Hearst & Coolidge

Sirs: In a footnote in your quotations from President Coolidge's address before the Pan-Amer- ican Congress, are these words, "A scarcely disguised rebuke to the suspicion-fomenting lie-circulating Hearst press." I am no friend of that slavering, slobbering, unintellectual and excuseless vulgarity known as the Hearst Press. But I hardly think President Coolidge's remarks were directed against the thirty-five odd" Hearst papers which have stood back of him as they have no President in more than a quarter of a century. The Hearst lies were directed against the Senators who oppose the Administration's foreign policies. No Presi- dent in many a day has had the almost unshakable support of the Press as that given Mr. Coolidge. F. H. JOHNSON

Dimock, Pa.

And in Indianapolis

Sirs: I can give you the particulars of still another statue erected to a Jew in this country. It stands in the city of Indianapolis, and is that of a (then) young lawyer Nathan Morris, erected, as stated on it, to recognize an act of supreme heroism, in giving his life to save others in a fire. BENNO LEWINSOX

New York, N. Y.

TIME, Dec. 26 issue, reporting the Jewish Tribune's plan to erect a statue to the late Oscar Strauss, said that only two public statues of Jews existed in the U. S.-those of Poet Heinrich Heine and onetime Mayor Nathan Barnert of Paterson, N. J. Since have come information of statues to Alfred Benjamin in Kansas City, Mo., Israel Marks in Meridian, Miss. (LETTERS, Jan. 23 -L-. 30) and, now, to Nathan Morris in Indianapolis. -ED.

Texas Presidents

Sirs:

In TIME, Jan. 23, p. 8, you say, "Sam Houston was the first and only president of the Republic of Texas (1836-1845)." Suffer the following:

In the revolt against Mexico, Texas declared her independence Mar. 2, 1836. A constitution having been adopted, David G. Burnet, Mar. 16, 1836, was chosen temporary president. Independence was won at the battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836. An election for president was called in the following September. Sam Houston was chosen and inaugurated thereafter. He was reelected, and inaugurated Dec. 1841. In 1844, a few months before Texas was admitted to the United States, Anson Jones was elected president serving till Texas became a state.

My son is a subscriber to TIME. Each member of the family reads it with growing interest. We Texans are jealous that the Democrats of other states who are to gather soon in Houston may know something of our unique history, romantic as a novel.

S. P. BROOKS

President Baylor University Waco, Texas.

Subscriber President Brooks omitted to state that Mirabeau B. Lamar was also a President of Texas. TIME hereby acknowledges receipt of 28 other letters in regard to TIME'S error, including much historical data from the following: Geo. C. Powell; Terrell, Tex.; J. D. Campbell, Beaumont, Tex.; Boyd Lee Spahr, Philadelphia, Pa.; Nat. M. Washer, San Antonio, Tex.; Horace M. Mapp, Prairie Lea, Tex.; John K. Whaley, McRae, Ga.; Henry Sweeney, Ladonia, Tex.; William L. Sherrill, Charlotte, N. C.; Thelma L. Aldridge, Waxahachie. Tex.; David R. Locke, Ingram, Tex. -ED.

Anecdote

Sirs:

For some unaccountable dereliction of duty either in your mailing department or in Uncle Sam's delivery system I have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing TIME for Jan. 16. Every day during the past week "Hasn't TIME come yet?" has been one of the first queries put to an already sufficiently harassed wife, by an anxiously expectant husband who counts on TIME to reveal the deficiencies in his newspaper reading and to supply the interesting details which are invariably missed in the average news story.

The death of General Goethals reminds me of an anecdote. ... In 1916, Gen. Goethals visited Cornell University and during his stay he came to the Delta Upsilon house (of which fraternity he was a member). He was sitting with a group of us, smoking. He smoked almost incessantly a rather vile cigaret which he had learned to like, but which, he admitted, left him unique in his tastes for tobacco, at least in the North. It was while commenting on the cigarets and on his long standing habit of smoking cigarets (not then so thoroughly popularized by the war, and the voice culture ads) that he suddenly chuckled and said, "You know when I was assigned to the Canal job, one of the Washington papers commented unfavorably on my selection. The editorial traced the history of the work up to 1907, pointing out the difficulties and hardships, the failures of the pioneers in the work, and concluded with the withering sentence 'And what in heaven's name can we expect of a man who parts his hair in the middle and smokes cigarets.' "

S. P. HOWELL

Buffalo, N. Y.

