Scout Watson & Others

Sirs:

It was with interest that I learned of San Francisco's generosity toward Boy Scout Thomas Watson, relative of President Hoover (TIME, March 16).

I am more deeply interested in learning whether any other people were hurt and if so, were they recompensed with equal generosity.

ISIDOR THORNER

Los Angeles, Calif.

Four suits still pend after the tunnel streetcar crash. Helen Sheehy asks $40,000. Jean Sheehy asks $5,500. Irene Roylance asks $6,500; Mrs. Margaret McCabe $50,000. Scout Watson was paid $21,500 in an out-of-court settlement; 36 others have also settled out of court, receiving $11,283.25 in amounts ranging from $4 to $2,500.--ED. Lippmann, Keynes & Strachey

Sirs:

Your admirable account of Walter Lippmann's life and spiritual difficulties (TIME, March 30) was most timely with all this pallid talk of liberalism going around. But didn't you overlook one of his most unique achievements? Didn't Lippmann discover John Maynard Keynes (Economic Consequences of Peace) for America? Wasn't it upon his advice that Harcourt, Brace & Co. published Keynes's book with a resultant sale far above anyone's expectations? And wasn't Mr. Keynes an intimate of Lytton Strachey? And wasn't that why Harcourt Brace got Strachey and his Queen Victoria and thereafter the whole boodle of best selling Strachian biography?

Presumably Mr. Lippmann got no very great commissions out of all this. But isn't he a rich man anyway? (Or is it a rich wife?). And wasn't that, also something you omitted?

Please be more careful in future, because I count on TIME to tell me all the knowworthy facts about men who adorn its covers.

ARTHUR HELDEN

New York City

Reader Helden is correct. It was Lippmann to Harcourt, Brace to Keynes to Strachey, the last part of the triple play resulting because Messrs. Keynes & Strachey shared a London flat at the time. Walter Lippmann is "rich" enough to have bought a commodious town house on Manhattan's East 61st St.--ED. Birth Control's Department Sirs: The inclusion, in the March 30 issue, of your article "Protestant Birth Control" under the heading Religion was perhaps necessitated by the lack of a more suitable column. It should be realized, however, that Birth Control, whether moral or immoral, is a social question, an economic question, even a political question, to a greater extent than a religious one. . . .

BENJAMIN WHITE JR.

Boston, Mass.

When Birth Control is discussed by religious bodies like the Federal Council of Churches, TIME will continue to report it under Religion, continuing also to report the medical and political aspects of Birth Control under other headings.--ED.

Coconuts v. Whales Sirs: Our tight little island is a microcosm of world troubles. Just now rubber is fluttering on verge of bankruptcy. . . . Many estates have stopped working, others cutting down costs to minimum. . . . Many a man has lost the savings of his lifetime.

Coconuts, another great Ceylon industry in the doldrums--chief reason seems to be slaughter of whales. One correspondent in Daily News hysterically asks if anybody knows how long the whale supply of the world will hold out under present slaughter rate--if supply seems able to continue indefinitely will not someone please page immediately the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and see if whaling cannot be stopped or impeded? However Ceylon's only hope, coconutwise, seems to be for the civilized world to decide that they prefer, much prefer vegetable fat such as coconut as the base for their margarine, rather than a purely animal fat such as furnished by whales. FAINT HOPE.

Tea is the only silver lining--it still pay? and Ceylon produces the best tea in the world. The one thing is to let the world know it. Conservative Ceylon Association in London sits tight on the money bag. refusing the Ceylon Planters' Association's S. O. S. calls to agree to a small cess per pound on tea so that America can be told the virtues and superior merits of Ceylon's famous tea. America is Tea's most promising undeveloped market. . . . GEORGE F. ENOCH

Colombo, Ceylon

Firearms for the Home

Sirs:

There has been quite a disturbance in the House of Representatives at Harrisburg, Pa. relative to the introduction of several anti-firearms bills, by some such men as Mr. Witkins of Philadelphia, who, I feel sure, knows little or nothing about firearms and especially revolvers and pistols, or their different uses and misuses, or he would not be so foolish as to think or at least have some of the public think that crime can be curbed by the passage of such bills as House Bill No. 460 introduced by him.

Anyone with common sense and no axe to grind with gangland knows that a law such as that which will make it illegal for the honest citizen to own or have in his possession a pistol or revolver is nothing but a tool in the hands of the gangs.

All one has to do is look at New York State with their Sullivan Law to see the result of such legislature.

Does anyone suppose that if it were impossible to purchase a pistol or revolver in these whole United States that murders and holdups would cease? Most assuredly no. There would be a decided increase, for where the gangster expects to meet a victim who may be armed with a pistol he would not strike. . . .

My personal opinion is that if every man carried a gun and knew how to shoot it there would be no organized gangs to furnish money with which to bribe our officials.

O. H. SCHWANGER Secretary

Elizabethtown Rifle Club Middletown, Pa. Trash, Cram

Sirs:

Under Art for March 23, you give out the impression that Henry Adams and John La Farge spent a hectic interval on Tahiti dodging Gloomy Paul Gauguin when as a matter of fact, to Paul they were Western trash and the last creatures in the world with whom he would traffic . . . but perhaps it is the lavish economy of your style that creates these false impressions.

