Finest Compliment
Sirs:
I have just read the finest compliment to the Press I have seen in many a year. I found it in TIME, March 4, where Earl Long is reported to have said, two days after his recent defeat: "I don't owe the newspapers a ------- thing."
MANLY J. MUMFORD Mokena, Ill.
Unmapped Massacre
Sirs: In TIME magazine of March 4, in the Foreign News Section, I noticed the plan of the City of Leningrad with different notations one of which was "Winter Palace (1905 Massacre Here)."
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that from memoirs of Count Kokovtzev and Count Witte, both liberal Prime Ministers of the Russian Empire during those years, it appears that the "massacre" to which you refer, amounted to eighty-nine people killed and wounded before the Winter Palace on Jan. 9, 1905.* No one, least of all myself, excuses this action, but I think that in your plan you could have made another notation, that near the Prisons of Kristi, in December 1917, by order of the Soviet Government, 2,760 people were executed in two days, and the only explanation was that it was a "protective measure."
VASILLI ADLERBERG New York City
> It is noted.--ED.
Birthday
Sirs: TIME'S knowledge of Gilbert & Sullivan exceeds both its and G. & S.'s familiarity with the calendar. Frederic, Pirate of Penzance (page 57, TIME, March 4, under Birthdays) will be 21 on Feb. 29, 1944. Why? 1900 was not a Leap Year--why--perhaps TIME can explain.
JOHN C. COOK Atlanta, Ga.
> Wrong were Gilbert & Sullivan; TIME was just dozing. Fictitious Frederic, born Feb. 29, 1856, will be 21 in 1944, not 1940. Reason: 1900 was not a leap year, as the last year of a century is no leap year except 1600 A.D., 2OOO A.D., 24OO A.D., etc.--ED.
No Ekers-Outers
Sirs:
In your Feb. 26 issue, in the article about Tom Dewey's tour, it stated that in Helena, Mont., the people "eke out a meagre existence from gold, copper & silver mines, sheep & cattle ranches, the production of wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, etc."
Do you happen to know that per population Helena is the richest city in the U. S. next to Washington, D. C.? That there are still lots of millionaires in this "hovel"? That the miners and ranchers around here are plenty rich ? That's not all!
Why not read up on your history? There is no "school for the feebleminded" between Helena and Butte, but a large institute for the deaf, dumb, and blind. Also, the population of Helena is not 11,800 but 12,900.
The people of Helena who "eke out a meagre existence" have a newly completed $1,000,000 high school, a $125,000 civic centre, and a hospital just finished which cost $370,000, besides many other outstanding new buildings.
We also have the first aviation division in our high school, the first in the U. S. Waiting for your revision of this mistake.
PENROSE H. RADLEY RALPHE MERRILL JOSEPH EARL HORNER WARREN F. BRASS JANICE LEE TORBERT Helena, Mont.
Sirs:
Referring to your account (TIME, Feb. 26) of Mr. Dewey's trip through Montana, I want to state, here & now, that it struck more than one sour note. The general impression it gives of a raw undeveloped State (third largest in the Union, I believe!) inhabited by a handful of horny-handed sons of toil, is hardly flattering.
Speaking of Helena, what do you mean "where natives eke out a meagre existence"? That's new to us. It is still one of the richest, per capita, cities in these United States. (Time was, when it was rated the richest.) Today, as formerly, it is referred to by our visiting Easterners, of whom we have many, as the "City of beautiful homes and well-dressed inhabitants." If you don't believe it, come out and see us sometime and we shall be glad to show you.
Yes, Main Street does run "along the bottom of Last Chance Gulch" (down which has poured millions in gold). What of it? Main streets must run somewhere. It may be a bit winding; but doesn't Boston have a street or streets said to have been laid out by a trail-blazing cow? . . .
WINIFRED GALUSHA Helena, Mont.
Sirs:
. . . Some older natives feel that the present population per square mile in Montana is just about right for free elbow room, that Nature intended it for range country, and rejoiced when in 1937, against all predictions, the range grass again took over the abandoned dry-land farms. The younger generation, scornful of distance, thinks nothing of hightailing it over mountain roads that give tourists the jitters, to a Saturday night dance, 60 or more miles away.
