Princess Alice & Prince Henry
Sirs:
I am enjoying the bright book by "Princess Alice" (TIME, Nov. 6). Mrs. Longworth's description of her famous father was the best recorded:
"When Father attends a wedding he has to be the bride; when he goes to a funeral he must be the corpse!"
But at times even Homer nods, and according to the newspaper accounts (if you will look them up) and my own recollection as an eyewitness close at hand, it was not the daughter but rather the wife of President Roosevelt of that day who christened the Kaiser's sailing yacht Meteor. I have a vivid memory of the grace and distinction of the lady who broke the bottle over the bow of the racing yacht in Nixon's boatyard on Staten Island. I feel sure that my memory is not at fault because I have always looked upon Edith Carow Roosevelt as the most gracious and distinguished woman who has presided over the White House in Washington during my 72 years. During the winter of Prince Henry's visit to the U. S. I lived at the Metropolitan Club and I think I missed no important phase of the rather interesting episode when Kaiser's brother looked America over. I had a close-up view from a small adjoining dining room of the great horseshoe table of guests when the financial magnates entertained the Prince at the Metropolitan Club. I was at the supper at the New York Yacht Club and stood beside the glass doors of the small committee room where the Club's committee had corralled Prince Henry, when he pushed the doors open and said, "Gentlemen, I think I will eat my supper with all the members of your club," and thus won the hearts of the rank and file. I recall that he came to the Yacht Club with his host, now General Cornelius Vanderbilt, and that a debonair feature of the occasion in his smart naval uniform was my longtime friend Hobart Chatfield-Taylor of Chicago and Santa Barbara. At the gala performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in passing down one of the circular side staircases the exuberant "Princess Alice" just missed hitting me in the chin when she displayed the dreadful bracelet with his portrait as the War Lord, which Kaiser sent to that vivacious young lady. Miss Roosevelt said to her escort, "See what the Kaiser has sent to me! "
I hope the smaller bracelet sent to Mrs. Longworth's wedding is less ugly than the one I saw at so close range.
ALDEN FREEMAN
Honorary Consul General from Haiti
Miami, Fla.
Newspaper accounts confirm Princess Alice's impression that it was she, not her mother, who christened the Meteor. In dark blue velvet, large picture hat, sable boa and muff, with a black ribbon inscribed "Yacht Meteor" in gold on her left sleeve, she firmly seized a bottle of White Seal champagne (in silver net to catch glass splinters), swatted it cleanly against the ship's side and with a little silver hatchet chopped, in one chop, the heading cord. Prince Henry cabled to his imperial brother: "The yacht christened by the hand of Miss Roosevelt just launched in the presence of brilliant assembly. Beautiful ship. Great enthusiasm. I congratulate you from a full heart.--HEINRICH"--ED.
Fat Brown Empress Sirs:
When Empress Waizeru Menen of Abyssinia (TIME, Oct. 9) walked into the Mograbi Opera House in Tel-Aviv to witness the performance of Rigoletto by the Palestine Opera Company, she was one and a half hours late and she did not "waddle like an ambulating lump of cocoa butter." Hindered on all sides by thousands who thronged the square in front of the building to see the modern Queen of Sheba, her walk, though slow and halting, was nonetheless queenly. Were she slimmer, eyes on Lenox Avenue would raise a notch as she passed by.
Her reception in the opera house was as tumultuous and unceasing as the Queen's acceptance of it was gracious. She expressed her gratitude the next morning by inviting the prima donna to her room in the Palatin Hotel and presenting her with a brooch bejeweled bearing the remarkable likeness of "Old Testament-bearded Emperor Haile Selassie, and by asking the whole company to present their operas in Abyssinia, plans for which are now complete. . . .
HARRY ZINDER
International Radio & Music Stores Ltd.
