"Something Like Ballyhoo"

Sirs:

You probably aren't aware of it but for over a year now I've been carrying on a passionate single-handed crusade to have TIME restored to the University of Pennsylvania Library which discontinued its subscription at that time. A colleague of mine told me the reason TIME was not subscribed to any more by the U. of P. Library was because it was too popular with the students (your magazine is used quite extensively in several Wharton School courses).

I protested to the Periodical Chief (and Buyer) telling her I could understand the Library's discontinuing its New Yorker & Vanity Fair subscriptions but as for its TIME discontinuation, goodness, no, never! Her excuse was that the Library had so many research periodicals to subscribe to that it just couldn't see how it could afford to subscribe to TIME.

Not satisfied with this gossamer explanation, I asked to be shown in black and white just how TIME was inferior to The Literary Digest, a magazine to which the Library can afford to subscribe. The Digest, I argued, merely showed scissors whereas TIME showed a much finer pair of shears. Her reply here was that TIME was "a smart-alecky and a funny magazine--something like Ballyhoo!"

I felt like shutting up and retiring to a cave after that; but, walking away, I promised her that if I were ever an opulent alumnus, I'd contribute a subscription of TIME to the Penn Library. She agreed that was all right.

J. H. POLLACK Philomathean Society University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.

Outrageous

Sirs:

For many years we have been faithful readers of TIME. The picture of the President and Mrs. Roosevelt embracing one another in the [March 26] issue was, in our estimation, outrageous. TIME has every right to give its readers real news and real pictures, but some discretion should be shown when our popular Chief Executive and his wife are being photographed. The wife of a gangster is usually seen kissing her husband through bars, and various movie actors and actresses are snapped during moments of osculation. The President and First Lady are in too high a position--a world famous position--to be thus shown in any magazine.

TRISTAN HEARST BURTON JAMIESON JR. Brown University Providence, R. I.

"Massacrez Tous"

Sirs:

Your [March 19] story of M. Chiappe's garbled telephone conversation and the `a la rue--dans la rue misunderstanding, which resulted in French troops opening fire upon Paris civilians, brings to my mind a curiously parallel story which was widely circulated after the coup d'etat of Napoleon III. According to some historians the massacre of the boulevards resulted from a mistaken command. The official responsible for the fatal order (perhaps Napoleon himself--I forget the exact details) is said to have been suffering from a severe cold, and to have exclaimed "Ma sacre toux!"--"My wretched cough"--which was misinterpreted by a zealous officer as "Massacrez tous," or "Kill everybody."

Perhaps the recent occurrence is a coincidence, or perhaps French officialdom clings conservatively to old and tried excuses.

EDWIN HYDE LAMBERD

P. S. The above anecdote is repeated by Victor Hugo in his History of a Crime, although that author accords it no credence.

Tucson, Ariz.

Shoemaker Stories

Sirs:

So frequent, hilarious have become the vocal and physical acrobatics of Congressman Francis Henry ("Shooey") Shoemaker (TIME, March 19) that Minnesota TIMEscribers prefer to read of his latest hippodroming under Sport.

Ranking radical ranter that he is, Shoemaker also has, at times, an engaging side. An artful versifier, a Shakespearean reader (with gestures), a raconteur, he can sit for hours recalling his Munchausen exploits. No sketch of him is complete without his own War story.

Editor-publisher of the Green Bay, Wis. People's Voice when America entered the War,* Shoemaker screamed his opposition: ''It's a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.'' Returning from a fishing trip that summer, Shoemaker stopped one night at a dance hall which reeked of Wartime spirit. Bunting and flags aroused his ire to such an extent that he refused to stand up when "The Star-spangled Banner" was played. The crowd, observing the lone sitter, moved toward him in mass formation, growling, ugly, threatening.

"I had to act quickly," Shoemaker recalled to a group of newshawks. "What did I do? I took a pencil and on the back of an envelope I wrote, 'What do you want?' and handed it to a big guy leading the crowd. He read it, then turned around and said, 'My God, boys, he's deaf and dumb.' "

Shoemaker also tells how he cured himself of bubonic plague in Panama by drinking three quarts of whiskey, how he was deported from Germany for speech-making on the steps of the Potsdam palace.

