Youngest Senator Sirs:
TIME for April 28 had this: "Engaged. Rush Dew Holt, 35, West Virginia's isolationist junior Senator from 1935 to 1941 (youngest ever elected); and Helen Froelich, 26, teacher at National Park Seminary near Washington."
I read this aloud to my old friend, E. E. Patton, the great scholar and educator, in his office at Knoxville, Tenn. This was his reply from memory:
"The record shows that Holt lacked only about six months of being old enough to take the oath as a Senator when he was elected. John H. Eaton, a Senator from Tennessee, was born on June 18, 1790; went to the Senate on Sept. 5, 1818. This shows that he went to the Senate when he was almost two years under the constitutional age of 30. Eaton, husband of Peggy O'Neale, the 'Gorgeous Hussy,' was the youngest man ever to hold a seat in the U.S. Senate.
"Why don't you write TIME and ask them to revise their statement?" he asked me. . . .
CHARLES WALLEN JR. San Francisco, Calif.
>TIME was technically correct in calling Rush Holt the youngest man ever "elected" to the Senate, but Reader Wallen's old friend is right in declaring John Henry Eaton--appointed to a seat in 1818--the youngest man ever to hold a Senate seat.
In Washington, Eaton became acquainted--too well acquainted, some said--with Peggy O'Neale, daughter of an innkeeper, whose first husband apparently committed suicide while on naval duty in the Mediterranean. Partly to quiet gossip, Eaton married the "Gorgeous Hussy" in 1829. When President Andrew Jackson appointed Eaton Secretary of War, the furor of Washington society over Eaton's wife was such that the President's Cabinet fell apart. Later Eaton became Governor of Florida and Minister to Spain. After his death Peggy married an Italian dancing master who stole her money and eloped with her granddaughter. Her old age was desolate. In the 1936 motion picture, The Gorgeous Hussy, Peggy's part was played by Joan Crawford; John Henry Eaton's by Franchot Tone.--ED.
"Ungullible" Americans
Sirs:
Helen Keller is blind. A relatively unknown, but very expressive poet, named Edmund Clarence Stedman said once:
Not thou, not thou--'tis we
Are deaf, are dumb, are blind!
That is what you are trying to make us "ungullible" Americans believe--that we are blind. Alas, dear editor of a forthright but unrepresentative periodical, it is you who are blind. It is you who cannot see that the real Americans that count (not the 10% who cheer the flags waving in the newsreels) cannot in any way condone convoying ships to Britain, using our Navy for protecting somebody else's welfare, or getting us into the war. . . .
JOHN A. CONDE Helena, Mont.
Sirs:
Please cancel any further delivery of TIME as I do not agree with your ideas. We have too many of them in the (isolationist) Chicago Tribune. . . .
EDWIN E. BALDUS Chicago, Ill.
Sirs:
I class TIME, LIFE, and the MARCH OF TIME together as today's most evil influence on straight thinking.
You are admittedly pro-British, and therefore unAmerican. A great man once said something to the effect that there can be no German-Americans, no British-Americans, either they are Americans or they are not. . . .
P. B. BERNHARDT Kenmore, N.Y.
Sirs:
I have read your article under The Presidency in TIME, May 19, and have indignantly discussed it with a number of my friends. One thought that TIME had become the organ of the Copperheads. Another said that it gave comfort to Hitler and the subversive elements of the population of the U.S. "If it were edited by Nazi agents, it couldn't be more un-American!" exclaimed another. . . .
W. B. COMPTON Oakland, Calif.
Sirs:
TIME'S honest impartial reviews of news is one of the attractions of this magazine. One can trust it. But if the world is to get back to normal and have a just peace, the democracies must stop talking about control. This desire of the democracies to keep peace by hogging everything for themselves has bred this war, and will breed others. . .
J. A. OLDHAM Boston, Mass.
Sirs:
Thank you for your article on National Defense, TIME, May 19. While we don't like all of the facts, we want to know where we stand.
PRIVATE CHARLES E. DAVIS Denver, Colo.
Winnie by Air?
Sirs:
And why should the writer of your National Affairs [TIME, May 26] consider a possible flying trip by Prime Minister Churchill to the White House so remarkable?
As long ago as Feb. 23 of this year my weekend paper, the London Sunday Dispatch, published on its front page an article I cabled advocating such a flight. And only the other day a member of the British Embassy told me that he would not be surprised if the Prime Minister made a flying visit to the U.S.
After all, you are our nonbelligerent ally, or do I misunderstand the pledges and promises and commitments of recent speeches by the President and his Cabinet ministers? What could be, therefore, more natural than that the twin leaders of the front against the Axis powers should confer? . . .
DON IDDON New York Correspondent
London Daily Mail New York City
Quartermasters Defended
Sirs:
A National Defense article in TIME, May 12, used the phrase "fumbling Quartermasters." TIME'S unfortunate adjective, which referred to a single isolated project, served to humiliate over 200,000 hardworking, loyal and efficient enlisted men, civilian employes and officers of the Quartermaster Corps, who' had nothing to do with this project.
The Quartermaster Corps was given the overwhelming task of spending $3,250,000,000 to accomplish specified results in feeding, clothing, sheltering and transporting nearly 1,500,000 men entering the new Army. Emergency conditions dictated speed and more speed. . . .
Mistakes? Of course; but they were a very small percentage of a tremendous accomplishment.
The men of the Quartermaster Corps were told to do the "impossible" and they did it.
I think you owe them an apology.
E. B. GREGORY, MAJOR GENERAL The Quartermaster General
War Department Washington, D.C.
> TIME'S adjective referred to a specific fumble, did not reflect on innumerable members of the Quartermaster Corps who labor capably and tirelessly at thankless jobs. Serious mistakes and delays there have been, but TIME has at no time forgotten that the Quartermaster Corps, understaffed and neglected for years, was called upon within a few months to do a huge job for an Army suddenly multiplied five times in size.--ED.
More on Grobba
Sirs:
Your item on "Germany's Lawrence" [TIME, May 26] must have amused those readers of your mostly well-informed magazine who happen to know the man in question. . . .
The story that Grobba changed his name from Borg seems to be based on the fact that an Army officer by the name of Borg, who specialized in Oriental languages, existed during World War I. He had, by the way, not the slightest similarity with Grobba. ... In 1932 he. [Grobba] was sent as Minister to Bagdad, where he stayed until Sept. 6, 1939, the date of the break of diplomatic relations between Iraq and Germany. Afterwards he has been a member of the German Embassy staff at Ankara. He still is nominally also German Minister in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, which post he held also before the war, together with the post in Bagdad.
When the Nazi Party came into power, he was called back temporarily to Berlin, to prove that he was not any more a member of the Freemasons.
The story of the Syrian Arab girl and his connection with General Erich Ludendorff, are--to my knowledge--just invented.
Regarding his Mohammedan religion, I only can say that Grobba was not allowed to go to Mecca, when he was appointed Minister to Saudi Arabia. . . .
DR. PAUL SCHWARZ New York City
> TIME had some of its Grobba data wrong, thanks Dr. Schwarz, former German consul who ought to know whereof he speaks, for more light on that elusive man.--ED.
Peace for Parents
Sirs:
The splendid article entitled "Onward Christian Soldiers," published in TIME, May 26, is an unusually timely story, calculated to bring peace to the hearts of the parents of youthful soldiers.
Permit me therefore to congratulate you and thank you . . . for assuring the parents of the nation that their sons will receive adequate religious ministrations while they receive military training. . . .
WM. R. ARNOLD Chief of Chaplains
War Department Washington, D.C.
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