Queen

Sirs:

I wish to call your attention to what TIME of July 25 published about our beloved late Queen Marie.

It is a pity that while the Queen was still lying in state, you could not find anything to say about Her, other than what appeared in TIME.

Has not this great Lady done anything in Her life to justify a favorable comment on your part?

I am addressing you this question as a man and a Christian, not in my capacity as Minister of Romania.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

RADU IRIMESCU

Royal Legation of Romania

Washington, D. C.

TIME'S motto: De mortuis nil hokum.--ED.

Chandler's Teeth

Sirs:

On TIME, Aug. 1's cover, Smiling Governor "Happy" Chandler aptly lives up to his name. As a dentist, I immediately noticed two missing upper lateral incisors. Am I right in this observation, or was the photograph incorrectly touched up ?

GEORGE KADEN, D.M.D.

Belleville, N. J.

Dr. Kaden's keen dental eye is right. Governor Chandler's upper right and left laterals are missing. This lack is abnormal but not uncommon: the Governor's 12-year-old daughter Mimi lacks the same two teeth.--ED.

Musical Olympics

Sirs:

RE ''MUSICAL OLYMPICS" (TIME, JUNE 13) AMAZED TO READ I BIT THE DUST IN BELGIUM, WAS ACTUALLY FULFILLING ENGAGEMENTS ENGLAND AT TIME.

RAY LEV

London

Rubber Rafts

Sirs:

In this week's [July 25] swell TIME write-up of the Hughes flight was a discussion of the rubber life raft with bottled carbon dioxide for quick inflation. Carbon dioxide happens to be a bad actor as soon as it smells rubber. . . . Its rate of diffusion through rubber is about 15 times that of air. A rubber life raft inflated with carbon dioxide in mid-ocean might, for this reason, be a little embarrassing, perhaps even rather trying after a certain lapse of time.

I thought if Mr. Hughes anticipates going life-rafting again he might like to know about that coefficient of diffusion.

C. C. FURNAS Associate Professor

Department of Chemical Engineering Yale University New Haven, Conn. Although carbon dioxide does indeed leak through rubber 15 times as fast as air, the leakage is still slow. A CO2-inflated raft will carry a man four to six days. CO2 is used only for the first quick inflation: the raft thereafter is kept buoyant by a hand air-pump.

Such rafts have proved successful.

Chief Pilot Verne W. Harshman, naval aviator on maneuvers off the coast of Colombia in 1931, was forced down by bad weather, kept afloat on his CO2-filled raft five days. Only trouble he encountered was sharks, which were attracted by the raft's color (orange-yellow for high visibility). Result: the navy changed the color of life-rafts' bottoms to olive drab.--ED.

Hy-de-ho Sirs:

Now that Father Divine and his Harlem Heaven have moved into Hyde Park the name should be changed to "Hy-de-ho" Park.

C.H. PERRY

Minneapolis, Minn.

Mrs. Tingley

Sirs:

In TIME, Aug. 1, I find the following: "In New Mexico, handsome Governor Clyde Tingley halted a move to endow a hospital named after his late wife. . . ."

I wish to congratulate you on your scoop over New Mexico newspapers; none having yet learned of Carrie Tingley's demise nor tardiness.

PAUL E. DEMETER

Albuquerque, N. M.

To Mrs. Clyde Tingley, TIME'S deepest apologies for an inexcusably careless error.--ED.

Nickel Sirs:

I wonder how many people noticed that your cut of the new Jefferson nickel (TIME, Aug. 1) is slightly "flattened at the poles?"

Thinking my eyes were deceiving me, I measured the design with a pair of calipers and find there is 3mm. difference between the horizontal and vertical meridians.

What I would like to know is whether this is an accidental distortion. . . .

HENRY SCHMIEL

Optometrist Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Bureau of the Mint avers that the Jefferson nickel, no matter what apparent distortion appears in photographs of the model, will be perfectly circular.--ED.

Wang An-shih Sirs:

"The government made loans to the farmers and these loans were to be repaid after the harvest. In order to keep the price of grain from rising and falling, the government was to buy up the grain when the prices began to fall and to sell it when prices rose. Instead of utilizing forced labor to carry out all the government's public works, he proposed to pay for this labor and levied an income tax to provide the treasury with the necessary funds.

"The people did not like to see the government exercise too much power over their business affairs. For eight years he held his post; then he was dismissed from office and died in disgrace."

His name was Wang An-shih, and he was born in China in 1021.

RUTH TOMPKINS

New York City

P.S. The quotations are from A History of the Orient, by Professors Steiger, Beyer and Benitez, published in 1926. . . .

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.