"Nuts to You"

Sirs:

Long have I esteemed TIME'S unsparing directness in portraying the naked truth, especially when pompous political personages are concerned. It is a unique pleasure however when TIME'S photographer treats us to such a delicious subtlety as in your article "Mr. Farley Announces," under National Affairs on p. 13 of your April 1 issue.

This amazingly eloquent picture-without-words tells the whole story: "Nuts to you, Mr. President," for unless my eyes deceive me the photographer caught Mr. Farley in the act of passing "the nut dish to "the Boss." . . .

THOMAS HARVIE BARNARD Clinton, Iowa

Bar & No Bar

Sirs:

Be fair, TIME; Jim Farley's father was never a saloon keeper as you inferred but a part owner of a brickyard along the Hudson.

Jim Farley is one of the greatest men in this country and one way to break down a lot of false ideas among narrow-minded religious bigots would be to elect him President of the United States.

H. MATTHEW ROCKEFELLER Pocantico Hill Kinderhook, N. Y.

> James Farley Sr. leased and ran a brickyard at Stony Point, N. Y., also kept a public bar in his home, behind a store front. Being the son of a saloonkeeper is no bar to the Presidency under the Constitution of the United States.--ED.

Life Lost

Sirs:

On p. 55 of your issue of Feb. 19 under Medicine, you publish an article about a man who asked a taxi driver to take him to Bellevue Hospital; the refusal of the nurse on duty to admit the man unless accompanied by a policeman, in spite of the fact that the taximan informed her that the man was apparently dying; the drive to a police station on the later advice of a policeman; and the death of the taximan's passenger before an ambulance came to the police station to get him.

What law or rule, written or unwritten, can justify the refusal of a hospital to receive a person in an extremity, through either illness or accident? . . .

One night in Feb. 1930 I was driving from Seminole, Okla. to Tulsa with the chief engineer of my company. All of a sudden, we picked up in our headlights the figure of a man spread-eagled on his back in the road ahead of us. We stopped, went back to look at him, found that he was unconscious but breathing. He had a bad scalp laceration and I immediately thought of concussion. We piled him into our car and drove as fast as we could to the next town, Okemah, which proved to be a distance of twelve miles. We stopped at a gas station with the idea of telephoning the police if there were any in a little bit of an oil town like Okemah. However, right at that point, our passenger, still without regaining consciousness, started to vomit blood which I knew to be an almost sure sign of concussion. Therefore, to cut down every second in an effort to save the man's life, we merely inquired if they had a hospital and how to get to it. We drove to the hospital which proved to be a large residence converted into hospital purposes. Arrived there, to our unbounded astonishment, the attendant refused to accept the injured man. For a few moments, we tried to argue him into it, but it did no-good and as we felt that every minute counted, I delivered an ultimatum to the attendant that we were going to bring that injured man up on his porch whether he liked it or not, and then get into immediate touch with the proper authorities, whoever they might be. The hospital attendant finally broke down and took the man in and a doctor was summoned. The patient died the following afternoon without regaining consciousness.

Whatever rule governs, it apparently is not sectional, but in effect throughout the country. How can hospitals be permitted to differentiate between a human being thought to be in extremis, brought to them either in an ambulance or accompanied by the law, and a person in the same condition brought to them by an eye witness of the accident? ... It seems inhuman to me, and justification of such procedure has got to have a mighty good reason behind it, to my way of thinking.

WINCHESTER BRITTON Cranford, N. J.

> Private hospitals, unlike New York City's Bellevue, make their own rules for admission. Few hospitals, public or private, would refuse to admit a dying man.--ED.

Life Saved

Sirs: Two o'clock one morning about the middle of December, just before dozing off to sleep, I picked up your magazine and turned to the caption Medicine. I was attracted to an article about the use of sulfamethylthiazole as a new cure for staphylococcic diseases.

This was indeed a fortunate moment for -- * who was at that time in Beth Israel Hospital in Newark dying of an infectious disease which apparently no medical aid could cure.

The symptoms which you described were so similar to the boy's that I was immediately tempted to call his physician.

It so happens that I am treasurer and director of this hospital, and the physician in charge of this case is my own personal physician. I am also acquainted with the boy's parents and the boy himself. All these factors combined to save a life. I called the doctor who told me the boy was on the verge of death. He had never heard of this drug nor had the pathologist in charge of our laboratory. ... As soon as the drug was administered the boy reacted favorably. Today he is absolutely cured. . . .

... If I might be facetious in a matter so serious, I could say in closing: TIME and life are natural partners.

-- * Newark, N. J.

> TIME (Dec. 11) reported on sulfamethylthiazole when Dr. Grayson Carroll of St. Louis announced that he had used it successfully on five patients. Last week in Cleveland, at a meeting of the American College of Physicians, doctors from the Mayo Clinic, Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania added their voices to Dr. Carroll's after trying sulfathiazole (a similar sulfanilimide derivative) on 1,600 cases of bacterial infection.--ED.

Lady Diana Goes Home

TIME herewith presents excerpts from a letter written by Lady Diana

Duff Cooper and received last week by an American friend. With her husband, Alfred Duff Cooper, Lady Diana spent almost five months in the U. S., visited 50 cities (while her husband gave 62 lectures), before returning in March to her home in England.

--ED.

Dear -- I cried so hard when I reached my cabin--the flowers, the hams, the turkeys, the cables made me cry more. I hated to leave America as never before. Though, always it has been a wrench. It is hard to turn one's back on light and wealth and lavish welcome and illusion, only to meet again with the dark struggle, poverty, gloom, dread and want.

