Farmers' Good Thing
Sirs:
TIME, the poor fish, is wet to the gills, when it says: "In short, labor has a good thing in the war, a better thing than any other large group except possibly the farmers, a good thing that looks bad compared to the sacrifices made by men in the armed forces" [TIME, March 30].
GARLAND HAYES
Hartwell, Ga.
Sirs:
Please help me explain the following TIME statement to a group of wheat belt high-school students: "In short, labor has a good thing in the war, a better thing than any other large group except possibly the farmers.
Louis A. COPPOC
Belpre Public Schools Belpre, Kans.
Sirs:
... It is plainly apparent that you do not know very much about farming or the farmer. . . .
FRANK HENDRICK Omak, Wash.
>The Department of Agriculture's indexes of prices received by farmers:
March 15, 1941 March 15,1942
Grains 84 122
Cotton & cottonseed 82 151
Meat animals 129 182
Chickens & eggs 90 130
Dairy products 118 144
Fruits 83 111
Truck crops 134 136
Miscellaneous 94 132
The combined index of prices received by farmers increased 42%; the combined index of the prices they paid rose 19%--ED.
Cable from Antipodes
SIRS:
THE CABLED DISPATCH OF ROBERT SHERROD (TIME, APRIL 6) HAS STIRRED ME DEEPLY AND I WISH TO EXPRESS MY PROFOUND GRATITUDE. YOU MAY BE CERTAIN THAT MY FEELINGS ARE SHARED BY ALL NETHERLANDERS, NOT IN THE LEAST BECAUSE SHERROD HAS SO WELL RENDERED WHAT LIVES IN ALL OF US.
DR. A. LOUDON
Netherlands Minister Royal Netherlands Legation Washington, D.C.
Jaws
Sirs:
... I read Congress has passed a bill to regulate the measurement of jaws for false teeth [TIME, March 30]. I am just wondering if there ... is ... any prohibition in the law against the development of the jaw bone? . . .
NEWTON H. BOWMAN, M. D. Mercedes, Tex.
Gingerbread
Sirs:
". . . Australians were stripped for action fighting mad. . . . The gingerbread was gone. . . ."
To use the word gingerbread" as a synonym for superfluity is a grievous error. . . . From antiquity, gingerbread was a ceremonial food and regarded as an appropriate sacrifice to the gods. ... As such it was ... often prepared in fanciful shapes and elaborately gilded. It was from this archaic custom that the expression developed, "the gilt is off the gingerbread. . . ." But mark you, it was the gilt that was "off," the gingerbread remained.
Gingerbreads of "honor" were gifts of distinction on special occasions. . . . The birth of Peter the Great, for example, moved the city fathers of Moscow to dispatch several such huge gingerbreads of "honor," one in the form of the coat of arms of the City of Moscow, another in the form of the double eagle. Louis XIV, a gourmet of parts, restored the French counterpart of gingerbread, pain d'epice, to the place of eminence it had enjoyed for centuries in France. . . .
Gingerbread very early ceased to be a monopoly of the nobles. Even the poorest citizen of ancient Rome somehow found it within his means to proffer a spicy gift to the gods. In ancient Greece, where bread-baking was a fine art, the city of Rhodes was as famous for its gingerbread as it was for its harbor-bestriding Colossus. Part of the loot that the roving Crusaders carried home was culinary lore of the East, including the recipe for gingerbread. As spices came to be a more common property, the great mass of the people took gingerbread to its heart, and it became a cherished heritage in the universal family of foods. . . .
In the light of history, therefore, it's difficult to understand how such a well-beloved, common, staple food should suffer the indignity of being used as a synonym for something nonessential.
