Pat & Kick
Sirs:
TO TIME, FOR ADMITTING THAT MUCH OF THE ESSENTIAL WORK IN LOUISIANA WAS UNDONE BEFORE HUEY P. LONG BECAME GOVERNOR TWELVE YEARS AGO, A PAT ON THE HEAD.
TO TIME FOR IMPLYING THAT HIGH-HATTED SWEET-SMELLING CORPORATION LAWYER SAM JONES HAS A CHANCE TO WIN LOUISIANA'S DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION FOR GOVERNOR ON FEB. 20, A KICK IN THE PANTS. . . .
IF TIME IS RIGHT AND I AM WRONG AND SAM JONES WINS, I WILL GO TO NEW YORK, CLIMB A FLAGPOLE ON TIME-LIFE BUILDING, AND AT HIGH NOON ON FEB. 29 I WILL CHEW UP AND EAT ONE COMPLETE ISSUE OF TIME.
BUT IF I AM RIGHT AND TIME IS WRONG AND EARL LONG WINS THEN TIME'S EDITOR . . .
WILL COME TO NEW ORLEANS AND EAT ONE ISSUE OF THE "AMERICAN PROGRESS" WHICH WILL BE COOKED AND SEASONED FOR HIM BY THAT PEERLESS NEW ORLEANS RESTAURATEUR, MONSIEUR ROY ALCIATORE OF ANTOINE'S. I ASSURE TIME THAT THE GREAT ALCIATORE CAN EVEN MAKE A SOUFFLE OUT OF AN EIGHT-PAGE NEWSPAPER.
JOHN D. KLORER
Editor
American Progress
New Orleans, La.
> TIME makes no bets. --ED.
Again, Viskniskki
Sirs:
I have just read your reply, in your issue of Jan. 29, to my letter of Jan. 12. Thank you for letting me have back the first K in my name. Thank you for restoring at least a few hairs to my head. Thank you for adding a month to my stay in Philadelphia. And thank you for giving Stanley Walker more salary. But how self revealing you are when, in an attempt to hold on to $1,000 of TIME'S money, you resort to the ancient device of calling names and take refuge behind a purported statement of an unnamed porter given you second hand. How far short you have fallen in the art of accurate reporting the following affidavits by two Evening Public Ledger executives will make all too plain:
I, the undersigned, Ellwood T. Maull, do hereby swear that early in November I instructed the porter supplying paper towels to the Editorial Men's wash room on the third floor of the Ledger building to discontinue the use of the middle of three-- paper dispensers installed in that room.
This was done without any report, suggestion or recommendation from Colonel Guy T. Viskniskki or any of his associates.
(Signed) E. T. MAULL
Chief Engineer
Attest:
John C. A. Rigney
Notary Public
I, the undersigned, A. C. Hampson, do hereby swear that prior to any report, suggestion or recommendation from Colonel Guy T. Viskniskki or any of his associates, I asked Mr. Maull to eliminate whatever actual waste of supplies he could, throughout the plant, specifically mentioning the seemingly excessive use of paper towels.
(Signed) A. C. HAMPSON
Business Manager
Attest:
John C. A. Rigney
Notary Public
... As for the check for $5 you say you are sending me for "pointing out minor inaccuracies" in your story of Jan. 15, it will be returned to you by registered mail when received. I've never considered myself very bright, but I just cannot be so dumb as to accept this particular sum from TIME.
GUY T. VISKNISKKI
Evening Public Ledger
Philadelphia, Pa.
> TIME makes no bets.--ED.
Sirs:
I enjoy Letters and have often thought you editors a very fine crowd as you take bouquets and brickbats with equal good humor. But today (TIME, Jan. 29) I am flabbergasted. Ed. sends $5.00 (out of his pocket or is it deducted from his salary?) to the fussbudget who picks out flyspecks. . . .
AGNES STUART
Washington, D. C.
> He says he will send it back (see above).--ED.
Sisu
Sirs:
I am sending you a letter from a cousin of mine, who lived in Helsinki until the war began. Since my people in Finland are some of the average Finns, who have no means of sending their letters by radio, not even by airplane, and since in these uncertain times it takes about four or five weeks for a letter to get here, I am afraid that I shall never be able to send you one timely enough. This letter is the latest I have received. I pray that it will not be the last. It is so little I can do for Finland here. I have sent the clothes and money that I could spare. I shall try to send more and I shall try to keep others interested in Finland.
KAARINA BJAREBY
Boston, Mass.
Dear Kaarina:
We have had a very exciting time lately. I must be very careful in writing this to you, for most likely this letter will be inspected, before it gets out of this country. Mother, Liisa and I are evacuated here in Pinjainen. Father had to stay in Helsinki, since he sells food; besides he is in the Civilian Safeguard Service.
Thursday, when the Russians came the first time, it was awful. I was in school when the alarm was sounded. We had to leave school and go to the cemetery, where we were supposed to be safe. It would have been terrible if the Russians would have started machine gun fire there. We were at least 400 schoolgirls, besides many other people there. I didn't want to stay there and began to run home. On the way I saw one Russian plane burn and fall down. Thursday evening was terrible. About half past three the Russians came again and threw bombs right into our section of the city. There was a terrible explosion. The bombs fell on the street where we are living. The windows broke and there was an awful mess. Mother and I were just going to eat when it happened. We didn't think of eating, but rushed down into the basement.
Here we are safer than in Helsinki. That Russia is an awful country, and I wonder where we would be if Finland had not received help from other countries. We are so very grateful for all the help we have got.