Again you leave the designer of St. Thomas hanging in mid-air atop the choir columns in St. John's Divine bereft of a family name. Such lack of tact might be overlooked but for the fact that the name Adams has been bandied and pilloried about altogether too often without linking it up with the crevices and cornices that contribute charming nuances to a Gothic cathedral. In brief it was Ralph Adams Cram and not your mystic Ralph Adams who is ploughing neat furrows in Bishop Manning's stamping ground. . . .

CAIRN TAWSMEN

Cromwell, Conn.

To Architect Cram, proofreaders' apologies for a sorry truncation.--ED. Evansville v. Evanston

Sirs:

Not in Evanston, but in Evansville did Sculptor Lorado Taft remark upon Julius Rosenwald's industrial museum as reported in the letter of W. Tucker Dean Jr. to the Editor, in TIME. March 23. Nothing is more galling to an Evansvillian in foreign parts announcing that he is from Evansville than the inevitable response, "Evanston? Oh, yes, that's just outside of Chicago, isn't it?" Not a suburb, Evansville is a self-contained little metropolis? If not, like Boston, the Hub of a Universe, it is, nevertheless, the Hub of the Tri State, where southern Indiana, western Kentucky, and southern Illinois meet. But Evansville seems fated to remain little known and confused with Evanston until it adopts a name which will put it in a class with Terre Haute, Walla Walla, and Woonsocket, names everybody knows.

ALEXANDER L. LEIGH

Evansville, Ind.

Maids & Clover

Sirs:

On p. 17 of your March 30 issue under Miscellany there appears an account of the "Maids, Cats, Mice, Bees, Clover" story.

It would indeed be not too difficult to "reveal'' such an Old Maid-Clover connection. Mr. [Charles] Darwin was the originator of that story which has been dusted off for further activity.

May I suggest that you turn to vol. 3, p. 646 of The Outline of Science, edited by J. Arthur Thompson, and Putnam-published.

Under ''Cats and Clover" may be seen the original corpse, before being torn from the tomb.

PHILIP E. JOHNSON

Watertown, N. Y.

To the Miscellany man, a rebuke for ignorance.--ED. At Amherst

Sirs:

Amherst, no doubt pleased to see herself included in your list of Eastern colleges exemplary of endowment, no doubt even more pleased to see herself printed on top of Williams, had when I was graduated by her three years ago. no such enrollment [1,697] as that which you assign her (TIME, March 30); in fact, just about 1,000 less. Amherst is a small college, is proud of being a small college, is determined to remain a small college--despite TIME'S kind but misunderstanding attempt to help her grow and thus, incidentally, to obscure her unusually high per capita (studiosum) endowment. EDWARD C. BURSK

Cambridge, Mass.

Typographical error. At Amherst are enrolled 697.--ED. Newshawk

Sirs: . . . "Newshawk'' is not the happiest choice to be made (TIME, March 30). All reporters are not that. There are falcons, doves and even buzzards among us -- and occasionally an English sparrow alights in our midst. Timidly, inviting criticism and protest, may I suggest "newsbear"? Embryo reporters are widely called "cubs." When they attain their majority may they not be '"bears"? Certainly good reporters are bears for news -- and some have been known to go bare for it. You brought this on yourself. . . . W. L. KAY

Philadelphia. Pa.

Sirs:

"Newshawk'' is a worthy name for a reporter. It denotes alertness, persistency, sharp vision and acute hearing. It is no disgrace to be called a "newshawk." On the other hand, it is an honor, a distinction and a badge of "something different." in which TIME excels. Let TIME continue to use it.

J. H. SWEET

Editor

Nebraska Daily New's Nebraska City, Nebr. Sirs:

I cannot agree with former Reporter Mok as to his criticism of the word "newshawks." A reporter and editor all my life, I experienced delight when I first saw the word in TIME. By all means continue it. ... It describes in a word what Schools of Journalism use paragraphs in textbooks to tell.

DENT E. GREEN

Managing Editor

Spencer News-Herald Spencer, Iowa

Sirs:

In the recent years of my reportorial assignments it has pleased me immeasurably when either the top city editor or the innocent bystander referred to me as something of a newshawk.

Perhaps Mr. Mok would have us as gullible as the vulture or as fastidious as the canary in the selection of editorial eatables. Rather I choose to be the hawk and relish the choice meat.

JOHN P. KEEFE St. Paul, Minn.

Sirs:

. . . Why not use "newsician?" We have mortician for one who deals with the dead, beautician for one who deals with beauty. . . . RUBEN LEVIN

Milwaukee, Wis.

Sirs:

. . . Why not the inferred alertness of "newscout?"

GORDON A. JEN

Detroit, Mich.

Sirs:

Why not . . . the simple word "newser?"

THOMAS H. DANIEL

Spartansburg, S. C.

"Newshawk" it shall remain, with occasional variations.--ED.

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