AEtna & Morgan

Sirs:

In the Jan. 9 issue of TIME, speaking of J. P. Morgan being elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel Co., your footnote on p. 32 reads:

''The only other company of which he is even a Director is the Pullman Co."

This is in error, in that J. P. Morgan was elected a Director of the AEtna (Fire) Insurance Co. in 1914 and is the fourth of the famous house of Morgan to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Company.

You may be interested to know that Joseph Morgan, the present Mr. Morgan's great grandfather, was one of the signers of the petition to the General Assembly asking for a charter to form the new insurance company, now widely known as the "Old AEtna." He was also one of the members of the first Board of Directors, an original stockholder and the first policyholder of the Company; in fact, the AEtna was formed in his Coffee House and conducted its business there for a number of years.

It is interesting to note further that the company had advertised that they would be ready to transact business on Aug. 19, 1819 but Mr. Morgan forestalled the opening by taking out a policy two days before, covering $6,000.00 on his Coffee House. He served on the Board of Directors from 1819 until his death in 1847, and during the period between 1835 and 1847 he devoted his time to the AEtna. making in 1842 a journey of 6,099 miles in the interest of the Company.

In 1852, Joseph Morgan's son, Junius S. Morgan, was elected a Director of the Company and served for one year or until he became a partner in the firm of George Peabody & Co., London, England.

In 1885, J. Pierpont Morgan was elected a Director of the Company and served until his death in 1913 when his son, J. Pierpont Morgan, Jr., was elected as a member of the Board of

Directors and is still serving the Company as such.

It has been said that while there were some years during the life of the AEtna that the name of Morgan has not appeared in the list of Directors, there has never been an hour in the history of the Company when they were not stockholders in it.

I feel certain you will agree that since the Morgan Family has always been so closely allied with the AEtna Insurance Co., it was, indeed, an error not to mention the fact in your article.

Will you kindly correct this error?

ELLSWORTH M. KELLEY Marine Dept., AEtna Insurance Co. Hartford, Conn.

To Bagdad

Sirs:

Do you accept subscriptions for such foreign countries as Iraq? Approximately how long after date of issue would a subscriber in Bagdad receive his copy of TIME? This information will be appreciated.

(MRS.) HERMINIE B. KITCHEN

New Brunswick, N. J.

Copies of TIME normally reach Bagdad within 25 days of the date of issue. There are two TiME-subscribers in Iraq, six in neighboring Persia. - ED.

Big Misunderstanding

Sirs:

In your issue of Jan. 23 re Keyserling, in a footnote you term the biblical phrase: "Woman, what have I" or "Woman what is it to me" etc. (St. John II, iio) actually as "rebuke addressed by the Savior to the Virgin Mary." While the word woman in the matter sounds strange to us of so-called Anglo-Saxon speech, that it was a "rebuke" is a big misunderstanding on your part. You take the cold English words as if the Divine Savior was using our language. You should remember that Our Blessed Lord spoke Aramaic or Syro-Caldaic. St. John, who records the words, gives them to us in Greek. We are not concerned here with any connotation of the word "woman" in our modern parlance. Any ordinary Greek scholar knows that in the Greek the word in no manner what- soever bears any hint even of reproach, rebuke or disrespect. Rather the opposite indeed. The Greek word is "gunai." Disregarding all Catholic authorities from Saint John Chrysostom to our day and generation, the Greek dictionary of the Protestant scholars, Liddell and Scott, assures us that the word "gunai" means "lady" and that it "is a term of respect." Dr. Westcott, another Protestant scholar, states: "In the word 'woman' as employed in the Greek there is not the slightest tinge of reproof or of severity. The address is that of courteous respect, even of tenderness." You will aid in removing a popular form of ignorance by kindly publishing this correction.

REV. NELIUS DOWNING

Clarksdale, Miss.

Like Gibbon

Sirs: This past week in a cours.e in English literature at the above college, the professor wishing to give an example of Edward Gibbon's (1737-1794) characteristic masterful writing in his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" turned to TIME and read several selections. He compared the clear, concise statements in TIME with the writing of Gibbon, bringing out that the style which characterized Gibbon's writings may be found in the present pages of TIME. . . . ABRAHAM S. ROSEN

Tufts College, Mass.

Interesting

Sirs: TIME is always interesting and provocative; more interesting and enjoyable than any previous issue was that of Jan. 16. The increase in size and the inclusion of a map make TIME more readable and intelligible. It is my hope that you will retain both features.

JAMES G. McMANAWAY

Agricultural & Medical College, Miss.

of --To which be Mr. exact, Hearst 24, is not part including owner. -- one ED. paper