant has been for many years a resident of India, and at that time was permanently residing at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras. Mr. Krishnamurti has been associated with Dr. Besant for many years, but his allegiance and friendship for her have been given as a natural tribute in recognition of her boundless services to the whole of mankind in addition to himself. To say that she carried him to England is to create an entirely false impression in the public mind.
You have quoted me as making an entirely untrue statement when you declare that I have said that Dr. Besant plans to appoint twelve "apostles." Such a statement casts a most serious aspersion upon the venerable and distinguished President of the Theosophical Society. Dr. Besant has taken no part whatever in the choice of apostles, and no person of authority in the Order of the Star in the East or Theosophical Society has, I am sure, ever made such an assertion. Will you not, please, in the interests of ordinary fairness withdraw these statements. I have the fullest confidence in your willingness to do so....
RUSSELL LLOYD JONES
New York, N.Y.
In the interests of accuracy and fair play, TIME must admit that Messrs. Kunz and Jones rightly accuse it of having erred.-ED.
"Under $600"
Sirs:
Your review of the New York Automobile Show in the Jan. 18 number of Time is very comprehensive and covers a great deal of ground in a short space.
You omitted, however, to mention Overland in addition to the three other makes noted in listing the cars selling for less than $600, when both the Overland four-cylinder Touring at $495 and the Sedan at $595 sell under $600.
WILLYS-OVERLAND, INC.
T. A. BOYLE,
Cleveland District Mgr.
Cleveland, Ohio
Hudson's Bay Co.
Sirs:
... On p. 29, col. 1, BUSINESS & FINANCE, your Jan. 4 issue, you state "The Hudson Bay Co. has ordered..."
Should this not be "The Hudson's Bay Co.?" This firm has held its timehonored name for centuries, so why change it now?
J. A. TANNENBAUM
Scranton, Pa.
Yes. But the bay is "Hudson Bay." e, p. 27, you quoted the downward pass that Brick Muller caught from the roof of the telephone building in San Francisco preceding the East v. West football game. You quoted that a football was passed, then another, then another, until the fourth ball was caught. This is true but to give the man full credit it might be well to mention that the first ball landed on the building across the street, the second on top of a parked automobile, the third against the telephone building; the fourth, the only one landing in the street, Muller caught. Also the S. F. Telephone Bldg. is the highest on the Pacific Coast; so Muller could not do better. Incidentally this is the longest football pass on record.
A. COLLINS
San Francisco, Calif.
Bull's Bells Belittled
Sirs:
TIME, I think, was right in stating that the New York carillon had first played Mendelssohn's Wedding March. This notwithstanding the letter (Jan. 4) of Mr. Bull of Ithaca. The Cornell chime has only 14 bells and its compass is thus only about one and one-half diatonic octaves. The New York Carillon has 53 bells with a compass of four and one-half chromatic octaves.
Neither Mendelssohn's Wedding March nor Wagner's Wedding March (Lohengrin), both mentioned by Mr. Bull as having been played frequently by him on the bells at Ithaca, are possible of production on only 14 notes of any instrument except in a much mutilated form.
The carillon is a fully developed musical instrument on which may be played (both hands and both feet are used) the music of any composer, substantially as written. The chime represents a kindergarten one-finger stage of bell music. It compares with the carillon much as does an old time child's piano with a cathedral organ.
WILLIAM GORHAM RICE
Albany, N. Y.
Vicar of Christ
Sirs:
In the article "Encyclical" on p. 21, Jan. 4 issue, you had this: "Pope Pius XI is Vicar of Christ who, his Church claims, received from God the absolute right over all created things, civil affairs, Christians and even non-Christians." This is false. The Catholic Church does not claim this for its Vicar of Christ. Neither can you find any support for this claim in any official writing or pronouncement of that Church. If you had had even a bowing acquaintance with the official law of the Church, the Code of Canon Law, you would have read therein that those laws bind Catholics only and not non-Catholics. The Pope claims supremacy only in matters spiritual and that only over those of his own faith. If you doubt this statement. go to any Catholic priest that you know and ask him for his volume of the Code. In matters spiritual the Holy Father does claim independence and resents interference from the temporal power as he should, for the State has no right in spiritual affairs.
Therefore your statement is clearly untrue. If your mistake arose from ignorance, you can still be gentlemen enough to acknowledge your error and with a warning to be surer of your ground in the future. If you deliberately falsified, of course you are not gentlemen and I expect no retraction. But at any rate I can be sure that every Catholic in the land will resent such statements of yours as these.
WILLIAM BOYD
Rapid City, S. Dak.
The misstatement may be attributed neither to ignorance nor to intentional falsification. The sentence in question should have read: "Pope Pius XI is the Vicar of Christ Who, his church claims, received from God the absolute right over all created things...." Subscriber Boyd (and also Subscribers B. V. Hubbard, Carlton Strong, William A. Padberg and Anna E. Goodrich, and Newsstand Buyers S. M. Morgan and Charles A. Beckermann) assumed that the relative pronoun " who," because it was not capitalized, referred to "Pope Pius XI," even though for that intention a comma should have preceded the "who." The careless proofreader has received a thoroughgoing rebuke. that fact is not justified. One doesn't put city garbage in one's stomach, and one should have as much consideration for one's mind. TIME is wrong in recommending a book of literary garbage for mental consumption.
I am one of TIME'S earliest subscribers, but a great change has come over it, and I request that you remove my name from its mailing list muy pronto.
BERKELEY WILLIAMS
Richmond, Va.