Tel-Aviv, Palestine
Action in San Antonio
Sirs:
. . . Due to the definite, concise manner in which the provisions of the National Recovery Act were outlined in TIME we knew at once not only that the Government would have funds to invest in worthy projects, but how to apply for these funds, by the middle of the summer. With this information at hand the City Federation of Women's Clubs of San Antonio set about putting into motion all of the efforts necessary to procuring funds for the erection of a fireproof dormitory which is to provide lodging for 180 girls at the rates of $1 to $1.50 per week per girl. Now, at a time when many others are just deciding on projects--board meetings, committee meetings and architects meetings are over for the San Antonio Federation. Their application, plans, drawings, specifications, reports, etc., are already in the hands of the Government's NRA Board where the Federation hopes to receive favorable attention. All this because we had the information at the earliest date possible in a form which was understandable. Too much gratitude cannot go to TIME! . . .
MARY ROSE HARRISON
San Antonio, Tex.
Emerson No Nazi
Sirs:
In your discussion of National Affairs on Nov. 20 you mentioned an announcement from Berlin that I would officially represent the Nazi party in this country. Thereto you added that I was an oldtime newspaperman, who wrote ''propaganda from Germany, which was distributed to English-speaking troops during the War."
You are right about me being an oldtime newspaperman, but are wrong in your other assertions. I first heard of the Berlin announcement you mentioned when reporters of New York newspapers asked me about it a few days ago. I told them that I knew nothing about it. I am still waiting for an explanation of the origin of so silly a yarn.
Since I never have been a Nazi nor a German citizen, I fail to see how I officially could represent Germany's National Socialist Labor party here or anywhere. Even if an American nationalist, such as I profess myself, could join any German or other foreign national party, I would not do so.
Furthermore you are in error about me writing propaganda from Germany during the War. I was an accredited war correspondent with the German armies and their military allies for American newspapers, which by no means favored the cause of the Central Powers. . . .
Whatever I had dispatched as a war correspondent passed through the inevitable mill of military or naval censorship, telegraph transmission, copy desk, headline writing, proof reading and final approval or disapproval by some responsible editor at home. Therefore the responsibility for whatever was published as coming from me was divided among several persons.
... A book about my War experiences, which I wrote in English in 1915, was translated into German in 1916 and was published at Munich. Copies of my book may have circulated among English speaking troops, but I never have heard it described as a work of propaganda. None of its many reviewers raised so unkind a point. Many loyal Americans and Englishmen among my readers praised my book as fair and truthful.
After I was interned in Germany as a prisoner of war in 1917-18 I edited a prison camp paper, English-American Notes, which was supported exclusively by British and American war prisoners. This newspaper, of which complete files are extant, contained no war propaganda. The only items in it that could be called propaganda, in a stretched sense of that word, were its paid advertisements of Tauchnitz books, sporting articles, wearing apparel, souvenirs and the like. Of such paid advertisements (the proceeds from which went to my publisher, a neutral Switzer) there were all too few, alas, for the counting room. . . .
EDWIN EMERSON
New York City
Giraffe Sounds
Sirs:
Does the admonition not to take seriously O. Soglow's Sanka coffee cartoon in your Nov. 6 issue include the giraffe represented as adding to the din created by the elephant and tiger with sounds of his own?
My school teachers and school books always said giraffes were without vocal cords and could make no sounds.
Who's right? Me or O. Soglow?
ALDEN SONNIER
Crowley, La.
Giraffes have vocal cords and. when startled, emit staccato grunts, rousing snorts.--ED.
Cover Players
Sirs:
Your front cover, issue of Nov. 13, showing several football players, representing two teams in action, has started a discussion as to who the players are, and what teams they represent. . . .
Yes, I've made a bet, and my bet is that Northwestern is represented by the men in white jerseys. Am I right?
WARREN C. HYDE
Minneapolis, Minn.
Reader Hyde loses. The white-jerseyed men are Chicago's Halfback Jay Berwanger (with noseguard) and Captain Pete Zimmer. The dark-jerseyed players diving for the fumble are Michigan's Guard Carl Savage (who recovered) and Tackle Tom Austin.--ED.
All-American Corbus
Sirs:
Suggest your getting out the little used, long neck oil can and greasing the old, rusty cogs, for again smug, red-faced TIME is wrong. Your muchly touted Bill Corbus TIME entitled "Stanford's All-American guard" never was named for any position on Grantland Rice's All-American, much less for the position of right guard.
