"And/or"
Sirs: If you continue to ignore the decisions of the courts in the State of Illinois, I am going to cancel my subscription. In TIME, Dec. 23 you have an interesting article on the use of the phrase "and/or," and credit the criticism of this expression to one of the justices of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. Your files will show that two years ago I wrote you a letter calling your attention to the use of this abomination in one of your editorials on medicine, and I told you then that this phrase had been held to be "against the law" by the Appellate Court of Illinois in an opinion by Justice John M. O'Connor in the case of Preble v. Architectural, etc. Union, 260 Ill. App. 435. Since that time the Illinois Appellate Court has again condemned the use of this phrase in Tarjan against the National Surety Co. 268 Ill. App. 232.
Major Edgar B. Tolman, Editor-in-Chief of the American Bar Association Journal has repeatedly criticized this symbol, and when Senator Carter Glass in the United States Senate demanded an amendment of the bill to which you refer, he read into the record of the Senate Justice O'Connor's opinion along with the criticisms made by John W. Davis of New York and the Honorable George W. Wickersham. And again in May of 1935 the Illinois Appellate Court spoke on this subject in the case of City National Bank v. Davis Hotel Corporation, 280 Ill. App. 247, and said that the court has now found "tiresome and vain repetitions of these further abominations--and/or, was/were, is/are, it/he, its/his, it/him--so do bad habits grow." A. R. HULBERT Attorney and Counsellor at Law Chicago, Ill.
Sirs: This from West Virginia's Maxwell, dissenting in Bell v. Gas Company, decided July 25, 1935, and reported in 181 S.E. 609, should be included in your anthology on "and/or." "The involvements of the contract are accentuated by the frequent use of the baffling symbol 'and/or'--a disingenuous modernistic hybrid, inept and irritating." GEORGE RICHARDSON JR.
Richardson & Kemper Attorneys at Law Bluefield, W. Va.
To Lawyers Hulbert and Richardson, to many another, thanks for citations of strong judicial language.--ED.
Sirs:
May I say a word in defense of "and/or" (TIME, Dec. 23)? This highly convenient phrase simply means "either one or the other or both." It makes it possible to say in one sentence what would otherwise require two or three. 1 fail to see why the expression of the conjunctive and disjunctive in one short phrase should cause so much trouble.
Let the vituperative epithets addressed by Judge Fowler, John W. Davis, et al., .to this innocent and useful phrase be directed instead to those bungling laymen and law makers who are unable to understand it and also (with emphasis) to those lawyers who have asked courts to interpret it in other than its true meaning and so have caused so much unjustified confusion. GEORGE E. McMuRRAY
Hopkins, Starr & Godman
Lawyers
Chicago, Ill.
Vive la Republique!
Sirs: Allow me to reply to L. de Vallombrosa & Evelyne Greig (TIME'S Letters, Dec. 16). I am a French Republican & that means, for the Republic. My politics are those of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Clemenceau, Poincaire & Doumergue. As a Republican I denounce your Croix de Feu & all other parties of the Right. France has soldiers, mobile guards&policemen & needs no other private armies. I denounce equally the Communists whose ideal Russia, outdoes Capitalism. And I scorn such men as Remain Holland & Aristide Briand, who being the sole internationalists & brothers of men are blinded by their ideals & allow the enemies of their country to gain solid benefits, at her expense & safety, under the guise of this same internationalism. But you of the right, composed of L'Action Franc,aise the clerics, the Royalists & the pretentious. Should the country be turned over to your clique? You dare to criticize the past 60 years government. What about yours during Louis XIV, XV, XVI, XVIII & Charles X? ... You say your enemies are Communists. Bad as it is, you are as bad! And you show your rottenness by attacking Free Masons; for those of France indeed are different from those of England & the U. S. . . . As to the dark pages--you refer to the Revolution, when after 175 years of licentiousness, tyranny & starvation, you refused to mend your ways & when the people threatened to make you, you, led by your foreign queen, her lover, & the King's brothers, called the foreigner into your country to fight your people. You, the nobles, clergy & their partisans, took English gold & passed over to the enemy in 1814 & 15, taking up once more arms against your country & betrayed him who had befriended you. And you allowed the foreigner, being held on the throne by their bayonets & restored to your feudal privileges, to camp in France, despoil Paris of its riches & treasures, while you shot the brave Republicans or left them to starve. Would you not like to do with those that disagree with you, as la Maintenon & her Jesuit allies did when they exiled the Huguenots, sending them to found new industries & enrich foreign countries? Or the St. Bartholomew's Massacre? Would it not be better to read solely Lamartine, A. de Vigny & Chateaubriand, who gave the English such good ideas to think up for vilifying the Republic & Napoleon? . . . You admire Hitler whose intentions towards France are so evident he has caused Britain to drop her isolation ... & Mussolini who for ten years was making trouble for France. . . . Your aim is not patriotism as you say; that is merely the snare to catch the foolish & to set yourselves up in the selfish & feudal powers & privileges of your party. It is your party that counts, not France, nor its peasants & petit bourgeois. . . . And you would bring war (not of defense, which is right & just) misery & distress, as though we have not suffered enough with our four invasions between 1814 and 1914. . . . Vive la Republique always! HELOISE COLOMBE
San Francisco, Calif.
