Fatuous?
Sirs:
Is there something about the atmosphere of the New Deal that dulls the intellect and blunts the sense of humor of those privileged to report the game from the sacred precincts of the chief players?
I wonder how many readers chuckled over the first paragraph of TIME (March 19): "Most amazing of President Roosevelt's accomplishments in office has been the all-time highwater mark to which he has brought and held his personal popularity."
As evidence that his popularity is not suffering a decline, TIME cites the poll on "the greatest U. S. President" held at Valley Forge Military Academy, in which the students voted 43 for Lincoln, 44 for Washington, 202 for Roosevelt.
Possibly TIME forgot that its Nov. 14, 1932 issue carried the following: ''When Rev. Dr. Enclicott Peabody, headmaster of Groton, discovered that his 184 socialite schoolboys were voting 4-to-1 against Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a 'Grottie' of 1900. he halted their straw poll, ordered politics adjourned."
There were millions of us with sense enough to appreciate the superior qualities of Herbert Hoover; millions of us who hoped, for America's sake, that he would be returned to the White House. But I don't think any of us were fatuous enough to regard one school's vote of 4-to-1 in his favor as evidence of amazing popularity.
Is TIME getting fatuous?
If all the "popularity" puffs of the press are based on equally anemic facts, it is easy to understand the discrepancy between press stories and the ever-swelling bitterness of personal remarks from the great middle class, who see themselves as the helpless football in the great game between Roosevelt versus America. We are willing to be kicked a few times for the sake of America, but not just for the sake of making a Red Grange hero out of a politician whose "most amazing accomplishment" during a year set aside for him to experiment, with the entire facilities of the country at his disposal, was to ring up a good score for personal popularity.
ELIZABETH EMMETT
Peace Dale, R. I.
Hotel Clerks v. Angels
Sirs:
Why Danville, Ky. Lost A Railroad Forever.
Dressed as a plain surveyor, bespattered with muddy water, a stranger registered in the Old Gilcher House, Danville, Ky., and was assigned to an attic bedroom with a dormer window, a shuck-mattress bed and tallow-dip candle, in the late '60s. The unknown guest demanded a decent room for the night, which infuriated the clerk who sized up the stranger and exclaimed: "That room is plenty good for the looks of you." Instantly the infuriated "surveyor" wrote across the page of the hotel register: "Surveyors: Locate the road just far enough away from Danville so its citizens can barely hear the whistles blow."
"(signed) E. D. STANDIFORD "President of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company" Sequel to the above: To this day, 60 odd years later, Danville passengers must hire taxis and drive three miles to catch an L. & N. train for east or west. To assuage their grief, awakened citizens of Danville induced the Cincinnati Southern Railway to survey its municipally owned "Queen and Crescent'' route via Danville, Ky., but notwithstanding this the stubborn old L. & N. refuses to make connection at the crossing and I've seen the latter's passenger trains pull out leaving Q. & C. passengers frantically trying to board the L. & N. Truly a dead hand governs the situation at Junction City, in the very geographical centre of Old Kentucky. Lesson: Beware, Hotel Clerks, lest you entertain angels unawares! COL. CLARENCE E. WOODS
"Youngest Station Agent of L. & N. R. R. to 1884" Sidney, Ill.
Sirs:
TIME, March 12, glorifies Charles Dickens properly, but errs in attributing to "modern debunkers" a description of Dickens as "snob, sentimentalist and egotist." Those identical qualities of Dickens caused him to be kicked down the stairs of the Louisville Gait House in the late '60s. The manager of that famed hotel put his boot in Dickens' rear and lifted him down the great stairway, to the amazement of the world. Kentucky historians record the incident. It can be verified by files of the Louisville Courier-Journal, now owned by our Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Robert Worth Bingham. I remember the uproar as of yesterday. Dickens had indulged in harsh criticism of Kentuckians which was instantly resented as described. Get history straight, and tell it that every time a Kentuckian had a fight after that he tried to "Knock the Dickens Out of His Opponent." True as Gospel.
