Subscribers' Library

Sirs:

Being an ardent reader of TIME and LIFE I have been closely watching both publications and have failed to notice any expression from your readers for the beautiful, comfortable and most accessible club and reading rooms which you have opened to your subscribers in the TIME and LIFE Building this summer.

My wife and I were impressed with the interior appointments, beauty and comfort of the rooms, but were even more impressed by the hospitality of those in attendance. We found the showings of the March of Time very interesting, being able to view a couple that we had missed and also to see again those that particularly impressed us. Your television set brought us untold astonishment by its very perfection.

With real appreciation for this unprecedented service to your subscribers. . . . S. WILLIAM SIMON, M.D.

Chicago, Ill.

> Let Dr. Simon not fear that his fellow subscribers are ungrateful. They have written several hundred letters of thanks.--ED.

Discrimination?

Sirs:

Am I being discriminated against ? Are not all TIME readers created equal? What is this Subscribers' Library of yours that a friend recently visited, and is still raving about? And why haven't I, too, been invited?

Because I travel a great deal I have never been a subscriber to TIME. But because I like your newsmagazine very much indeed (although it occasionally gets me mad), I haven't missed a copy in years.

In other words, I am one of I-don't-know-how-many-thousands of your newsstand buyers--and, speaking for all of us, we feel left out of things.

I am going to be in New York sometime late in August to see the Fair. Can you take a hint ?

Yours, more in sorrow than in anger,

J. S. ROBERTSON

Dayton, Ohio

>No slightest slight did TIME intend to put on Mr. Robertson, but TIME does not know the addresses of its newsstand buyers. Though admission to the library is by card only, he or any other newsstand buyer of TIME can obtain a guest card by writing to TIME'S Chicago office (330 East 22d Street). He will find a few exhibits, no dancing girls, no glimpses of the World of Tomorrow--just a cool roomy place high above the city where he can 1) meet his friends, 2) read his hometown newspaper, 3) write his letters, 4) see television, 5) look at a March oj Time cinema, 6) sit, relax.--ED.

Antarctic Coal

Sirs:

Referring to your issue of July 17, p. 13, I notice the following statement of Rear Admiral Byrd, "We discovered a seam of coal down there that we think is sufficient to supply the United States for 100 years or more. This seam of coal is ... exposed along the slope of a high mountain range so that it is not necessary to dig for it. . . ."

To a mining engineer this statement seems to offer obscurities. A rough calculation indicates that this amount of coal would be roughly 45 billion tons or a seam 100 feet wide, 1,000 feet deep and 5 miles long. I did not realize that Admiral Byrd had become such a prospector.

Even though it may occur on the slope of a high mountain range, it still seems that it will have to be dug out (unless the penguins can be used), transported from the high mountain range to a ship and then transported some 12,000 miles to the U. S. Unless coal prices 200 years hence are of an entirely different order than those existing at present, the economic value of this coal seems to be preceded by a decimal point and so many zeros that it seems strange to give it weight in connection with a Government appropriation of $340,000 to secure title thereto.

FREDERICK W. FOOTE

Engineer of Mines

New York City

> Admiral Byrd was putting the Antarctic's best glacial foot forward. The coal whose discovery he reported is poor-quality lignite, not worth importing.--ED.

Same Kind?

Sirs:

Neither my barber nor my dentist are usually very busy, so I seldom have time to read further in TIME than the first section on National Affairs. Usually I get to read only the "Letters."

Now you probably read all of the magazine, sometimes, and probably you can tell me: Is the rest of it the same kind of damn foolishness?

LESTER W. BAILEY

Portland, Ore.

> Let Letters-Reader Bailey fork out 15-c- and see for himself.--ED.

Ex-Presidents

Sirs:

Reader M. Axelrod's suggestion in TIME (July 24th) that: "All living ex-Presidents and all Supreme Court Justices over 70 shall automatically become members of a foreign policy board, for life, to advise the incumbent President on and to help administer the foreign policy of the U. S. A., especially during campaign years", strikes a familiar note.

Congressman-at-Large T. V. Smith proposed during his campaign (1938) along these lines: "Smith believes that the nation needs all the statesmanship it can develop. He deplores the way we waste the talents of our graduate statesmen, the Ex-Presidents. He proposes to give them seats, ex-officio, in some honorable body. He fears to propose to pack the supreme court with Ex-Presidents. He asks: Why not give them upon retirement seats in the Senate? He smiles to think of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt having it out in public debate in the Senate after 1940. Wouldn't that be something, really? Let's make our Ex-Presidents automatically Senators-at-Large." I think he's got something there!

THOMAS D. TOBERTY

Washington, D. C.

Greek Word

Sirs :

You are a bit hard on Edda Ciano in TIME, July 24.