Last fall Shoemaker, kept sleepless in a Minneapolis hotel by trolley repair men, went into battle at 2 a. m. in trousers, undershirt, smashed an acetylene welding machine, threw red lanterns in all directions, demanded a ride to police headquarters four blocks distant, was released when he identified himself. The trolley company swallowed its loss.

CHARLES W. MOORE St. Paul Dispatch St. Paul, Minn.

College Girls v. Normalites

Sirs:

One who is now merely a mother but who is familiar with the character and personnel of both public and private schools is intrigued by your statement (March 12), "Professor Norton's commission on the Emergency in Education wanted U. S. school systems rebuilt from the ground up in ten years." I sincerely hope the first step will be to take public education out of politics.

I live in a State (one of many) in which college graduates with a love for little children and a talent for handling them are deliberately forced out of the teaching profession in favor of graduates of the State Normal School because, if you please, they have not learned how to teach by means of an all-important and all-embracing subject called, appropriately, Education. What becomes of the brilliant and versatile college girls? . . . whom we parents should like to see molding the characters of our children in their tender years? I'll tell you. They are driven, by law, into the private schools.

Now the tendency of private education is to make insufferable little snobs of our offspring--not through the influence of the teachers but through the influence of other class-conscious pupils--and what is more intolerable (and intolerant) than a child-snob? But I would risk that (and it is a mighty unworthy parent who is unable to offset Phariseeism at home) if I could make sure of securing for my children the influence of teachers to whom their job is not just a pay envelope and a step higher on the ladder of respectability than the rung to which they were accustomed. But we, like so many others, simply haven't the money . . . even if we had the inclination to send our little ones away from home to be educated by teachers of our own choosing. How fortunate for all concerned if our State Board of Education would accept holders of B. A. degrees with no other strings attached except the desire to instruct the young!

For an intelligent college girl seldom considers those courses-by-which-The-State-sets-such-store worth her while after a sniff or two at them--and the game not worth the candle. They are stupid and inane and consist mainly of "horse-sense" in which only an imbecile might need instruction.

The crying need of the hour is character-building--emphasis on honest practices, integrity of purpose, general highmindedness. I don't care if my children never learn the Salute to the dear old Flag or if their teachers never know how many square feet of playspace per child there should be in the school yard provided these principles are taught by precept and illustrated by example.

MARGARET P. MOORE Narragansett, R. I.

Do other mothers feel the lack of brilliant college girls in public schools?--ED.

Japan's "Plan''

Sirs:

If TIME failed to report the [Paris] Peace Conference (theoretically transposing 1919 with 1934) it would be a grievous news fumble. Yet TIME has failed to report an analogous situation which is tremendously vital to the trend of our chaotic economic course.

I refer to trade conferences now being conducted by Japanese industrialists and government officials with England's textile manufacturers in London and America's tuna packers in San Pedro, Calif. . . .

With the same precision and relentless efficiency that has marked her military expansion, Japan today is waging a world-wide war to capture markets formerly controlled by her chief economic and political rivals. Her program, government-directed, has been dubbed the "Ten Year Plan." Its astounding successes may be considered one of the major factors blocking economic recovery in the Western nations.

One of the American markets frankly coveted by Japan is the rich U. S. canned fish trade. She has mercilessly attacked the tuna fishing and canning industry of this country by glutting the market in 1933 with 700,000 cases of cheaper-priced goods. The California enterprise is in a desperate plight and the result is appearance of a Japanese delegation offering to settle this trade battle on her own terms. . . .

I may also add that the scope of Japanese trade invasion has aroused the Senate to order an investigation by both the NRA and the tariff commission. . . . The Government is investigating charges that Japan is subsidizing her fisheries so that they may undersell the domestic enterprises in the American market. . . .

As for the London conference, which may be Great Britain's Waterloo as a first-rank commercial power . . . TIME should be more alert to such important events.

WILEY V. AMBROSE President Calif. Fish Canners Association San Diego, Calif.

TIME reported (Oct. 16) the peace conference of British, Japanese and Indian textile men at Simla, India, most important engagement in the deadly cloth war thus far, at which the British outbargained the Japanese on quotas.

TIME reported (Dec. 11) the House of Commons' discovery of the war, watched the London conference founder last month on Japanese refusal to compromise, will report the present negotiations directly between the two governments, when, as and if they get anywhere.

TIME notes with interest the meetings of U. S. and Japanese tuna-fish men in San Pedro, will follow and report when, as and if. . . .--ED.