COL. CLARENCE E. WOODS
Life Member Ky. and Fla. Press Assns. Kentucky Colonel on Staff of Gov. J. I). Black, 1920. First Honors Public Schools of Louisville, 1878. Sidney, 111.
Munitions
Sirs:
Anyone who at this time could step in and curb the prevailing war psychology which is becoming increasingly popular should immediately be considered a "Man-of-the-Year" candidate. The article "Munitions Men," TIME. March 5, was a masterful article, chock-full of facts, an article which should entitle the author to "Man-of-the-Year" honors if widely enough circulated and read to have effect.
Hearst jingoists stumping for war under the pretext of preparedness are at fault from the beginning because an outstanding lesson of the World War was that preparedness is not a factor that operates to preserve peace but rather one to foment and encourage war. The real lesson to be derived from gruesome war pictures is a condemnation of militarism and its pseudonym "pre-paredness." Your article, a frank statement of facts, does well in exposing this perversion of the facts.
E. J. SCHOEPP
Waupun, Wis.
The basic article was FORTUNE'S, not TIME'S; and it by no means settled the question of Preparedness v. Unpreparedness. Nevertheless, for the praise, all thanks.--ED. Sirs: Permit me to express to you the sincere appreciation that I feel from the depth of my heart, for the wonderful article in March issue of FORTUNE on the subject of "Arms and the Men." I feel that your courage in this matter is doing more to set forward the cause of world peace than any single bit of literary endeavor that has been released.
I take deep joy and thank God that this article may "be considered as no more than an opening gun." FLOYD FAUST
Pastor
Broad Street Church of Christ Columbus, Ohio
Sirs:
... It would be pertinent in the present period of jingoism for TIME to publish a similar story on American tycoons who stand to make millions on another war. It is possible, however, that such a story would affect some of TIME'S advertising accounts.
Dares TIME print an accurate and comprehensive story on U. S. munitions makers and armorers?
J. P. HOBBS
Washington, D. C.
Not overlooking U. S. armorers, FORTUNE concluded from its initial survey of the world situation that munitions occupy a relatively small place in U. S. industrial economy. TIME would gladly summarize a newsworthy account of U. S. armorers. --F.D.
Sirs:
... I was much interested in the article on the munitions trusts. . . . There is no doubt in my mind but the munition manufacturers constitute a vicious influence which has had much to do with promoting the propaganda for big navies and large military establishments. I voted against the Vinson big Navy bill but it was impossible to overcome the powerful influences at work for that program.
ARTHUR CAPPER
U. S. Senate Washington, D. C.
Sirs: It was necessary for me to go to the public library to read FORTUNE'S article "Arms and the Men" as I did not have a dollar to devote to this purpose. There are thousands of us in the same boat and I respectfully suggest that you publish this astounding information in the form of a 25-c- booklet to give it the widest circulation. . . . CLARENCE C. MARDER
New York City
Doubleday, Doran & Co. will publish the article in booklet form for $1. Big demand will lower the price.--ED.
Eyes Sirs:
In your March 19 issue on p. 14 you speak of Circuit Judge Allen as having "a cordial handshake and myopic eyes." From the appearance of her eyes in the accompanying photograph, I would suggest that the Judge is hyperopic, not myopic; in other words "farsighted" not "near-sighted." . . .
CHARLES A. RANKIN, M.D.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Queried, First Woman Florence Ellinwood Allen explained with difficulty through her laughter: "I am farsighted in one eye and astigmatic in the other."--ED.
Confederates in Underwear Sirs:
". . . Three of Dillingers confederates . . . waiting in jail at Lima, Ohio, heard of his escape, speedily dressed in their best clothes so as to be ready when he came to deliver them." (TIME, March 12.)
Your reporting was more facetious than truthful. Directly Dillinger's escape from Crown Point, Intl. was made known to Lima, Allen County authorities, the three confederates were speedily stripped of all clothing except their underwear. It may have been their best underwear. . . .