As voters, Montanans seem to be pretty unpredictable, though they do like visitors and resent being patted on the head, if you know what I mean. . . .
M. B. PERRY Berkeley, Calif.
> Well-favored Helenans, whose civic vigor TIME salutes, misconstrued the intended meaning of "eke out." Its irony, TIME supposed, was as plain as Helena's backyard Mt. Ascension and Mt. Helena. Whether second richest U. S. city or not is something for Helena to fight out with such claimants as Winston-Salem, N. C., Pasadena, Calif., Greenwich, Conn., Dallas, Texas, Washington, D. C.--ED.
Service Record
Sirs:
Since, once upon a time, I have had a doubtful privilege of knowing Comrade Semen Budenny personally, please permit me to take a liberty of correcting your information re said Budenny [TIME, Feb. 26]. ... He was not a Kosack, never in his life served as a Kosack, that is in an irregular cavalry, but upon serving his two years, eight months stretch in a regular cavalry, in Nijegorodsni dragoons, he re-enlisted. I don't remember for how many times. Eventually he served in Persia in 1914-17 as a sergeant-major of esquadron 4, same regiment, quartered in Hamadan, Persia. . . . When Budenny eventually was heard from, he was a head of a regular cavalry outfit, nominally of course: you admit that Reds eventually had to send him to the school at the age of 46 years, and we back in Russia knew very well that the real boss in Budenny's outfit was a certain Dalmatoff, formerly an old Russian colonel. As commanding officer, Budenny managed to get badly bruised up by Whites in Northern Kuban as late as early 1920, then repeated the same maneuver in Galicia in summer of 1920, and eventually distinguished himself by losing his transport and sterling silver wind ensemble of his outfit to the already defeated and . . . pitiful troops of Wrangel.
Such is his personal record. And please don't forget . . . that right from the start of the Russian civil war 80% of the officers of the General Staff of the Russian Army served with the Reds, and first thing they did was to abolish all "freebooting" and create a regular Red Army.
I don't know much about General Baron Mannerheim, but I am sure a real old general is more fit for commanding an army than an ex-sergeant-major, but of course the latter is only a figurehead.
WALDEMAR JANKOVSKI
Formerly in service with Signal Corps of Russian Army in Persia, 1915-1917, Hamadan billet. Sacramento, Calif.
Sweet Restraint
Sirs:
I am not among those who fear that the bastard English and outside-the-sheets style of TIME will have some influence on American writing. The taste of the fastidious will always lead them to prize the sweet restraints of good English usage. But for God's sake, TIME, stop "upping." If you "up" one thing more "a thumping -%" I will up my lunch. "Up" is adverb, preposition, adjective, and noun. Even in TIME'S conscience isn't that enough ?
CHARLES RIDGELY New York City
> Up is also a verb, transitive and intransitive (see Webster).--ED.
"Phooey!"
Sirs:
So Bantam LaGuardia said, "Phooey!" (TIME, March 4). The trouble with the political wise boys in all generations is that they are unable to recognize new issues and the men that fit them. Around 1858 another bantam, Stephen A. Douglas, about the size of Little Flower LaGuardia, looked at Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and he said, "Phooey!" Result: he stood holding Abe Lincoln's hat at the next inauguration. Little Flower is just too close to Buster to see his stature.
ARTHUR WHITEFIELD
Wilmington, N. C.
Stogies
Sirs:
TIME, like Reader Parker, could be wronger, but not much, about the origin of "stogies" (March 4, p. 2). They were invented in Washington, Pa., a town equidistant from Pittsburgh and Wheeling (about 30 miles). The following is from History of Washington County, Pennsylvania by Earle R. Forrest:
"The drivers of the old Conestoga wagons were inveterate smokers, and when the government first laid a tax on tobacco, these old wagoners were worried for fear they would have to give up their beloved smokes because of the high prices which the tax made necessary. George Black, a cigar manufacturer at Washington, came to their rescue with a cheap 'roll-up' which he sold at four for a cent. These 'smokes' immediately became popular with the wagoners who first called them 'Conestoga Cigars' which was later corrupted into 'stogies' and 'tobies'. . . . George Black . . . started to make 'stogies' and cigars for the old wagoners and stagecoach drivers on the National pike about 1840. He erected a brick building on South Main Street which is still standing. . . . Many years ago his son . . . estimated that during the period from 1823 to 1853 Black manufactured twenty-five million 'tobies,' which sold at $2.50 per thousand. These were packed in barrels and hogsheads and shipped to all parts of the country after their fame had spread."