It's been a strange and restful interlude, this tour of America--"restful" sounds an odd adjective to describe so many nights in the train and so many days of packing, unpacking, hustling, laundering, ironing, rushing, thanking, thanking, thanking . . . but restful it was, when compared with the quiet life of waiting in London. "I won't think of it now," as Scarlett would say. . . .

The trip has been fair and warm. No sign of Hitler's sharks, no survivors to rescue.

There are practically no passengers either, and no news except Mr. Kennedy's dread prognostications which were news to me. . . .

One young American, who assures me that he is typical of his generation, maddens me by speaking as the mouthpiece of German propaganda in the U. S.: "You dragged us in last time with your beastly propaganda. . . . What did we get out of it? ... It doesn't matter to us which of you wins ... all right, if Germany does command the seas, it doesn't affect us. . . ." All this although he has no sympathy whatever for Nazidom! At every word he utters, I can see Hitler rubbing his bloodstained hands. The result of all this is that I lie awake. He has murdered my sleep--so I open the doors of Peking with Lin Yutang's key. There are 800-odd pages and each one enthrals you with beauty, humor and interest.

We will soon be docking at Naples. . . .

Vesuvius is letting off very little steam. The dictators are kissing each other somewhere in Italy at this moment. God help us all.

The dangers of the sea are passed and those of the firm ground begin. Naples seemed carnival-gay as we sailed in, with bands playing, flags fluttering. The sun was blazing--luncheon was laid on deck. The bay looked like a poster of itself. For an hour or so we clattered around the town in a fiacre (Naples hasn't heard of rubber tires yet), stopping occasionally to drink coffee.

The smell of it from shops where they were grinding it, met one at every turn. So the myth that Italy is coffeeless explodes. They serve it intensely strong. No one in Naples or Genoa--our next stop--seemed the least concerned with what was brewing on the Brenner Pass. I mean by this that they were not buying papers or evincing any interest in any events if you asked them for their views.

The bookshops in both towns proclaim in gigantic letters across their windows that no one should miss reading Louis Bromfield's The Rains Came, "a book about indestructible India." No other books seemed to be advertised. Now this story is written in a strongly anti-British vein. I enjoyed reading it very much, but twice I remember hurling it to the ground with rage at its prejudice, injustice and ignorance. Goebbels is running this India racket, I am certain of it. Why should at least three questions about India be asked at every one of Duff's lectures in the U. S. A.? Who sends the lecturers from India to America to complain of British rule ? The Indians are not asking for America's support, but the Germans are inciting in the dark anti-British feeling--in Genoa as in Chicago or any other neutral town.

Traveling to Paris showed no sign of war.

No delay, no substitutes, heavy, meaty, buttery meals in abundance. The Government fell with a thud the moment we arrived in Paris. Conversation at dinner stuck to who would be who next day. All were for Reynaud except Henri Bernstein, who considers him a man of such value that his premier-power should be kept for a tougher time.

I walked the streets for a long while.

Paris certainly does not compare with London in warlike appearance. Practically no sandbags. The "blackout" is a blaze. No reassuring balloons pattern the sky, no robot aerial guard, fewer cars, of course. Gasoline is strictly rationed. The Ritz barman told me that they now feed alcohol to the cars.

Alcohol is plentiful here and not restricted to three sale-days a week. Motor and man drink from the same tap.

I went to Molyneux--business appeared to be as usual--less nakedness, more blacks and greys. Patterns are chosen subconsciously, while talking of Sumner Welles or Rumania.

"Suzy," the ultra-fashionable hatshop is the same old chaotic monkey house it always was. The floor like a carpenter's shop, ankle-deep in debris, straws, feathers, spangles and silk flowers. Clients sitting mesmerized before individual mirrors, Sumner Welles at last forgotten, while cunning workwomen pull roses or bows over their right eyes.

The shops of Paris and New York are sensationally different. In America surroundings are designed to soothe and glide and lull you into easy buying. Every size, every shade, every age catered for--but God help you if you should want your own ideas carried out. Here a true creation must be born with labour and pains ... to secure an impudent little lid either from the big popular store or the "Grande Modiste" needs a desperate tussle in a tropically-heated battle-room, heavy with a smell of stale scent and hot hard work . . . screaming like a jay amongst jays . . . still, for those who still care what they look like, it's worth it.

The conversation is the same in Paris as in New York and in London, i.e., how stupid, how inane everyone (themselves included) is, except the enemy. People forget that this is part of war, or of any struggle. In an English election it is always the opponent who has the clever, brilliant, shrewd though wicked leaders and supporters. One's own side, though good intentioned up to a point, is criminally negligent, dense, ill-starred, hopeless.

The French think we are smug. We think the French are no better prepared than we are. The Americans think we are phony.

What is to be done with mankind. . .? Whatever these Allies say, they have never been so firmly knit together, and they know in that lies their salvation. . . .

They go to bed early, the theatres start at 7:30. Henri Bernstein's Elvira is first class and a big success, though those few rich pacifists are afraid it may irritate Hitler.

No one dresses, the war is an excuse for shedding a habit they hated. Mr. James Cromwell is greatly preferred to Lindbergh.

Chestnuts are budding. Chevalier has had a big "war come-back" extolled by poilu and highbrow alike. The French Army's Tipperary is lilting, traditional and very moving.

Tomorrow I return to London's trenches.

All my friends are in France or the Near East. Evelyn Waugh is a marine, Rex Whistler a guardsman, Noel Coward a man of official importance.

Red lanterns hang from the cottages of Italy and Switzerland to remind the passers to pray for peace. This is a war measure that has obtained for centuries. . . . When nightly I come to my prayer for peace I never know how to frame it.

Goodbye--the Clipper's wings are flapping. . . .

* Name deleted by request.

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