Withdrawal Demanded

Sirs:

In TIME, Aug. 23, is the statement "At home, people . . . recalled that there is nothing in the Constitution to keep Mr. Borah from occupying both his own Senatorial chair and the Secretary of State's seat. If the President would select for his Cabinet the chairman of the leading Congressional Committees, 'responsible government,' in the sense in which it is understood in Britain ('Mother of Parliaments') would almost instantly be achieved."

For the proper information of your readers on this important subject you should withdraw both these statements.

Evidently you have overlooked the last part of Section 6 in Article I of the Constitution, which reads: "No person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office."

Moreover, even if there were no such provision in the Constitution, the selection of the chairmen of the leading Congressional Committees as Cabinet officers would not achieve "responsible government" such as Great Britain has. . . .

S. A. TORRANCE Yonkers, N. Y.

The Cabinet is a body totally unknown to the Constitution, hence members do not hold office "under the United States." Says Edward S. Corwin, famed constitutional lawyer, and McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University: "Article I, paragraph 6 is no obstacle to the President's constituting his Cabinet of chairmen of Congressional Committees. Members of present Cabinet are officers only as heads of departments. A Cabinet of Committee heads would not be officers, only advisers. . . ."

Of course, the executive power of the U. S. would still belong to the President, and he could not be made "responsible" in the British prime minister sense without Constitutional Amendment.--ED.

Borah in Boise

Sirs: A word about William E. Borah at home. You say (TIME, Aug. 23), "Senator Borah strode down the dusty streets of Boise--people applauded, tipping their hats to him, occasionally he nodded."

As a matter of fact Borah comes and goes unobtrusively and takes his place among Boise people as if he had not been away most of the time for a decade and a half. When he came this time, a little group met him at the train. There was handshaking under the belltower of Boise's unique Spanish mission railroad station. The prohibition director for Idaho and Montana took charge of the Senator's luggage. In the car of friends he rode down into the sea of trees beneath the green waves of which are the paved streets and houses of Boise. Trees, you know, gave the city its name; the French voyageurs, at first sight of the wooded valley, cried, "Voyez le bois." It has remained "the wooded city." Home folks call it "Boy'se."

Borah wanders about, alone for the most part. He nods to all. He shakes hands with many, amiable, affable, forsaking his Washington manner of studied avoidance.

At lunch, on days when he is not out speaking at some church, grange hall or fair ground, he sits in at "Kelly's round table" with a group of lawyers, bankers, merchants, physicians, sheep barons, newspapermen. Their battle cry is, "I disagree." They have no awe, no fear, no "yes" complex; they differ violently with the Senator on Russia, on prohibition, on the direct primary. He tries out his new ideas on them. They respond with mingled approval and ferocity, not always without profanity.

And he lives in a big borrowed house with servants and goes daily to a rented office to study his mail. That's Borah in Boise. MILO M. THOMPSON Editorial Rooms The Idaho Statesman Boise, Idaho

"Out West"

Sirs: . . . Just a word of appreciation from "out west" where all newspapers are not News papers. More often than not many important facts reach us in TIME, ahead of time--that is ahead of the regular news channels. It pays to be informed. TIME is well worth anyone's time. FRED A. GROSS San Francisco, Calif.

Gutter Sheet

Sirs: In TIME, Aug. 23, you furnish a correspondent from Los Angeles with the opportunity to vilify, in most offensive language, Mrs. A. S. McPherson, a woman in good standing in this community.

You add to her injury an utterly vile verse copied from a disreputable San Diego paper.

For selling that San Diego gutter sheet on the streets of Los Angeles, containing the article you quote from--and because of it--four newsboys were fined $100 each. Have a care lest TIME be also barred from newsstands and the mails. . . . W. S. KRESS American Catholic Foreign Missions Maryknoll Los Angeles, Calif.

Aeronaut

Sirs :

As a charter subscriber to your magazine, I have been an ardent supporter of TIME since its inception, and as a member of the aeronautical profession, your news items on aeronautics have been especially interesting to me.

May I congratulate your aeronautical editor on the able way in which he handles his material? . . .

J. PARKER VAN ZANDT Stout Air Services, Inc. Detroit, Mich.

Gold, Ivory

Sirs: May I offer a correction of a passage which appeared in TIME, July 5? With reference to the statue of Zeus at Olympia by Pheidias, it is said that "it is unlikely that he (Pheidias) worked in 'gold and ivory' ; . . . He doubtless made this god, like his others, of Parian marble . . . artisans polished the stone until it resembled ivory, and added gilt."

This is contrary to all the evidence, literary and epigraphical. We know from several sources that Pheidias made at least four "gold and ivory" statues : the Athena Parthenos at Athens, the Zeus at Olympia, the Aphrodite Ourania at Elis, and an Athena at Pellene in Achaia.

Pausanias tells us that an inscription under the feet of the god shows that this Zeus at Olympia was the work of Pheidias : "Pheidias, son of Charmides, the Athenian, made me."

Certainly the Athena Parthenos by Pheidias was of gold and ivory. We are told by Thucydides and by Plutarch that the gold plates of this statue could be, and were, removed. And inscriptions are preserved which record the amount of money delivered by the "Treasurers of the Goddess" to the commissioners and the amounts expended on gold and on ivory for this statue (438 B.C. and before). . . .

Certainly, in the light of our present knowledge, there is no reason to believe that the statue of Zeus by Pheidias at Olympia was not of "gold and ivory." J. P. HARLAND The American School of Archaeology Athens, Greece

Roxas

Sirs:

In TIME, Aug. 2, you refer to Dr. Manuel Roxas, Speaker of the Philippine House, as a deft chemist who worked out in the University of the Philippines in Los Banos a secret process for producing a sugary syrup and sugar from the nipa palm.

It is obviously an error to make mention of the fact that he is a sort of research chemist working for the University of the Philippines and at the same time a Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives. Dr. Manuel Roxas is another person but with the same name as Speaker Roxas who is not a Ph. D., and having no relation with the former.

PETRONIO ALAVA, M. D. St. Francis Hospital Wilmington, Del.

Human Appeal

Sirs:

I note in my last issue of TIME that you have discontinued a policy which I considered very attractive: that of the "Quiz" column at the end of the magazine. Any challenge to one's memory has a human appeal. So to this matter let me direct your consideration.

W. READ LARKER McCray Refrigerator Sales Corp. Raleigh, N. C.

Let Subscriber Larker see page 35.--ED.