$1 Medal

Sirs:

With reference to the President's Medal: I regret the misapprehension that prompted you to state on the front page of the [March 26] issue of TIME that "Five hundred official copies will go free to government topmen; others will be sold to the public at $1 each." . . .

The fact is that not even the President himself could possess one of these medals without payment being made to the government of $1 to cover the cost of making.

No government agency, except the Congress, has the right to give away values, large or small, belonging to the government.

The President's Medal executed in bronze is made and sold at the Philadelphia Mint. Orders sent by mail should be accompanied by a postal order including 15-c- for postage (personal checks will not be received). If less postage is required the difference will be mailed to the sender.

NELLIE TAYLOE ROSS Director of the Mint Treasury Department Washington, D. C.

10-c- Reprints

Sirs:

In the correspondence column of the April 2 issue of TIME there was a notice saying that Doubleday, Doran would publish the much discussed "Arms and the Men" article from FORTUNE in booklet form at $1 but that big demand would lower the cost.

The demand from many sources that this booklet have widespread circulation has been so insistent that we decided to abandon the $1 book idea. Instead we have made an attractive small illustrated booklet of the "Arms and the Men" article which through the courtesy of the Editors of FORTUNE, we will mail to anyone in the U. S. who desires a copy or copies for 10-c-. Ten cents represents the actual cost to us.

Should any TIME reader want this ''Arms and the Men'' booklet, simply mail 10-c- and a request to Doubleday, Doran & Co., Garden City, New York.

DANIEL LONGWELL Doubleday, Doran & Co. Garden City, N. Y.

P. S. Should any organization be interested in distributing this booklet of ''Arms and the Men" to their members, Doubleday, Doran &: Co. will gladly sell them booklets at cost. In bulk orders the booklet could be delivered at considerably less than 10-c- a copy.

Mother McClish

Sirs:

I have written several letters to you on matters of personal interest, but this is the first time 1 have had occasion to mention anything in an official capacity. In the issue of March 19 you devote most of the Medicine section to a discussion of the birth of a child to Juanita Deere McClish, formerly a student here at Bacone College (not "Bacone Indian College & School''). You may be interested in a few comments which put a slightly different light on the story. . . .

The girl's age, according to official school records, is 12, not 11; her date of birth was June 17, 1921. Her family are wealthy, but can hardly claim to be "aristocrats among Creeks" in any other sense, for they are not leaders or prominent people in the tribe. The McClish boy is an orphan, so his parents did not "readily give consent" to the marriage. His guardian objected, and would have preferred to have him punished by imprisonment for his act, but the girl's representative's reached the judge first and obtained the marriage order. The boy is known as a degenerate, and had left Bacone in March, 1933, a full year before the birth of the child. Since he was not at Bacone, conception of the child must have taken place at the girl's home or elsewhere; this is the more likely since the birth was in March, and Bacone closed in May last year for the summer.

. . . This birth is interesting medically, but is a horrible thing when its background is considered. It makes poor advertising for Bacone, a school under Northern Baptist auspices and the only institution of collegiate rank for Indians in the country. We have 200 students, in grades 1 to 14, representing about 35 tribes from all parts of the U. S.

W. W. DOLAN Dean Bacone College Bacone, Okla.

For other data and comment on precocious maternity, see TIME'S Letters Supplement No. 6, free on request.--ED.

Ruined

Sirs:

I live 80 miles south of Chicago and have been reading two Chicago papers, the Tribune and the Daily News. Would you be so kind as to give me the name of a paper which I could receive by mail the day after it is published. There are two requisites: it must be favorable to the Administration and it must not be a Hearst paper.

The last three months have practically ruined my health. I read the Tribune with my breakfast and I get so darn mad I can't digest my food and my day is spoiled. I read the Daily News before dinner and I get so darn mad I can't digest my food and my evening is spoiled. I spend my nights composing caustic letters to the editors which are never sent and I don't get my sleep. There must be a paper somewhere that has a good word to say for the President and the efforts he is making. I can hear plenty of it around here, but I want to see it in print.

ETHEL BINGHAM CONEY Watseka, Ill.

None of Chicago's four standard-sized newspapers being pro-New Deal, Reader Coney's choice is limited to the tabloid Daily Times.--ED.

*Slight error. Congressman Shoemaker's editor-publisher days were 1921-27.--ED.

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