Saturday on the Coast
Sirs:
I assume that no matter what day of the week you chose to mail TIME, there will be kicks. In my case there is the following kick: TIME may be bought on Saturday morning on any Los Angeles (or Hollywood) newsstand, yet my subscription copy never arrives until Monday.
Some of your subscription solicitation literature made a point of TIME's availability for weekend reading, I believe. By subscribing I have lost that very feature. Can anything be done about it? I use, as you will note, a postbox, to which TIME might be sent if that would ensure Saturday delivery, though I prefer delivery to my home otherwise.
K. V. R. LANSINGH
Hollywood, Calif.
Sirs:
My move to Los Angeles two years ago has proved entirely satisfactory but for one thing. Whereas formerly (in Philadelphia) I read TIME over the weekend, I now have to wait until Monday, sometimes Tuesday, to get my hands on it. Local friends who are TIME readers seem to be hardened to this treatment, thankful for TIME any time. I am not. In fact I'm mad. Can't you fellows charter a plane to get your copies out here for weekend consumption? How about it?
GEO. ROBEY
Los Angeles, Calif.
TIME, never happy about its inability to reach Pacific Coast subscribers before the weekend, has finally solved this problem. Starting with the issue of Sept. 12. TIME will be delivered to Subscriber Robey and all Pacific Coast subscribers by Saturday. Subscribers will appreciate that getting copies to individual mail addresses takes more time than delivering bundles of magazines direct to newsstands. New printing speed developed by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co., TIME's printers, and the split-second co-operation of seven potent railroad systems and the U. S. Post Office, will now combine to make weekend reading of TIME possible for subscribers from coast to coast.--ED. Rabbit & Lion
Sirs: In your magazine of July 11 under the title "Heroes" you say: "Commander Waters suddenly took an early page out of Benito Mussolini's book and, in the spirit of Il Duce's 1922 march on Rome, proclaimed himself the veterans' dictator." May I suggest that Commander Waters can be compared to Mussolini as a rabbit can be compared to a lion? When Mussolini decided the march on Rome, before he reached the capital, H. M. the King of Italy wired him, asking to form a new Cabinet. Mussolini's followers, the "Black Shirts," were all wellarmed, organized and had "guts." . . . GEORGE GAZZERA
New York City
Sterilizing in California
Sirs:
Our confidence in the fairness and frankness of TIME impels us to believe that your comments on the organization and work of the Human Betterment Foundation of Pasadena, Calif., in your July 4 issue, p. 28, were published under a misunderstanding of the real facts.
In 20 years, California sterilized 8% only of the insane and feebleminded committed to her asylums, by an operation that did not unsex any patient.
The Human Betterment Foundation is not a little family organization, but it is a non-profit corporation organized by 26 charter members, 18 of whom are listed in Who's Who in America. It is managed by a board of nine trustees, all prominent, conservative men. Its work is a constructive type of prevention of dependency, rather than the "patch work" of relief. . . . E. S. GOSNEY President
Human Betterment Foundation
Pasadena, Calif.
Exclusive Advt.
Sirs:
On p. 26 of your July 25 issue, you carried the advertisement of a "Christian" hotel, thus allying yourself with those who prefer to flaunt their anti-Jewish prejudice in the open, and effectively destroying my respect for TIME.
You may disregard the expiration date of my subscription, and discontinue it at once.
I. M. GRINGORTEN
Toronto, Canada
Sirs:
In TIME (issue of July 25, p. 26) there appears an advertisement for Point o' Woods an "exclusive Christian summer community." Is TIME guilty of accepting advertisements of discriminative calibre? Will TIME explain, elucidate?
KENNETH CARLTON ZWERIN
San Francisco, Calif.
To the Advertising Department a thoroughgoing reprimand for letting in a piece of discriminative advertising copy; to non-Christian readers a pledge that no such copy will again appear in TIME.--ED.
Yahoos, Yazoos & Yapoos Sirs:
The 40-billion-dollar lesson which we hinterland Yahoos have learned since 1914 is to look twice at any international gold brick which the Yazoos of New York and the Yapoos of Washington offer us. We bought one in 1917 and another in 1928 and hardly have we begun to pay for them than another is presented with the same glib prospectus.
The gilt (or guilt) of this latest cancellationist gold brick bubbles green beneath the acid of these considerations:
1) Do the Yazoos and Yapoos seriously expect we Yahoos to believe that cancellation favoring Europe at once and ipso facto means trade favoring America? It is an obvious non sequitur. Witness the attitude of our chiefest creditor. Right now at Ottawa she is busy as a beaver in a brook attempting to dam up a billion-dollar trade between dollar-tied neighbors, alienating from us Canadian plants and other acts which if a Yahoo like Andrew Jackson sat in Washington would mean war. Will cancellation revoke Ottawa decrees unfavorable to us? Will it put American wheat on a parity with Canadian in Liverpool? All Yahoos who have read the history of Anglo-American diplomatic poker-playing know better. . . .
