Picture of Grief

Sirs:

Acting upon an impulse which I imagined was largely a result of the particular mood I was in that day, I clipped from an insurance advertisement occupying p. 3 of your Sept. 16 issue, over a legend which ran in part "Motherless All Day. . ." the well-snapped picture of a round-eyed, marvelously wistful infant wearing an abused, tearful look of profound and perfect grief. Since then I have found that at least seven acquaintances also had the "impulse," saw, clipped the picture. . . .

JAMES WANDS RILEY Los Angeles, Calif.

Far from motherless, day or night, is the weeping infant in the Union Central Life Insurance Co. advertisement. He is Robert Jr., happy 18-month-old son of Lawyer & Mrs. Robert Burch of Winnetka, swank Chicago suburb. The Burches let their son pose as a favor to their friend, Photographer Arthur Dailey of Evanston, Ill., who had received an order for "a photo of a healthy baby with lots of personality, crying as if its heart would break ... a cry of neglect and not of anger." Photographer Dailey worked for more than an hour to make happy Baby Burch feel neglected, finally succeeded by sending Mrs. Burch out of the room. So effective was the result that many a touched reader called Union Central agents to ask about the picture; and a woman in Memphis sobbed over the telephone an offer to adopt the child. -- ED.

Unkind Word

Sirs:

Received copy of Oct. 21 TIME today, and have just read as far as p. 13 in it. Received quite a shock and am protesting against what I think is an unkind term. The article in question is the one about Mrs. Muench. Very last word. You speak of the infant as "a Pennsylvania servant girl's bastard!" And I ask you--is that nice?

Technically the term is correct, of course, but is it a kind term? . . . She may have been only a servant girl, but she was a woman! . . . Please be a little kinder in the future. Don't forget it was a man who gave you your chance to use such a term!

DOROTHY DEAN WILCOX Kent, Ohio

Sirs: . . .

You could better call the father a bastard for the dictionary defines: "Bastard, n. a child begotten and born out of wedlock; an animal of low breed.". . .

MARJORIE STOREY Toledo, Ohio

Roast Pork & Applesauce

Sirs:

I beg to add my protest re your "Dead Hog & Roast Pork" in the Oct. 28 issue. Granting that one reader's roast pork is another's dead hog," '' don't you think the protests printed were nevertheless indicative of the fact that TIME does word things in such a way that biases may be inferred, though perhaps not intended? Your style is intended to be interesting, and is so, but I personally often feel that in the effort to be interesting, you go too far. We have only just started to take TIME regularly. I have read practically every word in the last five issues, but I often squirm as I read, then sigh and think. . . .

MRS. G. S. SCHAIRER South Bend, Ind.

Proud is TIME to make Subscriber Schairer squirm, sigh, think. -- ED.

Sirs,

Reading the letters in TIME, Oct. 28 has clarified my mind as to your claimed fairness or lack of bias: when your statements or expressed point of view or ground for inference as to your opinion are such as to agree with my own opinion, you are undoubtedly fair and unbiased, but when any of these are contrary to what I think, then you are certainly unfair, biased, prejudiced, mean, underhanded. Consequently, when I am about to rush you a cancellation of my subscription I am brought to a pause by the discovery that you agree with me on so many points, and are consequently fair and unbiased, that I make haste to withdraw my cancellation. Let some of your correspondents recall that applesauce goes well with roast pork.

GOLDWIN GOLDSMITH Department of Architecture University of Texas Austin, Tex.

World in a Derby

Sirs:

TIME'S comparison (Oct. 21, p. 56) of a ripe human ovum with a pinhead gives an inadequate concept of the true size of this interesting cell. Actually its diameter is but 1/200 in. This is about the size of the smallest grain of sand that could be seen with the unaided eye. Stated differently, a sphere having the diameter of a common pinhead (1/12 in.) possesses nearly 4,000 times the volume of a human egg. One can compute further that all the eggs needed to replace the present population of the world could be held in a derby hat, whereas the sperm to fertilize them would not exceed the volume of a fairly small pill.

L. B. AREY Department of Anatomy Northwestern University Medical School Chicago, Ill.

Reynolds' Ride

Sirs:

In the Sept. 16 issue of your most excellent weekly newsmagazine, there was published a brief sketch and comment relative to my tour around America, and I write just to say to you that your article was brought to my attention more times than any other publication that carried descriptions of my tour.

. . . My car and trailer were stalled on a very steep grade in the Rushmore National Park. I had been stuck there all night and early in the morning there came bounding down the mountain two nattily dressed young men whom I later found to be employed on the memorial which is being carved on one of the lofty mountain peaks. One of them was the son of the sculptor himself* and he recognized our plight on the roadside and when he found out who we were he said, "Well, well, I have just been reading about you," and he picked from the seat upon which he was riding in the car your magazine of Sept. 16 and brought it to my attention and in which was the article and the picture of myself standing in the kitchen of my trailer with apron on and frying pan in hand. . . .

