Phiz
Sirs:
Archives for historical films are O. K. It would be an equal help to the historians of the future if the portraits of our political leaders could likewise be preserved. A glance at some of them would be extremely revealing. Any nation that will entrust its destinies to men with faces like those on the front cover, and on pages 7 and 8 of the Sept. 13 issue of TIME, deserves anything it gets.
HUGH R. MAGILL Dunmore, Pa.
Let Subscriber Magill submit his picture--ED.
House Guest
Sirs:
. . . And, TIME, in my opinion one of the worst expressions in the English language as used today is "house guest." Is not the word guest sufficient? Or do people entertain in the garage? To me the term is the last word in small town journalism.
LT. HENRY E. ECCLES U.S.S. 528 Pacific Station San Francisco, Calif.
Bennett Killed the Herald
Sirs:
Your mannerisms are choking your utterance and soon they will affect your circulation. In this way Bennett killed the Herald and you can kill TIME. Perhaps you aim to, so you may recoup by selling this recipe. X. X. P.
The Homestead, Hot Springs, Va.
Stupid Cottle
Sirs:
What an incredibly stupid, stupid letter was Mr. Alfred Cottle's in the Aug. 20 issue, dealing with TIME and the lies it tells!
I am ashamed that this ignorant letter angers me so, as the sheer stupidity of it should be amusing. If I were you, editors of TIME, I should discontinue his subscription. . . .
KATHEBINE LATHAM Lincoln, Ill.
Cottle Flayed
Sirs:
In regard to your "correction" or criticism" in the Aug. 30, 1926, issue of the TIME, "Lies," page 2, col. 2, I want to request you not to make corrections of statements and facts with which you are not personally acquainted; and also wish to inform you that they who have described the Finnish cities to you are actually liars, and stupid, as there are no fish-canning industries located in the cities, least of all in Helsingfors, which city is widely known and visited by tourists, and named "Paris of the North."
Do you, Mr. Cottle, think that a city which smells fish would become so widely praised ?
Also wish to state that the cities in Finland, both large and small, are classed among the cleanest in the world.
The above facts are stated by one who has lived in several different countries on this globe. In the future, would suggest that you personally make sure of facts and see for yourself before you make a "corrected" statement.
CEO. FOGELHOLM Minneapolis, Minn.
Upside Down
Sirs:
Concerning names-in-a-million, TIME of Aug. 30 is clearly right. Mr. Planalp, Mr. Staats, Mary Byram, Otto Baab, Otto Egge and others have proven that "there is more than one person whose surname is a perfect, proper palindrome." Therefore some else must claim the name-in-a-million, and I'm the one to do it.
Bead my surname as it meets your eye.
Then turn it upside down and read it just as clearly and perfectly. Can any of the multitude of TIME-readers match it?
I suppose it would be much easier to turn the written name upside down than it would some of the sturdy Scots who rejoice to travel under it.
GEORGE A. CRAIG The Middletown National Bank Middletown, Conn.
'Living Age" Praised
Sirs:
In TIME, Aug. 23, p. 14, under the heading "Mexico Observed," there is a long passage quoted from The Living Age. This is so informative, and so well written, that I hope you will often give us quotations from the same source.
While reading the passage referred to, I had the illusion that I held in my hand a first-class magazine. On coming to the end of the quoted passage I was let down with a bump. . . .
WALLACE CRAIG Harvard University Laboratories of Biophysics Boston, Mass.
Comparison
My attention has been called to an article entitled "McAdooian Wives" in your issue of August 30. This article is impertinent and makes an invidious comparison unwarranted by facts due I judge solely to maliciousness.
The former Miss Mildred Mason Trant, the lady I married, is the great, great granddaughter of General William Madison of the Revolutionary Army who was the brother of President James Madison of Virginia. The Madison family has been an illustrious one in public life beginning with the eleventh Century in England and beginning with the early Colonial period and since in the history of this country. The many cities, avenues and streets named Madison are mute tributes to this.
Mrs. McAdoo's two brothers-in-law are prominent professional men and her only brother is a prominent business man with a brilliant record as a volunteer officer in actual combat overseas in the late World War.
Mrs. McAdoo's father was a large owner of timber lands, mills and wholesale distributing lumber yards in Atlantic Coast States. The difference between him and the owner of a small lumber yard, as you describe him, is the same as the difference between a shoe manufacturer and a cobbler.*
The manner and place of my marriage was identical with that of the marriage of William Gibbs McAdoo Jr. I did not secure the approval of your corporation for this neither did I secure its approval of the lady of my choice. I do not apologize for this nor for any other statement contained herein.
I shall not exercise the bad taste shown by your corporation by making a comparison between the illustrious Madison family and its descendants and the Wilson family and its descendants. Human beings take pride in a long line of distinguished ancestors.
The question of reparation and individual responsibilty for your article I shall submit to my attorney.
MALCOLM R. McAdoo
Let Mr. McAdoo reread the item in question. No offense was intended.--ED.
Tender, Sweet
Sirs:
I wonder whether your statement (TIME, Aug. 23) "human flesh, when the source is not known, is tender and sweet," could possibly have been inspired by an experience similar to one which I underwent in Paris, in the late 80's.
I dined one evening with the father of an acquaintance who shall be nameless since he has not inherited his father's strange insanity. We were served during the extremely sumptuous meal with a peculiar meat exactly described by the words "tender and sweet."
Two weeks later the terrible old man sent me a letter informing me that what I had eaten was part of the thigh of_ an executed murderess, which he had obtained through bribing the police. I need not add that I was sick to nausea for days and weeks afterwards.
Your article seemed so vivid that I am moved to wonder upon what it is based.
MARSHALL WILLIAM RETZ Chicago, Ill.
"Long Pig"
Sirs:
Your reference to the taste of human flesh (TiME, Aug. 23) prompts me to suppose that you may be interested in certain little known facts about human gastronomy which have come to my notice while preparing a monograph upon cannibalism.
You may not know, for example, that the first photograph ever taken of cannibals partaking of human flesh was secured with the aid of a flashlight camera by Mr. Martin Johnson only two years ago. I inclose a copy.
At present cannibalism is practised in British West Africa, on certain of the South Sea Islands, and among the tribes of the Upper Amazon, Brazil. The British West African cult known as the Human
Leopards has been rigorously suppressed, but occasionally its members meet, don leopard skins, hunt down and slay a human, and partake of the remains.
Westermarck, in his Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas declares that among the Fiji Islanders the metaphor "as tender as a dead man" is in good use; and that throughout the South Seas human flesh is well known to be a delicious food "far superior to pork."
Howitt's Nature Tribe of South East Australia contains the statement: . . . [Human] meat looks like horseflesh, and smells, when being cooked on the fires, like beefsteak."
Prom the Rev. Dr. Turner's Nineteen Years in Polynesia we learn that "Hands are the choice bits--sacred to the priests," and that the flesh of white men was considered inferior to that of black, being of too salty a taste.
Junghuhn states in his Die Battalander auf Sumatra that the cannibals of that region considered human flesh "better than pork." The toes and the palm of the hand were esteemed as "choice cuts," and humans are still referred to as "long pig."
Finally I am indebted to Romilly's Western Pacific and New Zealand for a receipt for preparing human brains. The natives of New Zealand were accustomed to stew the brains in "Sak-Sak," a concoction of sago and cocoa. The dish was "pronounced delicious by white men who had partaken."
GRETCHEN SCHACHT Hoboken, N. J.
* TIME described Mr. Trant as a "Ports mouth, Va., lumber merchant."-- ED.