2) Why should a different code govern debts between nations and debts between individuals? We Yahoos who pledged our manured acres and sacred honor for loans to the Yazoos are paying to the last acre, the last cow, the last pig. Do the Yazoos scale down $3-a-bushel wheat borrowings to 1932 40-a-bushel wheat dollars? They do not. If impossible debts block trade between nations, do they not equally block trade between individuals? But where is the Yazoo or the Yapoo who advocates cancellation--or even moratorium for the Yahoos? What would a Yazoo say if one of us Yahoos drove up to his bank in a Rolls-Royce to say we couldn't pay the mortgage installment? Yet Britannia sports the world's greatest fleet and Gallia is aglitter with bayonets and gold. Strange that nations thus accoutred have the face to plead bankruptcy. At Versailles both gorged themselves with their neighbors' real estate. Why not deed enough of it to us to liquidate the debt? For example: We are proposing to spend a half-billion to let the whole British mercantile fleet at the expense of our own shipping (land and sea) into the Great Lakes, where from the day the waterway opens, the Union Jack will dominate from Duluth to Buffalo. Look at your map and see how Britain controls the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Why not, in exchange for the debt, cede us sufficient land to insure that this waterway cannot be locked at the pleasure of a London order-in-council? 4) Or if our Yazoos and Yapoos say this is twisting the lion's tail too hard, let us accept the Yazoo conception of swapping the debts for trade. Let us, however, be sure of the trade before we cancel the obligation. No Yazoo ever permits a Yahoo to burn the mortgage until the last denarius is paid. Therefore, as the debtors buy our wheat bushel for bushel, let us receipt dollar for dollar, million for million, billion for billion. No Yahoo can comprehend a creditor tearing up the note before it is discharged. 5) It is a typical Yazoo argument that the Yazoos who (Mr. Webb says) pay the taxes should disenfranchise the Yahoos. Surely any candid Yazoo will tell Mr. Webb that through wages, rentals, prices, interest, the Yazoo tosses over to the Yahoos his taxes with the same nonchalance that he hands the burden of his luggage to a steamship porter. Yes --the bitter salt of these taxes may be tasted in every crust of bread, every spoonful of milk, every ounce of meat which the Yahoo eats in the sweat of his brow. 6) We Yahoos are sick of playing the expensive role of wet nurse to humanity. We are tired of this yapping idealism that is worried about breaking the mythical heart of the world while the practical fact is that we are going broke ourselves. Our stomachs revolt at the spectacle of handing a 27-billion-dollar dole to European land grabbers, armed to the teeth. We protest at paying a 40-billion-dollar war cost plus the Allied Debts plus the German reparations and receiving in return (what a typical Clemenceau irony!) the godforsaken speck known as the Island of Yap. . . . The while France gets Germany's coal and iron regions and Britain a broad belt through Africa from Cairo to the Cape, not to speak of sundry other territories which they are ruthlessly exploiting under the hypocritical title of mandates. . . . What would Jefferson who bought the entire Louisiana purchase for 15 millions say to this? We do know well what Randolph of Roanoke would say-- he who spat at the Yazoos of his day this venomed indictment, whose sting still lasts after more than a century: "The spirit that guides them [the Yazoos of 1806]," he said, "considers the many as made only for the few--the spirit that is never so true to itself as when false to the nation." Would that our great Yahoo hero, Andrew Jackson, sat in Washington today to say as he said to a European debtor in 1831: "Pay or else. . . ." Andrew collected. He extinguished the public debt. America prospered. Ross M. BARRETT
Philadelphia, Pa.
Counter Challenge
Sirs:
Undoubtedly, scores of TIME readers are taking up the gauntlet flung by Challenger Webb and are now setting forth arguments for collecting the War Debts. I shall assume Challenger Webb will go undefeated. On that assumption I put forth this proposal and challenge Challenger Webb to answer. In the event the U. S. cancels foreign governments' War Debts, then the U. S. shall cancel all its Liberty Bond obligations to holders thereof.
First, such action will relieve the taxation burden, thereby releasing purchasing power, and start the wheels of industry to humming. Second, then Liberty Bond owners, instead of coupon-clipping, will help make the wheels hum faster. Third, the Liberty Bond owners are heavy taxpayers. A cancellation of Government obligations would lighten their tax burdens.
It is just because 1) at the time the money was borrowed with wheat at $3 a bushel, money was cheap, and now with wheat at one-sixth that price, money has far greater purchasing power; 2) while the services and lives of individuals were conscripted during the War, money was not. Cancellation of Liberty Bonds will erase that injustice.
I challenge Challenger Webb to advance three or even one sound argument for collecting what is left of the U.S. Liberty Bond obligations. If he advances three, or even one sound argument, please have him apply it in answer to his own challenge.
J. D. BURRUS JR.
Milwaukee, Wis.
Sirs:
In reply to J. G. Webb (TIME, Aug. 8)., ...
Quote, Mr. Webb: "The men who know most about money tell us that until War Debts are out of the way, international trade must plod and stumble."
Reply: It has been proven repeatedly in the present economic crisis that our big financiers are not infallible. . . . By cancellation of international public debts, modern "Shylocks" can collect private foreign loans in a more expedient and profitable manner. . . .
THREE ARGUMENTS FOR COLLECTION OF WAR DEBTS
1) The most important debtor nations, namely England and France, can pay.
Reasons: France's monetary gold supply; the most elaborate military system in the world, which cuts so deep into their budget and got them into all this mess. England's handsome and expensive navy, which they are unwilling to reduce; their prosperous world trade, daily increasing under the prestige of H.R.H.; also Great Britain produced five-sevenths of the world's gold last year. (TIME, July 18).
Apparently these nations won't have to go through the painful operation of bankruptcy.
2) Should the Allied Nations repudiate their debts or the U. S. cancel, they (A.N.) would lose their prestige and rating as powers, also destroy their credit rating which is so vital to the well-being of any nation.
3) Among the few securities which have held their own in the current business depression are government bonds. Should the U. S. cancel War Debts the public would be left holding the bag, to the extent of $78 per capita, or would have to pay themselves. . . .
RAY ANDREWS
Washington, Pa.
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