H. B. TRAUTMAN
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Pacifist Ayres
SIRS:
LEW AYRES IS NOW PAYING THE PRESCRIBED PENALTY FOR ONE WHO REFUSES TO TAKE UP ARMS (TIME, APRIL 6). IT is A JUST PENALTY
AND A SUFFICIENT ONE. THE GOVERNMENT WHICH DETERMINED THAT PENALTY DOES NOT INDICT HIM AS A SLACKER OR AS AN EVADER OF THE DRAFT. WERE HE EITHER HE WOULD HAVE BEEN PLACED BEHIND BARS TO BE KEPT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE STATE. AT THE INTERNMENT CAMP TO WHICH LEW AYRES HAS BEEN SENT HE PAYS IN MONEY AND LABOR FOR HIS BOARD AND KEEP. WE DO NOT ADVOCATE THE THING THAT LEW AYRES HAS DONE. IN FACT WE BELIEVE IT TO BE THE SAD RESULT OF A SADDER MISCONCEPTION BUT WE TAKE OCCASION TO POINT OUT THAT HE SPOKE AND ACTED FOR HIMSELF ALONE AND THAT THERE WAS NOTHING OF EITHER A SEDITIOUS OR TREASONABLE NATURE IN HIS WORDS AND ACTION. SUCH-BEING THE CASE IT IS NOT WITHIN OUR OWN CONSCIENCE TO REMAIN SILENT WHILE SO MANY VOICES ARE RAISED AGAINST A MAN WHO ACTED ACCORDING TO DICTATES OF HIS CONSCIENCE. AS MEMBERS OF THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY WE DENY THE REPRESENTATION THAT WE ARE ASHAMED OF LEW AYRES AND THAT WE WOULD DISCLAIM HIM. WE ARE NOT ARBITRARILY GROUPED AND MADE ONE WITH THOSE WHO APPEAR TO BE USING THIS OCCASION TO POINT OUT THEIR OWN PATRIOTIC VIRTUE. THE PACK HAS TURNED ON LEW AYRES. EXHIBITORS ARE BOYCOTTING HIS PICTURES. EDITORIALS AGAINST HIM APPEAR IN THE TRADE JOURNALS. ABUSE IS BEING HEAPED UPON HIS HEAD BY MANY OF HIS FELLOW WORKERS. IT IS A SORRY COMMENT ON THE RIGHTS OF DEMOCRATIC LIFE AS OBSERVED BY THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY, THAT THE PUBLIC PRINT HAS BEEN FAR MORE UNDERSTANDING AND HUMAN IN ITS TREATMENT OF LEW AYRES THAN HAS THE INDUSTRY WHICH HE SERVED FAITHFULLY AND WELL.
JOHN HUSTON
GEORGE CUKOR
MARY ASTOR
FRANCHOT TONE
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND
GEORGE OPPENHEIMER
WALTER HUSTON
CHARLES LEDERER
HUMPHREY BOGART
Hollywood, Calif.
> Said Pacifist Ayres last week:
''One issue upon which nearly all the most venerable of our teachers and sages have agreed is that man's troubles are the result of himself. That is, the selfish emotions and passions within himself. And any emancipation from these conditions must be accomplished for himself-by himself. Individually and alone. Maybe collectively later, but first as man and then as mankind Surely it is only childish dreaming that makes us hope we can come to live in Utopia without first becoming inward Utopians.
"Now let us consider war. Is it not strange that no one really wants war yet few think life can be successfully or, at least respectfully, lived without it? We all shake our heads sadly over our predicament, and then wait for the other fellow to stop first. . . . So in my opinion, we will never stop wars until we individually cease fighting them, and that's what I propose to do. And I propose to proclaim a moratorium on all presumed debts of evil done us, to start afresh by wiping the slate clean and continuing to wipe it clean. To hold no malice and so seek no revenge. To set our hearts in the right direction --and have confidence in God's beneficent wisdom to help us work out details."
Spray
Sirs:
OCDirector James M. Landis or perhaps TIME'S reporter (TIME, March 30) should be required to take A.R.P. training before appearing in print.
According to instructions I have received recently in a class training for A. R. Warden service, a spray of water, not a stream, is played on an incendiary. . . .