Forrest was a pretty careful historian and he was acquainted with the Black family. Incidentally, many years ago when I worked in a Washington drug store, the best seller at the cigar counter was an "Ohio Flat," a variation with the damndest shape you ever saw.
HAYDEN WELLER Garden City, N. Y.
Sirs:
The Wheeling "stogie" once achieved literary standing. When Rudyard Kipling wrote Captains Courageous he required something sufficiently powerful to make a worldlywise, traveled, smart-alec, young son of a rich American father so ghastly nauseated that he would fall overboard from an ocean liner in order, for purposes of the plot, to be rescued by a fishing smack. A Wheeling "stogie" did the trick--not an overdose of ice cream sodas, as in the movie version. The lad was no sissie.
W. T. MOSSMAN Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sirs:
. . . TIME also might be wronger but not much in stating that "To Conestoga went teamsters hauling lumber, tooling the team with one hand, while they rolled a cigar with the other." I would suggest to son Jimmie that he have a movie made showing such a stunt (if it can be done) and show it in the . . . slot movie machine to be put on the market by Mills-Globe Co.
GEORGE H. BAMMANN Pasadena, Calif.
Nostalgia
Sirs:
Pinocchio may be all you say it is, but the Disney character who wanders through the picture under the name of Pinocchio is not the Pinocchio of Collodi or of any boy's or girl's childhood.
Pinocchio's face and physique are as much his own as Lincoln's, Alexander Graham Bell's, George Washington's, Charlie McCarthy's.
If this picture starts a new trend, I shall expect to see Lincoln acted by Robert Taylor (without makeup), Bell by Mickey Rooney, Washington by Shirley Temple, and Charlie McCarthy by Edgar Bergen's other puppet with the unpleasant face. . . .
EDWARD KIP CHACE Princeton, N. J.
Informal
Sirs:
Congratulations on a well-informed, sincere article on our president, Dr. Frank Aydelotte (TIME, March 4). We students at Swarthmore are justly proud of him and the record he has made here as a president and a friend.
But to prevent any false impressions among your readers, may I correct a few of your statements about our institution? In the first place, dancing is not quite the nightly pastime here that you would have your readers believe. Only once on weekday evenings (Tuesday) are there any more than half a, dozen students in Collection Hall, then only for half an hour. Weekend dances are mostly informal, open to limited groups only.
As for the academic side of life at Swarthmore, your article did us more than justice, though it did not mention our predilection for study in the "Libe." However, honors students are not chosen by examinations, but rather on their general record of study for the first two years. Also, the percentage of students who graduate with honors is usually less than the 50% you quoted.
In spite of my disagreement on these points, I thought the writer of your article captured the genial, informal spirit of our life here with unusual success.
GUY HENLE
Editor, The Swarthmore Phoenix Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa.
Precocious
Sirs:
Anent Franklin Roosevelt II;s statement [TIME, March 4] that Franklin Roosevelt III has outgrown diapers at the age of 1 1/2 years--does that precocious accomplishment come from his grandfather's experiences with flood control?
GERALD R. BARRETT
Webster, N. Y.
Surprise v. Astonishment
Sirs:
In reviewing Gogarty's Going Native (TIME, March 4) you quote him: "It was better . . . that she should be astonished than that we should be surprised."
In Charles Palmer's story "Runaround in Reverse" printed last June in MacLean's Magazine the hero admonished his erring wife and her lover thus: " 'I must say I am surprised. Or rather, you are surprised, I am astonished.' He had waited a long time for a chance to use this."
Mr. Gogarty waited longer.
JEAN-MARIE CONSIGNY Los Angeles, Calif.