ROBERT R. REYNOLDS United States Senate Washington, D. C.

Devoted Group

Sirs:

I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for the very excellent and unprejudiced manner in which you presented the Chinese aviation picture in TIME, Oct. 14. I personally appreciated very much your recognition of the efforts of the American Aviation Mission in China. When you mentioned the group, as a "devoted group," you were correct, as these young men did a wonderful job under extremely adverse circumstances. Living as we did in the interior of China, the mails from home were looked forward to with the greatest impatience. I think that every member of the group was a subscriber to TIME because of the wide field of information which you publish. May I congratulate you upon the real knowledge and pleasure that you give Americans who are out of touch with things going on in the active world.

JOHN H. JOUETT New York City

To Colonel Jouett, famed chief of the Aviation Mission, thanks for hearty words. -- ED.

England's Chestnuts, U.S. Gumbo

Sirs:

Congratulations on your enlightening and discerning article "The League," [TIME], Oct. 14, which in the main describes England's nimble maneuvering while slipping the noose around Italy's neck. For me it has crystallized into convictions many things which up to now have been only impressions -- namely that: 1 ) Mr. Eden is an overly young and ambitious careerist. 2 ) That England, whilst casting pious eyes Heavenward, seeks to have the League pull her own imaginary chestnuts out of the fire. 3) That to duck a "possible" conflict of English-Italian interests in the Red Sea area 30 years from now, she is right now, today, willing to take all the steps of the aggressor which will inevitably plunge not only Italy and herself, but other European nations not in the slightest involved, into war. 4) That her interest in Italy's Ethiopian occupation is entirely selfish, else why did she so cavalierly shrug her shoulders at Japan's machinations in Manchuria, meanwhile leaving the U.S. "out on the limb" in precarious single protest. 5) That not content with getting the nod from the League, she is attempting to lead this country step by step into a morass of commitments and implied "community of interest" to a point where a last desperate jump backward will only find us stuck in the gumbo of our own stupidity. 6) And lastly, that the only thing worse than a bully at a peanut stand is a bully in Grand Central Station.

H. B. GROSETH Austin, Minn.

Clouting Clergymen

Sirs:

Your news item "Clouts from Clergymen" (TIME, Oct. 28). Are TIME readers to assume that the clergy is 100% anti-Roosevelt or has TIME adopted the "hand picked" method of publishing news?

RAY A. PAULIN Athens, Ohio

Sirs:

Why only print the answers from clergymen who are against the President and the New Deal?

Are you going into politics? I am not a politician and I am not for the New Deal as it stands today.

ALBERT BEER Beer's Ready-to-Wear Santa Fe, N. Mex.

Sirs:

. . . All clergymen did not criticize the Administration, and TIME errs in printing the blasphemies of a few nondescript so-called ministers of the gospel.

THOMAS R. METZGER Metzgers Potatoes Inc. Greenville, Mich.

By no means all clergymen clouted the New Deal, but it was the clouters, with few exceptions, who rushed into print with their answers to the President's request for advice. The others privately wrote to the White House where secretaries last week declined to estimate the number of letters received. When all letters are in, they will be counted, tabulated and excerpts presumably will be published. -- ED.

Blessed War

Sirs:

In your Oct. 28 issue under "Clouts from Clergyman" you give prominence to the reply of the highly gleeful Rev. Charles A. Eaton, now Representative Eaton. I am writing to inquire if that is the same Rev. Charles A. Eaton who during the early part of the World War claimed "this War is the greatest blessing that has ever fallen on mankind since the German Reformation" (Road to War -- Walter Millis). . . .

EDNA LADEN Boston, Mass.

The same. -- ED.

What's Wrong ?

Sirs:

With a thorough appreciation of the subtleties of modern advertising, may I respectfully inquire what the Ethyl Gasoline Corp.'s advertisement in your issue of Oct. 21 is all about? . . . Why not caption the ad., "What's wrong with this picture?"

The gentleman with the 12 -gauge double-barrel shotgun. He is right where he belongs -- with his posterior perched on a bench. With those shiny, tight-fitting riding boots I'll guarantee that if he is foolhardy enough to venture "up the trail," he'll need someone to carry him home. That type of boot is made for riding and not for walking.

As the hunting is good "up the trail" may we assume that he is going either for birds or rabbits? You don't need dogs for rabbits so we will say that he's after for birds. His dogs are a springer spaniel -- all right for ducks and other water fowl -- and some sort of a fox hound. Do you shoot foxes for sport in the East? For either birds or rabbits, the two dogs would be as ridiculous as the riding boots.

And now the old pappy-guy with the red mittens. An extended rabbit may be that long but that gesture would never describe any sort of an American game bird. Nope, that gentleman is obviously describing a fish and in doing so is committing an advertising sin -- he is diverting attention from the theme of the ad -- autumnal hunting. . . . Personally, I'm going to stick to plain gasoline.

GEORGE M. RASCOE San Francisco, Calif.

*Gutzon Borglum's son James Lincoln. --ED.

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