DOROTHY BULKLEY Cleveland Heights, Ohio
> Reader Bulkley's instructions were correct. A stream of water causes an incendiary bomb to spit and scatter flaming metal.-ED.
United State
Sirs:
On reading the statements of the Governors of Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, etc., refusing to take the evacuees from the West Coast (TIME, March 16), I thought for a bit we were in Central Europe, that the States were separate countries. The statement of the Governor of Colorado, to the contrary, brought me back to the realization that these were still the United States.
It prompted me to write him a letter of congratulation on his and his State's patriotism. I am enclosing his reply.
MICHAEL F. DOYLE JR. Hollywood, Calif.
> Wrote Colorado's breezy, 55-year-old Governor Ralph L. Carr, in part: "No action of ours could stay an order of the Army to make the transfers. An agreement on our part as Americans to aid in that effort establishes our position as patriots, raises the morale of the Army and tells the United States generally that the people of Colorado, at least, have not gone soft." -ED.
Witness Stix
Sirs:
Usually accurate TIME erred and did able Henry A. Stix a grave injustice in its story [TIME, April 6] on the first reorganization plan proposed for the Associated Gas utility system, submitted by him, its vice president and comptroller. You there stated that at Howard Hopson's trial Stix "turned State's evidence," thus implying that Stix himself was accused of wrongdoing.
In fact, after full investigation of Stix's longtime connection with Associated, the U.S. Attorney General's office exonerated him completely. As the one most familiar with Associated's complex financial setup (he was not familiar with Hopson's personal tax difficulties) Stix was necessarily a key witness at the trial at which Hopson was convicted of using the mails to defraud. It was his accounting ability and the forthrightness of his testimony which later prompted Prosecutor Hugh Fulton (now Chief Counsel for the Senate Truman Committee) to use Stix's services on several important investigations.
Stix's reorganization plan was submitted by him personally, but he is now retained by counsel for Associated's Trustees to help them in various reorganization details.
ARTHUR T. SCHWAB New York City
> Correct. TIME meant only to point out that Mr. Stix was an important Government witness at Hopson's trial for mail fraud, apologizes to him for any unintended implication that he himself was in any way criminally involved.-ED.
Far Western War
Sirs:
. . . You mention Picacho Pass, Ariz, as the place "where the only far western encounter of the Civil War was fought" [TIME, March 30].
That noise you heard was General Henry Hopkins Sibley turning over in his grave. In February 1862, General Sibley met and defeated Union troops from Fort Craig in the Battle of Valverde. He marched swiftly up the Rio Grande Valley, took Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, then turned east in an effort to capture Fort Union, and later cut the route over which gold flowed from California to the east.
He was defeated on March 28 at the Battle of Glorieta, which occurred about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fe. This is regarded as a decisive battle in that it removed the threat of the Confederate forces gaining control of the gold route to California.
JOSEPH A. BURSEY Director
New Mexico State Tourist Bureau Santa Fe, N. Mex.
Shaw
Sirs:
TIME, March 16, shows the destroyer Shaw in dry dock undergoing repairs which include a new bow.
While a sailor aboard the U.S. destroyer Alwyn during World War I we were in dry-dock at Portsmouth, England. In the dock next to us was the U.S. destroyer Shaw. She had been rammed by the Aquitania off Portland, England Oct. 9, 1918. Her bow had been completely wrecked but she had been able to make port under her own power.
A complete new bow was built on at the Portsmouth yards and I saw the ship when completed looking like new.
Whether this was the same Shaw or not, I do not know. ...
HOWARD W. COVEY Browning, Mont.
>It was the present Shaw's predecessor-this one was built in 1936.-ED.
Blobulin
Sirs:
What is this "blobulin" mentioned in Science, TIME, March 30. ... Could you have meant "globulin"? . . .
KATHRYN S. MURKETT Greenwich, Conn.
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