Chicken a la Thomas Sirs:

No Socialist, I regret in advance lay readers' probable titter at your implied censure (TIME, April 24) of Socialist Norman Thomas for locking Long Island henpen which supplies eggs for Mrs. Thomas' New York restaurant. I understand Socialist principles to include not only ''equitable distribution of wealth" as you point out, but also equitable distribution of commodities. Any restaurant which, as Mrs. Thomas' establishment at No. 71 Irving Place does, serves polite proletariat a well-cooked, well-balanced dinner for from 45-c- to $1 on attractive tableware, in clean, quiet, friendly surroundings, is following principles of which anybody, Socialist or not, may well be proud. Frequently a guest at this restaurant, I like my eggs and chicken fresh--have you ever tasted its chicken shortcake?-- and consider 50 chickens to one set of thieves an example of maldistribu- tion, rightly susceptible to padlocking. E. S. COUSINS New York City Sirs: I have read TIME for several years and have been impressed with its accurate reporting and unprejudiced comments. However in TIME of April 24 an item appearing about Socialist Norman Thomas left the impression a Socialist should share his wealth with others. TIME usually accurate should know better. Socialists are not trying to bring Socialism by having any individual distributing his wealth but by having all productive wealth socially owned and controlled. H. A. ROLNICK

Philadelphia, Pa.

Sirs:

. . . TIME'S superficial criticism does not recognize that in Socialist Thomas' new order personal property will be more secure than in the present Capitalist regime. Socialist Thomas' chickens will be his own until they are declared to be major instruments of production, when they will be taken over with due compensation, not stolen from him. . .

JOHN NEWTON THURBER

Buffalo, N. Y.

A Very Poor Information

Sirs:

Reading your paper of April 3, I find a writing entitled "Medicine" about the Pan-American Medical Congress, lately celebrated at Dallas, Texas. And I have been greatly surprised to read that Cuba is among the countries whose governments have paid the doctors' expenses. You had a very poor information and I wish you to please make clear that I myself covered all my expenses and I can assure you that no one of the Cuban's doctors received a single penny from the government, and that we were not representing the government. We were there working for the people's sake and by our own personal efforts.

I ask your excuses for troubling you with this letter and I will be very much obliged if you can correct your note.

DR. ERNESTO R. DE ARAGON

Havana, Cuba

Now that the strenuous work of the

Congress is over, I wish to take this opportunity to express to you and your wonderful journal our sincere thanks for your co-operation with the Pan-American Medical Association.

I was very gratified to read the splendid article which appeared several weeks ago as well as the kind words of praise which I assure you I do not deserve. I have received numerous communications from physicians from many parts of the U. S. highly pleased with the interest which you have taken in this organization.

I also wish to take this opportunity to say that our firm has been a subscriber of long standing of TIME and we believe that each copy is just a bit more interesting and educative than the last one.

JOHN O. McREYNOLDS

President

Pan-American Medical Ass'n. Havana, Cuba

No Dragon Heads

Sirs:

It is rather unlikely that Eric the Red and his company sailed for Greenland in dragon-prowed ships (TIME. April 17). The dragon-heads were banned in Iceland waters, for one thing. According to the sagas "it was the opening word of the heathen law, that men should not have head-ships (dragon-prowed vessels) at sea; or if they did, they should take off the heads before they came within sight of land, and not approach the shore with gaping heads or yawning beaks, lest the land-wights be terrified by the sight."

On a harrying expedition the vikings would point their prows shoreward with dragon-heads mounted, to scare off the "land-wights" or guardian spirits of the country. To approach a shore in this manner was evidently regarded as a hostile act. Hence the law.

Eric the Red was no stickler for law or etiquette, probably; but as he was looking for a place to live in, he would be anxious to find favor with the guardian spirits of his new home, and so would refrain from displaying the dragon's head.

GUTTORMUR GUTTORMSSON

Minneota, Minn.

/j

"Nyew Orr-leens"

Sirs:

As might have been expected, your report (TIME, April 24) of the launching of our latest fighting ship was worthy of even so beautiful a craft as she is. My one objection is your implied criticism of Miss Jahncke's pronunciation. I can visualize the ship's stopping and remounting the ways had she come down with: "I christen thee jJyew Orr-leens!"

Incidentally, Miss Jahncke's brother is among the far-too-many of my classmates who would do anything short of committing murder to be one of the three of us assigned to the New Orleans after graduation.

CARTER BENNETT

Midshipman, U. S. N.

Annapolis, Md.

Hardy Cuban Readers Sirs:

I have just returned from a very extensive business trip which took me all through Mexico and Cuba.