EDGAR M. COONEY
Lima, Ohio.
Pajamas are the preferred attire of gangsters living in Lima's cells. But after Dillinger's escape, his Lima confederates kept their clothes on day and night until their jailors stripped them down to underwear.--ED.
Carbon Dioxide Sirs:
. . . The disgust of Mark Edward Ridge's host in TIME, March 19, must be shared by all who . . . handle daily the product discussed there.
About 150,000,000 lb. of frozen carbon dioxide, nicknamed Dry-Ice by its pioneer maker, will this year be handled by U. S. ice cream makers, meat packers, confectioners, housewives. In eight years' experience with it, there is not one casually from what your staff writer is pleased to call "deadly fumes emanating from the ice."
... A man immersed in pure carbon dioxide will be quickly deprived of the air necessary to sustain life, and will of course die. Immersion in pure water is a ''deadly poison" in this sense.
Carbon dioxide is daily imbibed and inhaled by millions who consume carbonated beverages. It is present in the breath we exhale, in the blood, in the tissues. . . .
If TIME must dignify Mark Edward Ridge as "intrepid," dignify his story by two columns of copy, let it at least spare Science, and list such items under Miscellany. I will bet a TIME subscription for Mark Edward Ridge on Hank Schafer (TIME, March 19, p. 66) to complete successfully and without injury "black-browed young daredevil" Ridge's bungled show.
We trust you will try to repair the damage done to an industry with a record 100% clean of casualties from gas poisoning. . . .
C. L. JONES
American Dry-Ice Corp. New York City
TIME gladly repairs such damage as may have been done by ambiguity: fumes of carbon monoxide (from autos) are a definite poison to the blood; fumes of carbon dioxide are fatal only as pure water can be fatal.--ED. Producing Pu Yi
Sirs:
In your account of the coronation of Henry Pu Yi, you made a statement which I believe to be incorrect. You stated that this young man is the son of a nephew of the old Dowager Empress.
I consider the Princess Der Ling a much
more authoritative source of information than
your newsgatherers, and according to her, there
is no relationship whatever between Pu Yi and
(Continued on p. 63) the former Empress. He is the grandson of the man whom she had loved and wished to marry when she was young. She was forced to marry another man for reasons of state, but never forgot her first love, and it was his grandson whom she placed upon the throne at the death of the Emperor, her nephew. . . . EFFIE M. SMITH
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sirs:
In re my attempt at correction of a statement in a recent number of your magazine, I find that I was wrong on one point. In looking up the authority I had quoted, I find that while
Pu Yi is, as I had stated, the grandson of the Empress Dowager's early lover, he is also her grandnephew.
Had I gone to the trouble of looking up this article from which I had quoted first, rather than relying upon my memory, I would have been saved the need of apologizing for my error.
E. M. SMITH
Pittsburgh, Pa.
The Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (meaning Compassionate and Fortunate), was the last great sitter on China's Dragon Throne. Born into a noble clan still well-known in Peiping, she was chosen for the household of a dissolute Emperor, wangled herself up from fourth to second rank and produced his only son, a feat in itself. A slim little woman with lively black eyes, an implacable fury when crossed, otherwise fond of argument, company and flowers, she effectively ruled China from 1861 when she was 27 until her death in 1908. a chagrined old crone of 74. She engineered three coups d'etat to do it. She put one nephew, aged five, on the throne and later took him off when, grown up and turned reformer, he bought a Bible and a globe. Another nephew she married to the daughter of her girlhood love, thus producing Pu Yi whom she made Emperor at two. She floated a foreign loan for naval construction and put it into a fantastic marble pleasure boat that grounded in her lily pond. She sent the fanatic Boxers (Righteous Harmony Fists) against the Christian missionaries, stopped the massacres to make a sketch in the Forbidden City, again to send fresh fruit to the besieged foreigners. --ED.
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