That I say too, that Russia won't take this country until I also have knocked the wind out of at least one Russian. It is too bad that I am not sixteen years old yet. Then I could have stayed in Helsinki to help father . . . and if a bomb would fall on my head, I would gladly die for dear Finland. But now I am too young. I can only do my duty for Finland by being a good girl and helping mother, and that's not so hot always.
There's lots of snow here and so thick blizzards that the Russians haven't been able to bomb anything, but now it seems to clear again. We have been coasting and sleigh-riding and I won't have to be alone, for I have five cousins here and we have quite a gay time together. We hear the day's news on the radio, a very good radio it is too, and we keep each other glad, for "we are not to be fed on sadness" [part of a Finnish song]. First we listen to the evening prayers and later on we even dance.
I hope that you write to us soon, even a card. With best regards from Finland.
ANITA
Sirs:
My son (eight months old) of Finnish descent tore the cover of TIME [picturing Joseph Stalin] in half as soon as the mail was brought into the house. I am wondering if this is the so-called Finnish sisu.
JOHN SAARI
Willmar, Minn.
No Thanks
Sirs:
Suppose a reporter from here, assigned to cover TIME, should poke his nose into the composing and press rooms, take a gander around the circulation and advertising departments; should then knock out an article which magnified the mechanical side, said little about your main job--reporting and writing ? We don't believe you'd feel grateful for that kind of coverage, thankful that you had been treated fairly.
No thanks, then, for your handling of the Ohio State University (TIME, Jan. 22). Of course, we're proud of our "horse doctors," our "tooth doctors," proud, too, of our "service stations" activities on the side. But your choice of pictures and captions and your unfortunate selection of facts contrived, TIMEstyle, to present the country's fifth largest university as a big, sprawling, ungainly institution--partly trade school, partly convention bureau, partly "service station," but a University, hardly.
Yet Ohio State is a member of the Association of American Universities, the nation's top-notch rating group whose select circle includes only thirty-odd universities and whose standards of admission and tenure are high and strict. Yet, during the recent holidays, Ohio State was host and manager, for the third time, of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Yet, just before your article was written, Ohio State professors were named to head three nationally distinguished groups: the American Botanical Society, the American Association for Applied Psychology and the American Chemical Society. This happens regularly--dozens of our professors have headed distinguished academic, professional, and scientific groups. The immediate past president of the American Medical Association is an Ohio State University professor (Dr. J. H. J. Upham). . . .
Shouldn't a fair write-up have included such noteworthy facts? "Not rich in ... great teachers?" Did you ever hear of the following, to name a few of our great ones: Bode (education) ; Goddard (psychology) ; Osburn (entomology) ; McPherson, Evans, and Henderson (chemistry) ; Hayes (economics) ; French (engineering drawing) ; Leighton (philosophy) ; Hagerty and Stillman (sociology) ; Transeau (botany) ; Spencer (political science) ; Hatcher and Graves (English) ; Alpheus Smith and Blake (physics) ; Ketcham (phonetics) ; Hockett (history) ; Hudson (bacteriology) ; Boiling (classical languages) ? Don't believe us that they're great--consult Who's Who or some impartial educators who should know. We'll be glad to supply the names of others.
As for the student body, if, as you reported, half of our students work their way through, how much time and money do you suppose they have for dances, necking, and 3.2 beer, which anyway are old, but incidental pastimes on any college campus? How much more constructive it might have been to mention that our Student Senate is a model which self-governing organizations all over the country have copied, ditto our fine and unusual fraternity system?
Granted, you're no house organ for any institutions or individuals which you may meet, and that you owe the citizens of Ohio and our far-flung graduate body (42,000, thousands of whom are your readers) no obligation to make them feel good by "constructive" writing. But it might be argued that you owe your subjects a fair break, and it certainly is argued that you owe your readers an honest and workmanlike job of reporting.
Our kick is that you withheld many significant facts from your readers and that you exaggerated out of all proportion the nonessentials here, overlooked or ignored the qualities that entitle Ohio State to respected membership in the American Association of Universities.
JOHN B. FULLEN
Alumni Secretary
The Ohio State University Association
Columbus, Ohio
> TIME had no intention of belittling Ohio State, was impressed by the many and varied services which Alumnus Fullen considers "non-essentials."--ED.
Sirs:
The sons and daughters of the poor farmers, salesmen, teachers, storekeepers, railroaders and small town doctors, so painstakingly enumerated in your article on Service Stations, feel sort of grapes of wrathy. The article reminded us of the report of some dowager (lorgnette and all) who had ventured across the tracks on a slumming expedition. . . .
You have so impressed me with my mediocrity that I am enclosing my renewal subscription. I, too, want to become omniscient.
STEWART A. HOOVER
Columbus, Ohio
Sirs:
During my five years at Ohio State Hennick's did not, as you state in your Jan. 22 issue, sell beer. Do they now? . . .
EDGAR LESHER
Ann Arbor, Mich.
> No. To Hennick's, TIME'S apologies.
--ED.
Sirs:
TIME marches sidewards.
CARMINE F. ORSINI
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Sirs:
TIME marches backwards.
AL TRIZZINO
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Sirs:
This letter comes to you in support of your excellent article under Education (TIME, Jan. 22) in which you give a typical TIME description of an outstanding institution--namely, the Ohio State University.
I strongly suspect it was written, at least by an Ohio man, and perhaps a graduate, as it's quite exacting in all details as to O. S. U., and its activities.
Most O. S. U. graduates are proud of their Alma Mater even though it lacks some of the tradition connected with more famous institutions. We are just what we are and make no bones about it. Ohio State enjoys an enviable reputation in Columbus and that means a great deal. Quite a few schools do not enjoy a similar situation in their location due to superior attitudes.
R. O. LANE
Ohio State '30
Jackson, Mich.
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