LETTERS

Hurley's Faith

Sirs:

Vice Presidents often become Presidents. No Catholic has yet been President. Why did TIME miss an opportunity to give an important fact, politically, about Patrick Jay Hurley? . . . (TIME, Sept. 14).

MILDRED SHEPARD WRIGHT

Orange, X. J.

Secretary Hurley's father & mother were Roman Catholics. He attended a Baptist school. His wife is an Episcopalian. Regarded by many as a Catholic. he never discusses his faith (TIME, Dec. 16, 1929). When he goes to church it is usually with his wife at hers.--ED.

Purse-Giver Chaplin

Sirs:

Rare indeed does TIME err. But occasionally an error slips in ... and not without purpose. It may be but a reminder that after all you are human.

Under People, TIME. Sept. 7, you inform us that cinemactor Charles Spencer Chaplin offered a prize of 20 pounds sterling to that porter of London's Borough market in Southwark who could run fastest with a pile of half-bushel baskets on his head.

But along comes an Associated Press photo in the picture section of the Sunday Chicago Tribune, Sept. 6. with the legend that "One Charles Chaplin--not ours--is the present champion and has put up a purse of twenty pounds for the winner of this contest." I have accused you of erring, but it now occurs to me that the Chicago Tribune may have erred! May I suggest an explanation of these conflicting reports?

A. O. AMBROZ Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Cinemactor Chaplin's secretary sent from Los Angeles a check for -L-20 for the first prize (suit, overcoat, gold watch). The same Chaplin gave the same prize in 1930. Rumored reason: to proceed with twelve baskets piled on their heads, contestants tend to manipulate their feet duckwise as Cinemactor Chaplin does. Real reason: Charles Spencer spent his urchinhood in Southwark. For a view of the race, held last fortnight at Herne Field near London, won by Porter H. Staiano, see cut.--ED.

Bright-Eyed Wife

Sirs:

Your issue Aug. 10, p. 21, article captioned, "El Dorado Viewed."

I am the "bright-eyed, hard-muscled little wife" of Dr. Herbert Spencer Dickey. I have accompanied my husband on a number of trips, through Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, and on one occasion to within 300 miles of the source of the Orinoco with him.

I did not, however, accompany my husband and his party to the source of the Orinoco on the trip from which we are now returning. I remained, instead, on the lower Orinoco collecting specimans, and gathering data for my forthcoming lecture tour.

No Rosita Forbes or Lady Dorothy Mills, I am satisfied with my just deserts, desire nothing more. ELIZABETH DICKEY

St. Thomas, Virgin Islands

Georgetownite

Sirs:

I see in TIME (Sept. 14) that I am "supposed" to be one of those who wrote Washington Merry-Go-Round. Not that I think your readers give a damn whether I had a part in it or not, but the fact is that I had precisely as much to do with the book as Calvin Coolidge or Jack Dempsey had. There is, as you say, a "coterie of newsmen" who meet now and then and settle the affairs of the world, but it is no more a "Georgetown Group" than a Flatbottom Group. It includes some hard-boiled conservatives. It does not include some of those you name, and if any of its members gave birth to chapters in the Merry-Go-Round they retired into a corner to do it. I can stand being labeled a Georgetownite (though I live in the Free State), but the last paragraph of the review, wherein it is said that Ross, Anderson and others of the "Georgetown Group" singled themselves out for encomiums, strikes me as a pretty dirty and unwarranted crack.

CHARLES G. Ross

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau Washington, D. C.

Apparently TIME did with Washington Merry-Go-Round what the book did with official Washington. Besides Correspondent Ross, others who emphatically disassociate themselves from the Merry-Go-Round are Paul Y. Anderson, also of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Ruby A. Black.--ED.

Invisible Wires, Velvet Backdrop Sirs:

I have just read a review of the motion picture The Last Flight in the Aug. 31 issue of TIME. "The mood of the picture" to quote your reviewer, "seems to have been induced by an author who was trying to imitate Ernest Hemingway with one hand and Philip Barry with both feet."

Now that would be practically the neatest trick of the week, for any author to execute. It would be especially difficult for me, since, although I am familiar with the work of Mr. Hemingway. I have not read a line of Mr. Barry's, nor have I had the good fortune to attend one of his plays.

I have learned that it is futile to protest against the Hemingway comparison; most every young author who pokes his head above the ground nowadays is beset by Hemingwayniac; armed with bayonets, banderillas and empty Vermouth bottles.

But the Barry charges are puzzling. I was present at a dinner party once where Mr. Irvin S. Cobb ventured to assert that he could write a successful novel in the Harold Bell Wright manner. I heard Mr. Cobb admit later that he had been unable to bring off a single chapter. He found that he could not make his characters talk or deport themselves in the stilted style of the Wright heroes and heroines. . . .

In his review of The Last Flight your critic has charged the author with a one-handed imitation of Mr. Hemingway and a two-footed imitation of Mr. Barry, whilst inducing the mood of a motion picture on the side. A very neat effort indeed, as I have said, and nearly as difficult as Mr. Joe Cook's celebrated attempt to imitate four Hawaiians.

However, I doubt if I could accomplish it even with the aid of mirrors, invisible wires, and a velvet backdrop.

JOHN MONK SAUNDERS New York City

Ardent Townist Sirs:

In the Sept. 14 issue of TIME there is a picture of Charles Hanson Towne. You call him a bachelor. May I ask if he is the Charles Hanson Towne who published The Foolish Dictionary, under the name of Guideon Wuurdz? And if he is the same man, was not he married to Edith Kellner of Bethlehem and New York and shortly divorced.

It is really none of my business. I only claim an ardent interest in his accomplishments, because as a maiden of 15 summers, I thought he was just about IT. To my knowledge he never knew I existed!

RUTH ABBE THOMPSON Nashua, X. H.

Reader Thompson is confusing Author-Editor Charles Hanson Towne with Author Charles Wayland Towne of Butte, Mont., who published in 1904 The Foolish Dictionary and The New Foolish Dictionary in 1914 and whose second wife (1921) was Katherine L. Reynolds. Charles Hanson Towne has never married. --ED.

Love & Western Sirs:

. . . We wish to say that we have continuously owned and published Love Story Magazine and Western Story Magazine (TIME, Aug. 31) from the time of their inception.

We presume that you are going to correct the statement attributing their ownership to the Macfadden organization. . . .

H. W. RALSTON

Street & Smith Publications, Inc. New York City

TIME regrets having been deceived by a report that these magazines had changed hands, gladly publishes this correction.-- ED.

Gulls v. Ducks

Sirs:

Your recent discussion of duck enemies (TIME, Aug. 10), reminds me of a talk I heard some three years ago before the study class of the San Francisco Board of Marine Underwriters. I regret that I cannot recall the speaker's name, but I do remember that he was a man of long experience in Alaskan waters, preparing at that time to pilot a sporting and exploring party northward.

He gave us a vivid description of the difficulties of navigating the Inside Passage, digressed from that to a portrayal of northern bird rookeries, and was led by the latter subject into voicing his hatred of the common seagull. His indictment comprised two counts:

1) Seagulls swarm about the shallow waters through which salmon make their way to the spawning grounds and peck out the eyes of salmon forced to the surface by the rushing host.

2) During duck breeding season, millions of gulls leave their rookeries each morning to raid duck nests, attacking the young only and gorging themselves with baby duck brains. Any northern gull opened before noon in that season will be found to be full of the said brains. . . .

F. W. HARRIMAN San Rafael, Calif.

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