On one occasion I was quite far in the interior, down in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec spending several days with the manager of a large fruit plantation. One afternoon we rode on horseback a good many more miles than I was in training for. Presumably I supposed to see his extensive fruit lands, but imagine my surprise when we came to a little village on a railroad line where we waited for a train only the usual three or four hours late. A few minutes after the train arrived he got a copy of TIME. The trip back was at a fast canter all the way, and we didn't sit down to dinner that night (I didn't sit), until he had read everything including all the advertisements. On another occasion I had just arrived at the George Washington Hotel in Guantanamo, Cuba after an all-day plane trip from Havana. Tired and feeling the need of a little reviver I stepped into the bar and gave my order in American. This attracted the attention of another fellow American and he started a conversation. To make a long story short, he told me he had just come in 40 miles from the mountains where he was cutting lumber, to get his copy of TIME (i. e. when it isn't suppressed in Cuba). . . . WHITTAKER LONSDALE

P. S. Your article on Mexico (April 3) shows almost too keen an insight of Mexican affairs, and their present feelings.

Havana, Cuba

Last fortnight Postmaster General Arturo M. Elias, half-brother of Mex- ico's political boss and onetime president. General Plutarco Elias Calles, made public a presidential order barring TIME from Mexico "because it systematically dedicates itself to insulting Mexico and the officials of the Government."--ED. Valuable Kelp Sirs:

Calling your attention to "Big Leaves" (TIME, April 17), I recall one day when anchored off the island of Buldir in the Aleutian Chain of Islands, Alaska, in the Revenue Cutter Unalga, seeing a leaf of kelp floating by. Its length was so great as to cause me to hook it with a cast of my fishing rod and line, and to determine its length. I sent for the carpenter's tape, and with the aid of the quartermaster on watch, found it to be nearly 60 ft. in length, as I remember. Most certainly it was over 50 ft., but as the year was 1913, I can't recall its exact length.

Kelp is a marine plant which grows up from the bottom of the sea in rocky country, and spreads its leaves on the surface of the sea. It is of immense aid to the navigator in Alaska where there are extremely few light houses, buoys and other aids to navigation. Its proximity at once tells the navigator to be extremely careful. Had I passed a certain reef now called Tahoma Reefs in the day time instead of at night in 1914, I would not have lost the revenue cutter Tahoma.

Kelp attaches itself to the rocks by strong roots, growing from a ball as big as a cocoanut. From the ball ascends the trunk, from 6 ft. to 10 ft. long, something like a black snake whip, and from the top of this trunk the leaves branch out and come to the surface of the sea, some- times in water as deep as 15 fathoms.

R. O. CRISP

Commodore, U. S. C. G., Retired Washington. D. C.

Kay Francis' "Tomowow"

Sirs'

Having received from five separate sources the following clipping from TIME of Jan. 23. with the query "Is this true?'' I write my comments to you for whatever correction the statement may need. The statement:

"In Hollywood, Calif., cinema, sound engineers listed ten words barred from cinemas: Cohesion, distilling, aluminum, catastrophe, seething, felicitations, nemesis, procrastination, hippopotamus, and rural. Reason: most film actors hiss or swallow them."

This is a rather fantastic list, and they may be barred from the scripts of some studios. Most of them I have heard in one or another of our recent pictures with a fair accuracy of reproduction. Sound apparatus nowadays records just what is spoken in the way it is spoken with a high average of measured accuracy, and individual words are no difficulty. However, often adjustments of various kinds have to be made to counteract individual peculiarities of voice or inflection. On our own lot: George Arliss' sibilants are especially strong. Richard Barthelmess' vowels have a tubby-throaty effect. When Kay Francis says tomowow, wobber, twouble, however, we must record it that way. FREDERIC MACALPIN

Recording Dcpt. Warner-First National Studios North Hollywood, Calif.

Oldest Woman's School Sirs:

TIME APRIL TWENTY FOURTH PAGE FORTY WOMEN DOCTORS MAKE NO MENTION OF WOMANS MEDICAL COLLEGE OF PENNSYLVANIA AT PHILADELPHIA STOP OLDEST INSTITUTION IN THE WORLD FOR THE TRAINING OF WOMEN PHYSICIANS STOP FOUNDED EIGHTEEN FIFTY BY QUAKERS STOP AMONG ITS ELEVEN HUNDRED LIVING GRADUATES ARE WOMEN EMINENT IN MEDICAL AND EDUCATIONAL FIELDS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

MARTHA TRACY

Dean

Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pa.

TIME'S story reported the opening of a cancer clinic in the muliebral New York Infirmary for Women and Children, did not go into the history of women's medical schools. Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania has graduated some able women physicians, among them twelve fellows of the American College of Surgeons, eight fellows of the American Col- lege of Physicians. Among notable graduates, apart from Woman's Medical's own able faculty, are Professors Elizabeth Bass (Tulane College of Medicine), Rachelle S. Yarros (Illinois College of Medicine), Edith P. Mols (Florida State College for Women), Caroline Croasdale (New York State College for Teachers), Lillian Welsh (Goucher) and Curator Myrtelle M. Canavan of Harvard's Warren Anatomical Museum.--ED. Sweeping Statement Sirs: Your otherwise excellent account of the Scottsboro Case in your issue for April 17 contains one paragraph to which I should like to take exception. It follows:

"Southerners could not see how the jury could have decided otherwise. How could a man continue to live in a small Southern town if every- one who passed him on the street knew that he was one of twelve who set at liberty a blackamoor who surely had fought whites, possibly had molested a white woman?"

This statement is entirely too sweeping. Many thousands of Southerners are shocked at the Scottsboro verdict. They feel that it was contrary to the evidence. I have read many editorials on the case in Southern newspapers, and I have yet to find one in a paper published outside of Alabama which approved the verdict.

VIRGINIUS DABNEY

Richmond Times-Dispatch Richmond, Va.

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