St. Luke's Picture

Sirs:

Assuming you wish to be correct in all your statements, I beg to state that the picture of the Blessed Virgin painted by Saint Luke is not in Rome, but in St. Mark's in Venice (TIME, Dec. 28). It is shown to the people for a few days at certain periods of the year. We were fortunate enough to see it in November, 1930. MARY A. F. BRENNAN

Beverly Hills, Calif.

Baedeker says the picture is in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. But there has always been room for doubt on this subject even before Empress Pulcheria removed it from Antioch to the Church of the Guides, Constantinople.--ED.

Gandhi's Toothcleaning

Sirs: I have always thought it rather petty to catch up TIME'S reporting of details when they slip on a most insignificant point. However I realize that it may not be the fact that TIME is wrong that prompts many of the letters, but a sincere desire to give information which they chance to have.

Therefore only for the sake of knowledge I want to know whether Gandhi actually "brushed his teeth" (TIME, Jan. 11, p. 19, col. 2). Having had personal contact with the common Indian native I would say that if Gandhi is trying to be a common native himself he doesn't "brush" his teeth. Most natives are quite particular about washing their teeth and mouths. But instead of a brush they use a forefinger and some charcoal on their teeth, and two fingers to lave the tongue, going far enough back to tickle the throat into a convulsion, and of course water to rinse.

ALBERT T. BEALS

Detroit, Mich.

St. Gandhi neither brushes his teeth with a toothbrush nor tickles his throat with his forefingers. Like most Hindus he keeps his teeth, gums and tongue clean by rubbing them with a dantan, a slender

twig six or seven inches long cut from the dantan tree, after one end of the twig has Deen chewed to a pulp. To clean the tongue the same twig which has cleaned the teeth is split in two and brushed across

the tongue. Other chewers of twigs are natives of French African colonies. Trays of such twigs were displayed to visitors to the International Colonial & Overseas exposition at Vincennes marked: LE VRAI DENTIFRICE COLONIAL.-- ED.

Kettering Redefined Sirs:

In your issue of Jan. 18, p. 40, you requote Charles F. Kettering's definition of Research as "a method of keeping everybody reasonably disatisfied with what he has."

As co-speaker-of-the-evening with Governor Ritchie at the Illinois Manufacturers Banquet at the Stevens Hotel, Chicago last December. Mr. Kettering confessed criticism of his definition, offered a new one: "a method of finding out what people will be wanting when they are through wanting what they are wanting now." R. H. HILL

P.S. Up-to-the-minute TIME should know this. Mexico, Mo.

To Subscriber Hill, thanks for an able piece of up-to-dating.--ED.

Maude Adams & Friend

Sirs:

Your wire giving me Maude Adams' itinerary was very accurate. After renewing my acquaintance of 15 years ago, about the first thing Miss Adams wanted to know was how I had found out where she would be the day before I saw her, and upon explaining that TIME had given me such information she immediately replied, "I shall subscribe for the magazine immediately."

You deserve many new subscribers on account of your accuracy, and here is hoping you have many during the coming year.

P. P. HUNTER Roanoke, Va.

Cord's Ingratitude

Sirs:

I must protest against your irreverence, in printing the expression which Mr. Cord used to describe his success from his advertising scheme. If he had the bad taste to use the expression, you did not have to print it. It is shocking to think of one who has had such great success, having no more gratitude to the Ruler of all things than to use His holy name in this blasphemous way. And I venture to say that neither his success nor yours will last long if you continue to use such expressions.

If there is any more of this kind of thing in your paper, I will get the news from some other, and I am sure hundreds of other subscribers will do the same.

A. M. HOSSINGER Newark, Del. Whenever TIME has occasion to give an account of a man. it will do so as accurately as possible. Motormaker Cord is not accurately heard without the note: "a goddam wow."--ED.

Most Terrible Weapon

Sirs: Part of the education of my son, Stephen, aged 7, is his weekly listenin on the March of Time. At 3 a. m. Stephen arose astride a nightmare to interrupt our slumbers. "What is it, son?" asked his mother. "Gee! Ma," said Steve, "I just had the awfullest dream. I was bein' chased down the street by our laundryman with China's most terrible weapon--the BOYCOTT!" Either you make those broadcasts less dramatic, or else Steve goes to bed at 8 on Fridays hereafter. JOSHUA S. SARASOHN Detroit, Mich.

Big Gripe Sirs:

In your issue of Jan. 11, p. 35, was published a paragraph that is almost unbelievable. You quote a student from Louisiana State U.: "Military training is fostering a belief among students that war is necessary." Compulsory military training, while of debatable importance in the curricula of U. S. land-grant schools, is known as one of the biggest gripes to lower classmen. As an outstanding example, military training was the ostensible cause of student strikes at several midwest universities within the past few years. A canvass of undergraduates would reveal that the majority, while perhaps excusing military training on the basis of future preparedness, regard it as an unnecessary evil and by no means as an end to promoting war.