Your article causes the reader to feel that Edda is becoming something of a meddler in European politics. Actually I suspect she is just another little gal trying to get along, swishing in the time-honored fashion through life just one desperate jump ahead of the fear that she may suddenly cease to be attractive to men.

She has it easier than other women because a great many gents are afraid of her old man and quite anxious to please him.

Her interest in European politics is probably only convenient and secondary, and matched in superficiality only by her knowledge of same.

One can but hope that she will shortly trip over an innuendo, experience a rapid reclassification of her interests and ambitions, and go home to mind her children.

The Greeks had a word for her, but I forget it.

ANDREW McWHINEY

Baltimore, Md.

> Shortly after TIME, July 24 (with Countess Ciano on the cover) appeared, all Italian newsstands were forbidden to display foreign publications so that they could be seen by the public.-- ED.

Republocrats

Sirs:

MY GRATEFUL APPRECIATION FOR YOUR "STUDY-PROVOKING" SKETCH "CONGRESSIONAL REVOLT OF '39" [TIME, July 31]. FROM YOUR OUTLINE AND FROM MANY A STUDENT PALETTE WILL SPRING COLORFUL WORD PICTURES OF A NEW PARTY--"THE REPUBLOCRATS."

LLOYD D. LUCKMANN

Instructor

San Francisco Junior College

San Francisco, Calif.

Sirs:

Your staff of ace-high political writers outdid themselves in TIME, July 31. . . .

Was I pleased with last week's account of Capitol doings? Pleased is too mild a word. I was foaming over with delight; at the victory for the Republocrats, but even more so by your absorbing, fun-provoking story of the fracas. How did we ever manage before TIME arrived on the scene?

A. J. HUNTER

Cambridge, Md.

"Fuehrious"

Sirs:

Adolf my hat to "fuehrious" [TIME, July 31] ; it gets in Mein Herr.

BEN F. COLLINS JR.

Los Angeles, Calif.

Futile Lapidist

Sirs:

How TIME does change things! Even the classic figures of early Greece fall before its ravages.

To the best of my recollection, abetted by contemporary research, it was Sisyphus who was the Greeks' most futile lapidist, not Tantalus.

Perhaps weary Henry Agard Wallace "toiling like Tantalus in Hades" is merely logrolling; or maybe the pork suspended above him and the slush about him disappear as he is about to grasp them.

Or maybe his rate of locomotion has allowed the log to petrify.

Tell your political editor, who is otherwise a really estimable fellow, to watch his figure.

Touche, TIME.

TOM H. JOHNSON JR.

Chattanooga, Tenn.

> Touche it is, right in the pit of the mythological dictionary.--ED.

Two-Fisted Fighter

Sirs:

Permit me to observe that you have done a very interesting and thorough research job in getting together the very interesting sketch that you present this week on Wendell L. Willkie [TIME, July 31]. It is always worthwhile to spotlight men who have done an outstanding job in their field. Too much credit can not be given to Mr. Willkie for leading the way back to sane business-government relations. . . .

Moreover, you may have helped to push a good two-fisted fighter along toward the Presidency. Many hope that you have.

When my last subscription expired I let it drop because of some of your previous spotlight work. I renewed it this week.

A. C. OLIPHANT

Washington, D. C.

Sirs:

. . . I realize that the laudatory style in which Mr. Willkie is written up is quite permissible under the circumstances, but it does strain one's credulity when he is given sole credit for the doubling of Commonwealth & Southern's sale of kilowatt hours of electricity since 1933 and the changing of a common stock deficit of nearly a million dollars into a profit of over $5,000,000 during the same period. No doubt Mr. Willkie is an able business statesman, but the fact remains that much, and perhaps most, of the increase in sales and resulting profit came from the increased consumer's use due to the 3-c- rate which, mark you, was forced upon this very unwilling company by the TVA yardstick competition. . . .

The whole impression left by the article is that the TVA is a diabolical scheme to stab America in the back. Actually I think the project must be recognized as a worthwhile experiment in a country where the management of electrical power has been woefully shortsighted. In our country, where many of electricity's greatest uses have been invented and where a world-wide reputation has been justly established for technological efficiency in whatever is undertaken, only one-fifth of the farms are electrified. Compared with the so-called "backward" European nations in which the use of electricity is nearly universal, it stands as a national disgrace. I am afraid that your writers have allowed their blind reaction to obscure their vision and warp their judgment. . . .

R. WALLACE BREWSTER

Uniontown, Pa.

Presbyterian Corsets

Sirs:

Apropos of the objection to the commercialization of the name Quaker [TIME, Aug. 7], Rufus Jones preached about this in a Haverford meeting some years ago.

Referring to the many products which have used the name Quaker, he showed that it was used as a commercial standard of excellence but remarked that he wondered why other faiths were not similarly favored. He said, as I recall, that there should be Episcopal frocks, Presbyterian corsets and Baptist bottled water.

J. H. REITER

Harrisburg, Pa.

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