Tax
Sirs:
About a year ago you reported the case of a Y. M. C. A. secretary on the West Coast who claimed [income tax] exemption for an unborn child. This exemption was disallowed, but he appealed the ruling (TIME, Jan. 9, 1939) Wouldn't it be timely to report the present status of the case?
R. G. CORTELYOU
Miami, Fla.
> Y. M. C. A. Pressagent Lloyd Wilson lost his case for good last week.--ED.
Illingworth
Sirs:
In your portfolio of war cartoons (Jan. 22 issue) you included a very powerful British war cartoon entitled "The Combat." You . . . attributed it to the wrong artist. It was done not by Klingworth, but by the well-known cartoonist L. G. Illingworth. . . .
PETER HESSE Providence, R. I.
> For a timely example of able Cartoonist Leslie Gilbert Illingworth's art, see above.--ED.
Supreme Court and Big Shots
Sirs:
TIME, Feb. 12, p. 17: "Nobody dreamed of assuming that the Supreme Court had the power to declare unconstitutional an Act of the People, as represented by Congress."
If I read the correct meaning into the above, TIME errs. I think the first Judiciary Act, creating the Supreme Court, embodied a clause upholding such power. I think John Marshall, at the Convention of Virginia, said the power of the Supreme Court should prevail over that of Congress in constitutionality issues wherein there was no reasonable doubt. I think James Madison's record and minutes of the Philadelphia confab that created the Constitution show that this power was fully discussed and intentionally embodied into the Constitution (also the power to ignore the opinions of the high court when Congress deemed it in the general welfare so to do). I think Jefferson was in the "overwhelming minority" of big shots holding the view that the court did not have this power. . . .
ED WOLCOTT
San Fernando, Calif.
> TIME erred. Many a Founding Father--Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Elbridge Gerry, Alexander Hamilton--flatly assumed that any law inconsistent with the Constitution would be voided by the courts. Even Thomas Jefferson, butt of John Marshall's extra-legal lecture in the Marbury v. Madison case, expressly admitted the Court's right to decide constitutionality of laws, although he unflaggingly criticized the Court until his death.
Yet the right, although widely-recognized, was not intentionally embodied in the Constitution; nowhere is it expressly stated. The second paragraph of Article VI ("This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.") has to be wrenched and tortured to bear out wily Chief Justice Marshall's politically-minded Marbury v. Madison decision.--ED.
Buskin & Sock
Sirs:
Am I to understand that the play, The Man Who Came to Dinner, is a tragedy? Quoting from TIME, Feb. 19: "Alexander Woollcott finally drew on the buskin. . . ."
In my study of drama, I find the buskin, or boot, signifies a tragedy; and the sock, similar to a light moccasin, denotes a comedy. . . .
WILMA OFFER
Victoria, Tex.
Sirs:
A buskin for The Man Who Came to Dinner? (TIME, Feb. 19.) Here in Chicago Clifton Webb pulled on the sock, a happier choice. Perhaps the late Town Crier should have thrice refused the part.
JOHN C. REDMOND
Chicago, Ill.
> Technically Readers Offer and Redmond are right. But let them consider Classicist John Milton's language in U Allegro:
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned Sock be on. . . .
--ED.
Something Screwy
Sirs:
Regarding that letter of Richard Rothschild that appears in your issue of Feb. 19, there is something screwy here.
Of all the people who would broadcast the ill-treatment he received from the French, a Jew would be the last one, even though conditions were as bad as Rothschild relates. I am therefore prompted to ask whether you check up on the possibilities of propaganda leaking into your Letters through the use of false information and false signatures of the person or persons sending these letters. . . .
Something is screwy here, gentlemen.
CLARENCE M. SALZER
Cincinnati, Ohio
Sirs:
May I suggest that Richard Rothschild's letter in TIME, Feb. 19, might possibly have been the product of a Nazi propaganda mind? Would the Editors of TIME care to accept a dare to identify the author of the above-mentioned letter?