Alarmist's View
Sirs:
I view with no little alarm your Feb. 26 issue which states that the "only leprosarium in the U. S." is in Louisiana.
I may have missed an issue of your timely magazine, and may thus seem ignorant of recent developments, but what has happened to Hawaii? Has it been secretly anschlussed by Japan? Have the ocean waves risen to engulf it--Navy, pineapples, Kalaupapa leper settlement and all? Or are your editors ignorant of the fact that the Organic Act declares Hawaii to be an American Territory, "an integral part of the U. S.?"
FENWICKE W. HOLMES Los Angeles, Calif.
> There are two ways of looking at the U. S.: as 48 States, in all of which together there is only one leprosarium; as a nation, which is much better off because Hawaii has two leprosaria; the Canal Zone, one; the Philippine Islands, three; Puerto Rico, one. TIME might well have taken the more embracing view.--ED.
Disposal Plan
Sirs:
The third term jitters which periodically convulse the American body politic could be avoided if parties would follow the example of big business.
No healthy, successful president, whether of a corporation or of the U. S., really wants to be turned out to graze at the age of, let us say, 58. Corporations know what to do with such a president. Instead of switching him abruptly from a position of intense activity to the Nirvana of complete retirement, they make him Chairman of the Board.
Why should we not do likewise with presidents of the U. S., instead of sending them home to twiddle their thumbs, perhaps die of sheer ennui, or, even worse, to hatch up unsuccessful but embarrassing schemes to stage a comeback--as did Theodore Roosevelt and others? Grant, after two terms (1869-1877), retired, then made a strong bid for the Republican nomination in 1880. Van Buren, defeated for re-election under the Democratic standard in 1840, led the new Free-soil party in 1848. Fillmore, rejected by his dissolving Whig party, became the Know-Nothing candidate in 1856.
If F. D. R. balks in advance at retirement, and the Democrats hesitate to draft him for a third term, just let them draft him for the vice-presidency, where he can do as much good for the country, probably, and more for the party.
. . . Ex-presidents have been as difficult to dispose of as old razor blades. The vice-presidency would provide not only a place but a use for them. . . .
H. CLAY REED
Department of History and Political Science University of Delaware Newark, Del.
"Hen House"
Sirs: In regard to Mrs. Patterson's "hen house"*(TIME, March 4): poultrymen in neighboring countryside look with envy on Cissie Patterson's "hen house." Amazingly prolific, her hens every weekday lay an egg in six editions, and on Sunday an inflated goose egg. . . .
THOMAS J. MURRAY Washington, D. C.
More Wrath
Sirs:
. . . John Steinbeck is successful; his work is powerful propaganda; I love his little red colt [The Red Pony]. But I resent--as I resent the bathos of Dickens--John Steinbeck's attempt to engage my sympathies by means of "phony pathos." He has this same fault in Of Mice and Men. . .
No, I am not a Californian, nor am I a psychiatrist. I am one who suffered conditions as bad as the Okies for 15 years of my life--I wrote about it in the Atlantic, in the Nation, and in a book. Nor am I jealous because my book [We Sagebrush Folks'] was a best lender and not a best seller. . . .
John Steinbeck can write, and write wonderfully. But I am outraged when I trust so capable an artist to have him try to knock the intellectual sensitiveness out of me with a bang on the head--or the heart?--using his typewriter as instrument. I dare to say that Of Mice and Men is an illegitimate attack on the emotions, as are also parts of The Grapes of Wrath. . . .
ANNIE PIKE GREENWOOD Salt Lake City, Utah
Sirs:
I am pleased to notice that your critics don't lose their heads as completely as those of some other publications do, in discussing the works of John Steinbeck. Quite aside from the veracity of his material, I find him dull and phony, and can't for the life of me understand the tremendous vogue he's having. He doesn't really like or understand working people, to my way of thinking, and he's so very sentimental and pompous; in fact as far as I'm concerned, he's nothing but a stuffed workshirt.
DALE CARGHILL
Oakland, Calif.
* According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica the number killed was about a thousand.--ED.
-- Newspaper jape at the many women on her editorial staff. -- ED.
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