Bradley's Pleasure
Sirs:
I am in receipt of the copy of your valuable publication, TIME, and I note the [Kentucky Derby] article on p. 20. It is very good.
From all I can learn Jockey Fisher [on Head Play] was the first offender. Meade [on Broker's Tip the winner] only retaliated and pushed off Fisher's mount in order to protect himself. It is too bad this occurred and it took away a great deal of the pleasure of the victory.
EDWARD RILEY BRADLEY
Palm Beach, Fla.
Syracuse Mouse
Sirs:
. . . In a clever article entitled "Profound Mouse" on the art page of your May 15 number of TIME, your art critic describes Mickey Mouse as a "big-eyed, wisp-snouted rodent" and then goes on to declare "last week Mickey Mouse became Art"--in Manhattan's Kennedy Galleries.
Nay, Li'l of Noo Yawk is not always first. For Mickey Mouse first became Art at the Art Alliance in Philadelphia last autumn; (who dares say nowadays that Philadelphia is slow?) and Mickey as Art in the temple of the muses first appeared in New York State at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts last November, immediately following the Philadelphia showing. And verily the last shall not be first.
ANNA WETHERILL OLMSTED
Director
The Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts
Syracuse, N. Y.
Beacon Hill Mouse
Sirs:
In reference to your interesting article on Mickey Mouse (TIME, May 15), I wish to tell you that Disney's brain-child is known as Mitchell Rodent on Beacon Hill, Boston.
SELWYN LEVINE
Roxbury, Mass.
Matrimony & Alimony (Cont'd)
Sirs:
You wasted a good deal of valuable space on your letter page last week, it seems to me. Messrs. Crane, Overman and Hope and Miss (or is it Mrs?) Manners all missed the big point in commenting on the story about the liberalized New York alimony laws (TIME, May 22).
There ought not to be any alimony laws of any kind because there ought not to be any alimony. The simple fact is that the vaunted female sex is basically parasitic. They want something for nothing, and see no reason for not getting it. Most women are supported by some man until they are married, and supported by some other man afterward. When they cut loose from the husband, why not let them go back to their families? Or get out, if their poor old fathers can no longer afford to keep them in the manner to which they are accustomed, and scratch for a living? There is not one scintilla of reasonable argument dictating that a divorced man should support some woman he is no longer living with. Only sentimentality and maudlin legal precedent are responsible for this unnatural, stupid state of affairs. Turn the parasites out to root for themselves!
LEONARD J. (FOR JUSTICE) BERNHEIM
Chicago, Ill.
Joost Lika Babe Ruth
Sirs:
Two days after President Roosevelt's last radio address, my genial barber, Mike, was attending to my wants. He speaks with a ghastly accent.
" 'Ja hear Rosavelt?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied, "and liked it very much."
"Heeza hones' man," said Mike, waving his arms widely. "Joost lika Babe Ruth. Some time hita ball; some time strike out. Just do his best."
It was probably the first time in the 18 years that Mike has been in the U. S. that the President has said anything he could understand.
A. G. WlNKLER
New York City
Courteous Cuba
Sirs:
I returned from Havana May 14 and read TIME'S presentation of the Cuban situation in the May 15 issue the following day. Clear and concise, it yet fails to inform the travel public that the political turmoil in Havana is something entirely apart from the tourist business. The casual visitor would never suspect that the situation was anything but tranquil; cruise passengers and convention groups are courteously received at all public places (and a good many-private ones!) and the city is going strong 24 hours per day. Any article on Havana, failing to make clear this fact, is not fair to Cuba or to the steamship companies serving the Island. . . .
E. S. WHITMAN
United Fruit Co.
New York City
Teachers' Gratitude
Sirs:
In trying times such as these, it is very encouraging to know that the cause of free public education is taken up by the press, even in places outside of our "Century of Progress" city.
We wish to express our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for the publicity given to the Chicago teachers through your splendid article " 'Walks' In Chicago" (TIME, May 8).
CRANE TEACHER COUNCIL
A. E. COZZI, CORRESPONDING SEC'Y
Chicago, Ill.
Jungle Folk
Sirs:
. . . Mysteriously irresistible, as TIME in the enclosed photo, are the things of the white man for the jungle folk
Attracted, I suppose, by its red-margined cover, the young curaca (chief) picked up TIME of Aug. 1 from a pile of expeditionary duffle which was being stowed away after a trip, during which he had been one of our guides. As chance would have it, he opened to p. 19, on which appears the squattiness of elderly-Quenchua-Indian-appearing Tang of Mongolia. Taking the moment to myself, my camera, and TIME, I told the curaca that when another great curaca-yumbu manacunana (magic-chief-who-fights) let his picture be distributed throughout the white man's world, he, feared by his foes along the Arajuna River and the Napo, should not hesitate to stand in front of my black-box-that-portrays.