I will lay you a wager of one year's subscription for TIME for each member of this year's undefeated, untied Princeton freshman team that you are wrong. We will limit the number of subscriptions to 22 and one for Johnny Gorman, their coach.
In the game of football there is a penalty for crawling. . . .
DEAN HILL
Bronxville, N. Y.
TIME erred in calling Stanford's dark-haired Corbus "blond," but let Reader Hill mend his talk. Stanford's Corbus was named right guard on Grantland Rice's 1932 All-American team, as Grantland Rice's Manhattan office (telephone: Mohawk 4-7500) will confirm. To the Princeton freshman team and its small, twinkling Coach Johnny Gorman (the quarterback who, in the 1922 Princeton-Chicago game, called for and caught a historic forward pass in the shadow of his own goal) 23 subscriptions to TIME. To Reader Hill, the bill.--ED.
Morris Plan Interest
Sirs:
In your publication dated Nov. 13 you state that the interest rate for Morris Plan loans is approximately 17%. Will you kindly advise me as to how that percentage is computed?
W. A. JOHNSON
Indianapolis, Tnd.
There are many mathematical formulas for figuring interest rates on co-maker loans such as Morris Plan loans. One formula widely used is:
i=2md
--
x(n+1)(--)2md
i --Interest rate
x --Face value of note
n --Number of period installment payments (usually 50)
m --Ratio between one year and length of uniform intervals between installment payments
d --Amount of discount charged
For example: if loan is $100, discount will be $8; over a year; 50 separate payments.
i=2 (52 x 8)
--
100 (50+1)--2 (52x 8)
i= 832
--
4268
i= 19%
However, the rate of interest varies with the mathematical formula used. The elementary arithmetical way used by the Russell Sage Foundation is:
i= d m
-- X --
amount received (n+1) -- 2
For example: if loan is $100 as above, etc.
i= 8 X 52
-- --
92 (50 + 1) -- 2
Interest=17%-- ED.
Man of the Year
Sirs:
The Forgotten Man might well be the man of the year. But the odds -- if you want odds -- are 1,000 to 1 that he remains forgotten.
TOM LENNON
Hollywood, Calif.
Sirs:
... I am not fearful of betting on the Man of the Year, according to TIME.
The Dope has it 2-to-1 on John D. Rockefeller Jr. for his financial unsuccessful Radio City, and his contribution for the indispensable Liquor Report.
Better dope lays it on "Bob" Wagner, or Hugh Johnson, Bob Minor, and others.
HAROLD J. RUTTENBERG
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sirs:
. . . The President, of course, is doing his best in a trying situation and deserves the support of every patriotic citizen, so far as the conscience and judgment of that citizen allows him to support the policies of the President. We all believe in the unselfish ambitions and the patriotism of the man in the White House. But I would not nominate him as the Man of the Year. The soundest influence in public life in America today is Alfred E. Smith. . . .
CHARLES V. JONES
Roanoke, Va.
Sirs:
Of some ten persons I have asked, all answered Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the 1933 Man of the Year. I am of the same opinion.
LAKENAN BARNES
Columbia, Mo.
Sirs:
My Man-of-the-Year bet:
1) Litvinoff (constructive)
2) Hitler (destructive)
3) Roosevelt (experimentive)
R. E. ZACHERT
Brinson, Ga.
"Remarkable Showing"
Sirs:
In view of the many unfounded and conflicting rumors, your article on the proposal of merger of Northwestern and the University of Chicago is good reporting. A few errors, however; have crept in. The most serious is the statement that "last year the University of Chicago hospitals and clinics lost $831,000." The truth is they closed the year with no deficit whatever--a remarkable showing. The statement that under the proposed merger "Chicago would turn over its practical work to Presbyterian Hospital and, taking over Northwestern's ablest men, would concentrate on research" is also unfounded. The proposal of merger is still in an early stage of discussion. Nothing has been agreed upon and no action will be taken without thorough study and careful weighing of educational advantages and disadvantages.
FREDERIC WOODWARD
Vice-President
University of Chicago
Chicago, Ill.
For hospitals without deficits, all praise.--ED.
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