All thanks to a fervent French Republican for her fervent letter.--ED.
Conspicuous Exception Sirs: Permit me to call to your attention an error in TIME, Jan. 6, which does serious injustice to The Times (London). On p. 34 TIME has picture of Jon Lindbergh under which is printed "The London Times spread him over two columns." Again, on p. 38 TIME says, "Across two columns on the main news page of its Sunday edition that most stiff-necked of the world's newspapers, The London Times, spread the photograph of Jon Lindbergh." Now, The Times (London), so far from having printed, or "spread," any picture of Jon Lindbergh, has been a conspicuous exception among newspapers in according to the Lindbergh family that privacy they desire and certainly should have. (See New York Times, Dec. 30, p. 3.) Moreover, The Times (London) has no Sunday edition. The Sunday Times, which TIME seems to have confused with it, is an entirely different publication, owned by Lord Camrose's Allied Newspapers, Ltd. There is no connection whatever between the two newspapers. I feel sure that TIME will want to correct its error, no less for its own sake than ours. LOUIS E. HINRICHS
New York Correspondent of The Times (London) New York City
TIME gladly sets the record straight on The Times (London) and The Sunday Times of London.--ED.
Greatest Man
Sirs:
What has Senator Borah done to you that you feel it your duty to continually belittle his candidacy?
I have personally known the Senator since 1904. He is sincere, capable, honorable, temperate, a fine citizen and the greatest man to sit in the U. S. Senate since the Civil War. Were Lincoln alive today he would proudly approve Mr. Borah's candidacy, in my opinion. . . .
BROWNING WARREN
The Nebraska Wesleyan University
Lincoln, Neb.
No belittler of the Presidential candidacy of sincere, capable, honorable, temperate William Edgar Borah, TIME simply reports its progress in the light of political realities.--ED.
Prosperity Josh
Sirs:
The enclosure herewith "reveals" in greater detail the "Retire at Birth Plan," officially, "The Perpetual Prosperity Plan," to which you refer in your "Michigan's Main" election story, TIME, Dec. 30. ... Background of the use of this "Plan" in Michigan's campaign is about this: A subscriber to this newspaper, living in Battle Creek, at a dinner-table talk there recalled having read the "Plan," and sketchily detailed it to his friends as he recalled it. He had forgotten the title, but not the general idea. The result was that it was gossiped around and finally bobbed up in the Main campaign, about as you recite it. Recently I saw that Battle Creek subscriber-resident, and he told me of the occurrence and the use that was put to the "Plan." Also, he has secured a number of copies of the real "The Perpetual Prosperity Plan," which may be used to better inform such as may be interested in the Battle Creek Congressional district. Smart readers of the "Perpetual Prosperity Plan" will recognize it as satire. About the other type of reader it makes little difference. I wrote and published the "Plan" last June as a josh. Perhaps it may be good politics for the anti-Townsend-Planners to treat it as seriously as occasions may advise. . . . R. M. MCCABE Editor
The Logan Observer
Logan, Iowa
Sirs:
Congratulations on your concise and accurate account of Retire at Birth Plan's principal features. . . .
R. A. B.'s absurdity is obvious enough to make a few blind followers of dear Dr. T. see the impossibility of his idle dream.
WALTER P. NORTH
Attorney at Law Battle Creek, Mich.
Lady Deacon
Sirs:
There is considerable difference in the Methodist Episcopal Church between a deaconess and a deacon. A deaconess is a woman who, with specific training, is consecrated to parish service of some type, such as visiting, nursing, church secretarial work, hospital chaplain, or social service. A deacon is a man or a woman who has received the first of two orders of ordination to the ministry. Uldine Utley [TIME, Dec. 30) was recently ordained deacon, not consecrated deaconess.
It is customary to wear a robe for the ordination service, and any minister (man or woman) who is properly dressed wears black in the pulpit, not blue and gold. And the most of us do not take our Bibles in swimming with us. I was ordained deacon in September 1931 and elder in September 1933. I resent publicity stunts of any kind in the ministry.
DOROTHY DUNTON Toledo, Ohio
Bias
Sirs:
Please discontinue sending us TIME. Your biased attitude on political questions made us doubt the fairness of your opinions on other subjects as well.
The unfair and sarcastic article about Mr. Hoover in the Dec. 30 issue was uncalled for. I am not alone in being utterly tired of the continual ballyhoo for the New Deal and its President. . . .
GENEVIEVE G. RICHARDSON
Sheboygan Falls, Wis.
We are stopping TIME because we despise Republicanism.
B. J. JONES
Nogales, Ariz.
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