ADELE BARBARA MORGAN
New York City
> Born in Berlin, the only son of a banker, Architect Richard Rothschild moved with his wife to Milan, Italy, soon after Hitler came into power. When Italy ordered the expulsion of all Jews who had entered the country after 1919, Architect Rothschild tried to get permission to move to some other country. After a great deal of difficulty, he got a permit for himself & family to enter Chile, in return for which he agreed o help Chile rebuild after its earthquake (TIME, Feb. 6, 1939, et seq.). Well-to-do, he sailed from Genoa with his family and belongings last September, is now in Valparaiso.--ED.
Sirs:
Hats off once more to TIME. Reason: for publishing the letter of Richard Rothschild in the issue of Feb. 19.
Almost all of the information relative to foreign news published in newspapers or magazines is pro-English or pro-French. It does everyone some good occasionally to see what is over on the other side of the proverbial fence.
HOWARD E. MUNROE JR.
West Barrington, R. I.
Monument, Hams
Sirs:
In your story Florida, TIME, Feb. 19, you paid nice tribute to Carl Fisher's imagination and to his love of the music of the sand sucker.
You omitted, however, I think, one revealing thing about the man. You did not mention the monument Carl built to Flagler, Carl's also imaginative predecessor, also pioneer of Florida's "pleasure dome." Most of Florida appears to have forgotten Flagler; Carl in his heyday did not.
I last saw Carl when he was ill, in one room of one of his second string hotels. As I drove along the causeway that evening after leaving him I saw his statue to Flagler out in the water with lights on it. I thought it revealed a side of Carl not so well known.
Carl once offered me an island down near the end of the beach if I would set up a boys' school on it. I told him I did not think that Miami Beach would be a good place on which to get boys over the hurdles of the College Board Exams. He told me afterwards that he was glad I had not taken him up, that later he had sold the island for three millions, I think it was. . . .
You mention Carl's cook. Carl told me that his cook was not only a good cook but a tremendous eater as well. Also a great eater was the cook of Mr. Allison, Carl's former partner in the PrestOLite business. One day, according to the story Carl told me, he made a wager with Mr. Allison on the gastronomic potentialities of their respective cooks. ... On the starting line Carl's cook said to Allison's cook, "What do we start wit, Nigger, hams?" Said Allison's cook to Fisher's cook, his eyes bulging a bit, "Look here, Galloway, did you say ham or hams?" "I said hams," said Galloway. "Nigger, you win," said Allison's cook.
L. R. GlGNILLIAT
Culver, Ind.
Pudding (Concl.)
Sirs:
For God's sake and for the sake of continued Anglo-American accord, publish the following correction:
YORKSHIRE PUDDING
(served with roast beef)
Ingredients:
4 heaped tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoonful salt
2 eggs
1 pint milk
Method:
Put flour and salt into basin, make a well in centre, break in eggs, stir gradually, mixing in flour from the sides, and add milk by degrees until a thick smooth batter is formed. Beat well for ten minutes, then add remainder of milk, cover, and let it stand for at least one hour in refrigerator. About half-an-hour before beef is due to be done take deep dish, put in a thin layer of dripping taken from meat tin, and while dish and dripping are getting thoroughly hot in oven beat up batter well again. Take dish and dripping from oven and pour in batter, place in hot oven and bake for about half-an-hour, or till browned and properly set. Serve hot with the roast beef and gravy.
The above is the real McCoy. Mr. Priestley's recipe (TIME, Feb. 19) when finished must have the consistency and digestibility of a rubber bathmat and need a hacksaw to "cut in squares." No authentic Yorkshire Pudding was ever "turned over" to be "done on the other side." It has the temperament of a souffle and should be treated as gently.
My authority is Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book (standard English cookbook) checked and double-checked by the fact that I am English, was raised on Yorkshire Pudding and sich, and as it is one of my favorite dishes, I make it often.
FREDA TAYLOR BAUMANN
Sunnyside, L. I., N. Y.
> Cervantes said: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." --ED.
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