Fishbowl v. Pickle Jar
Sirs:
Can it be that the historic jar rushed from Philadelphia's Independence Hall to Washington with so much ceremony for the draft lottery was not the one used in 1917? In History of the World War by Frank H. Simonds, Vol. IV, p. 41, there is a photograph entitled "Drawing the First Number" purporting to show Secretary of War Baker pulling out the first of 10,500 capsules. However, the jar is definitely not the one illustrated in TIME, Nov. 11. Mr. Baker's 1917 jar is shaped like a fishbowl and has a small mouth whereas the jar shown in TIME looks like a large glass wastebasket.
Can you throw any light on this mixup?
JOHN QUENTIN RODGERS
Lumberville, Pa.
> TIME did not err; the picture in Simonds' history is miscaptioned. The bowl pictured in TIME, resembling a pickle jar, which was used for the 1940 drawing, was the one used for the first drawing in 1917. Pictures were taken of Secretary Newton D. Baker taking out the first number, but they were not good. By the time of the second drawing in June, 1918, the pickle jar had already been installed in Philadelphia's Independence Hall. So for the second drawing a fishbowl was obtained and used, and Secretary Baker was again first to put in his hand. Pictures of this second drawing were so good that they leaked into history books with captions indicating it was the first.--ED.
Bombs on London
Sirs:
The bombing of London irritates me less than TIME'S article on the Battle of Britain (Sept. 23). You say: ". . . Busses stopped . . . cabbies ducked." This is sheer nonsense for I have ridden many times in both busses and taxis during a raid.
At the beginning of the Luftwaffe the decision on stopping busses in a raid was left to the judgment of the individual drivers. Few stopped. Today none stop until a street "spotter" gives the signal.
Taxis are fewer than before the war, due both to petrol rationing and raids, but I've always been able to get one. On Oct. 4, I taxied from Blackfriars to Harley Street during a raid. Suddenly the guns went into action overhead. My driver turned to me and said: "Madam, the raiders are overhead, would you care to take cover?" "Not unless you want to," I replied. He withered me with a look and drove on. This is the rule, not the exception.
You do London a grave disservice with such misrepresentation of facts. . . . You suggest that Londoners are living on the last spurt of energy which so often galvanizes a dying man. This is untrue and unworthy of TIME.
ELIZABETH BURTON London
>TIME'S account described the first week of mass daylight raids in mid-September, when Londoners' reactions showed they were not yet bomb-hardened. They did undoubtedly harden, and they naturally grew cockier when mass daylight raids stopped after the British defense had rung up high daily scores in planes shot down. Far from cocky is the frank recital below of a man whose home was hit.--ED.
Sirs:
Attached is an extract from a letter I received lately from England. .
W. ALVIN SCHAFFNER
New York City
Oct. 28 Dear Al,
. . . When I get letters like the one you wrote from Vermont I don't know whether I want to curse and blaspheme and damn you to hell for having peace and quiet and normality or whether I want to cry for the folly and stupidity of what we are trying to live through. I got bombed out of the place where I was living after a night when the bombs whistled down for five hours without stopping and I spent the night on my belly cursing Hitler and Chamberlain. ... I escaped with nothing worse than a black eye (imagine how ridiculous--a black eye for five hours of bombs!) and then I moved out into the country for a week to get my breath back.
I couldn't stand the morning and evening commuting though, and the uncertainty as to whether there would be any trains or not and if the lines had been bombed, where, and whether I would be able to do a journey of less than 30 miles in two hours or seven. So I've come back to London and just cower every night and keep on cursing. The truth is that after that famous night I lost my nerve, and it isn't a pretty thing to lose your nerve, as well as all your clothes. It takes time to get adjusted to this sort of thing, and I don't think I'd have lost my nerve even under that bombing, if I'd had any sort of sleep for the previous three weeks.
I find it quite hard to sleep with bombs coming down--you hear them first rather like a rushing express train and then the rush changes into a scream and the scream comes nearer and nearer and then changes into an explosion that rocks everything. When it actually hits . . . the place you are in, it is like the wrath of God and it takes minutes before you get the dust and the dirt out of your eyes and mouth and realize with something like surprise that you are still all in one piece. . . . It is a treat to look through TIME and see some real newspaper work at last. The stories don't contain much that we don't know about but they are so well written and so well balanced that reading them, I realize what a lot of bloody bad journalism we have had to put up with in the last few months. When I see you next I am going to work on you just to prove to you what a swell job of journalism TIME is. . . .
Exempt Criminals
Sirs:
In my 20 years of teaching criminal law, I have never until today felt obliged to point out any advantages in criminality. . . . The War Department's announcement [concerning criminals and the draft] has changed all that. My students may be subjected by draft to mud and cooties, to battle, suffering and death, but the kindly War Department will not subject their innocence to contact with ex-convicts. . . . Men who have been convicted of felony and have been discharged after punishment, or who have been placed on probation without imprisonment, will not even be accepted in the draft army, lest the other candidates for death "be forced in the close intimacy of barracks life to associate with a man who has been convicted."
Was there ever a greater profit offered for crime? Money return from thievery or fraud, if one is not caught; a year or two in jail, or possibly only probation, if one is convicted--then absolute immunity from the hardships and danger into which every law-abiding young man may be compelled.
Even if the ruling should be thought not likely to beget new criminals, it is a slap in the face to all those socially thoughtful souls who have so long been preaching the accepted doctrine that once-punished wrongdoers must necessarily revert to crime if their punishment is permitted forever to stigmatize them as unfit for social contact. . . .
JOHN B. WAITE
University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Mich.
> The exclusion of persons who have been convicted of a felony from military service is no mere War Department ruling. It dates back to a law passed in March 1833, last amended in 1877. Let Professor Waite console himself with the facts 1) that in modern warfare the death toll is often higher among civilians than in the armed forces, 2) that draftees are not "candidates for death." They are candidates for a year's training, which so far as it is successful will teach them how to win battles without being killed, for there is no more important military lesson than that wars are usually lost by the side which has the largest percentage of casualties.--ED.
Senior for Horses
Sirs:
[In] your issue of Dec. 2 you state that Absorbine Jr. is used to rub down horses. This is incorrect. Absorbine is used for this purpose; Absorbine Jr. for humans.
PAUL MARBURY
New York City
Strange Instrument
Sirs:
Is the opinion which you have of us Colombians really so dismal?
It is true that Alexander Brailowsky did not give his concert in Barranquilla, but it was not for lack of a piano, but because the one in the theatre was in bad shape.
We are poor but not dunces.
C. DE EDER Palmira, Colombia
> TIME'S brief mention (Nov. 4) was based on cabled dispatches. What actually happened, according to Pianist Brailowsky, was this:
Well aware that pianos in South American towns are often less than perfect, Brailowsky arranged for a Steinway to be shipped for the Barranquilla concert. When it failed to arrive, the Barranquilla impresario assured the pianist that he had a good instrument on hand. Brailowsky went to the theatre before the concert to try it, found a four-foot-six miniature grand. When he struck one key, another key mysteriously went down also.
When he pressed the loud pedal the soft pedal went down too. . . . After the eager audience had assembled, Brailowsky demonstrated a few of the instrument's quirks. A music lover stood up, shouted, "No, no, that will never do for Brailowsky!"-- ED.
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