The curaca wears a light coronary hat of monkey skin, parrot and toucan feathers, something of a symbol of his lately inherited chieftainship. The object on his shoulder is a blowgun. A full three meters long, it signifies his adulthood, helps proclaim to the jungle world that at 20 he is a chief, has been married for five years. In his hands, its 8-in. splinter-like arrows tipped with curari poison, it is a deadly game-getter within 100 meters. I have seen an adult jaguar die within .30 seconds after having been injected with a Slryc/inos Toxifcrra-tipped arrow. Man, apparently, is little harmed by the darts. Poison, arrows. Kapok wadding are skins from the Indian's neck in a quiver.
The sylvan matron is the curaca's No. 1 wife, accompanies him on all trips. The monkey, disarranging her palm-oiled coiffure, is soon to go to the States.
The trousers are not the curaca's, were donned for the occasion.
RICHARD C. GILL
Hacienda Rio Negro
Banos, Ecuador
No Education, No Taste
Sirs:
No. 11 & 12 (March 15 & 20") contained an article who were intentionally full of hatred. Both articles are far from gentlemanlike. I suppose you do not claim to be one.
I am 30 years out here in the East, have been in contact with Americans all along but I have so far not found one who had the nerve you seem to have. As said above this 30 years have made me pretty well cosmopolitan, but still I am a German and honour my country, and to be sure I have seen many a dirty article but yours is the limit. Why throw dirt on our Prime Minister Hitler, why run down Hindenburg, both men who have done much more than you will ever be able to. Your whole writing shows that you are hardly able to call yourself a person with some real education nor taste. Remember if you throw dirt on some one else that some of the dirt will remain on your hands. Our Hindenburg. and also Hitler, are such persons whom you certainly cannot serve the water.
J. H. LlPPORTE
Ruling, China
Life of Bland
Sirs:
In your issue of May 1 is a letter from a wife of a grandson of Silver Dick Bland. This is of interest for two reasons: first, he has no such grandson, and second, the false lady tells a tale equally false. ... As his son, it is my privilege to try to inform her, and you also, as your journalism has been of the same genre. . . .
My father's life recalls the respect that Congress paid him after his death. You will find nothing loftier in our annals. The three-day recess enabled his fellows to set down their admiration for his single-handed fight against American Imperialism. They felt the prophetic verity of his warning of the train of troubles that "would follow our acquisition of the Philippines. They responded to the memory of the courage of the lone individual who faced the flaming patriotism of Congress and country in the grip of Spanish War victory frenzy, who faced it to the end and with the last ounce of the vestiges of his earthly energies.
And if TIME cares, TIME will read William Vincent Byars' An American Commoner and find there the quotation from Dana in his Sun: "R. P. Bland is the only statesman produced in this country in the last quarter of the loth Century." And TIME may find the following in the Sun early in 1912: "We note that Champ Clark has selected Bill Stone as his campaign manager. Be careful, Champ, remember what Stone did to Bland at Chicago." And if TIME is not, history will be concerned with what happened at Chicago: That Bland led without any sort of organized support and that he failed of two-thirds [majority for the presidential nomination] because he was sold out when he refused to join the Gang. That, earlier, he refused to have anything to do with the campaign when he had found that he was in the hands of the man the Gang had selected as his manager. He not only refused to leave his farm, he refused to permit the telegraph company to run a wire to his farm home: he refused, in short, the highest measure of success. And history will be interested in why he refused. Three years later, did not this same man, Stone, shout and wave at his cohorts in State convention that "I am in favor of taking the Philippines, I am in favor of taking everything in sight"? . . .
JOHN BLAND
Hill City. S. Dak
Virginia's Colored Friends
Sirs:
In your issue of May 9, you caption a reference to "Slave Virginia" as "Yankee Common Sense."
Your reference to lynching in Virginia is so worded as to imply that it is quite an ordinary-happenstance. TIME, which purports to know all things, may well refer its readers to the number of lynchings which have occurred in Virginia and compare such outlawry to what goes on in sections where it is, I presume, felt that "Yankee Common Sense" controls the will of the people.
On the same page containing your reference to lynching, you recite merely the facts, with little or no expression of your own, of the only case on record so far as I know, of mob law, pulling a judge off the bench, and, in the essence of things, except for actual death, lynching him.
Strange it is that to many otherwise intelligent persons north of the Mason & Dixon Line, anything that happens below the Line is reported to the world as evidence of the ignorance, bloodthirstiness and injustice of the inhabitants of the South.
Practically any municipality, with the possible exception of such cities as Richmond, Louisville, Charleston, and New Orleans, is referred to as a "hick" village.
When will people, who allow their imaginations to dictate what they write, learn if there has ever been an example of fair treatment and devotion between two races so widely different in color and status, it is to be found in the tolerant relationship of the Virginian and others of his class in the South, and the devotion toward him of his colored friends!
LAURENCE C. WITTEN
Cincinnati, Ohio
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