WILLARD C. EVANS

(University of Illinois)

Evanston, Ill.

Glowing Terms

Sirs:

Why, oh why, Mr. Editor, is TIME so short? . . . Mr. Editor, when I finished TIME this evening I went back and read several articles again for fear that I had missed something. I even sat ruffling the pages for several minutes after finishing, wishing there was more. I certainly do like your magazine and wish I had the command of grammar which would permit me to ''paint in glowing terms'' my sincere appreciation of the greatest magazine published.

I walked one half mile, to the building where we get our mail here, in sub-zero weather to get TIME last night. I could of sent some one else but feared they would "hold out on me," as everyone here likes TIME.

May the sands of TIME flow forever through my hourglass.

L. H. CARD Staff Sgt. Med. Dept. U. S. A. Fort Lincoln, N. Dak.

For terms as glowing as TIME ever received, all thanks.--ED.

Misplaced Heat

Sirs:

May I correct a misstatement concerning the use of solar heat for attaining high temperatures (TIME, Dec. 21, p. 31, and Dec. 28, p. 25)? The erroneous report seems to have started in a too-brief abstract of a paper that I gave before the American Chemical Society. While I have been experimenting for 20 years with the production and measurement of high temperatures. I have never set up any apparatus for solar heat. The experiment has, however, been tried on a fairly large scale several times, and the highest temperature has been attained, I believe, with Straubel's sun mirror at Jena. Needless to say, it is not a very practical instrument in the New York region, where climate and industry combine to make sunlight an uncertain quantity.

ROBERT B. SOSMAN

Research Laboratory U. S. Steel Corp. Kearny, N. J.

"Passing" Sirs:

The masquerade of Lieut. French (TIME, Jan. 11), while amazing to white people, among the initiated (meaning Negroes, of course) brings only a knowing smile.

In all strata of society in America there are persons of Negro blood "passing." Many have obtained places of distinction. The economic repression to which we are subjected in America is the chief cause of these "masquerades." Had French remained "'colored''' he would have stayed an enlisted man. I even knew of a waiter who passed because all of the best hotel jobs were barred to Negroes. And, just as Lieut. French had maintained his contacts with the people of his origin, many of the others do likewise. . . .

JOSEPH B. LA COUR

The Kansas City Call Kansas City, Mo.

$4 Pick-Me-Ups

Sirs:

On p. 33 (TIME, Jan. 11), foot of first column you say, "Cost of cortin 'pick-me-ups' at present prices is $100 a dose, effective for three full days of sprightliness."

On the word of Dr. Hartman himself, this is quite untrue. Cost of cortin is approximately $4 a day for the largest dose now being given any patient. W. P. VOGEL JR.

Buffalo, N. Y.

The $100 figure resulted from bad arithmetic. . . . Last week a Dr. E. Franc Morrill of Rock Island, Ill. lay in coma from Addison's disease. Cortin, flown from Buffalo, revived her.--ED.

Twins Apart Sirs: I am glad to read (TIME, Jan. 11) that twins are considered news for readers of TIME. News the twinologist seeks is a report of same-sexed twins who, since early infancy, have lived in different homes. Data from these can do much to define the roles heredity and environment play in making us what we are. Thus far only four such cases have ever been reported to science--that is why they are news. PAUL T. WILSON

University of California Institute of Child Welfare Berkeley, Calif.

Cheerful Item

Sirs: Under the depressing caption "Cruises Cancelled" in TIME, Jan. 11, you mention among other items of travel news that Cie Internationale des Wagons Li ts et des Grands Express Europeens abandoned the Manhattan office (No. 701 Filth Avenue). This statement, technically correct, is nevertheless misleading. It would have been better to explain that the building was abandoned, and not the office. This office staff, furniture, etc., was moved from its one-story premises at No. 701 Fifth Avenue to the recently enlarged Thos. Cook & Son offices at No. 587 Fifth Avenue, comprising six working floors. (Thos. Cook & Son and Wagons-Lits merged two years ago.) In all fairness to the travel world, why not insert this cheerful item in your next article on travel? In this cruise-cancelling year of 1932, the firm of Thos. Cook & Son-Wagons-Lits Inc., now numbering 350 offices throughout the world, operates five of these in Manhattan--two on Fifth Avenue, one on Broadway, one on Madison Avenue, and one on Park Avenue. Two of these offices were opened in 1931. "TIME marches on'' through its first depression--this largest of travel firms has been marching on since 1841, proving that the first hundred years are the hardest. J. J. MARINER

Traffic Manager Thos. Cook & Son New York City

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