A National Lottery?

Sir:

The congressional uproar about gambling [TIME, May 8] should make one point perfectly clear: there should be a national lottery in this country.

A national lottery would help to eliminate the underworld from gambling and serve to divert considerable sums of money into the national treasury.

This suggestion, of course, will be opposed by the professionally unvirtuous and the professionally virtuous.

J. D. FORBES

Crawfordsville, Ind.

A Pipe Dream?

Sir:

Hail to Herbert Hoover for his head-clearing lecture on the United Nations [TIME, May 8], For those whose cries of pain followed, a volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales . . .

At present the U.N. is Russia's most effective weapon in the hot & cold war . . . It lulls Americans into a pipe dream of security while their Government economizes its way toward defeat in World War III.

NORM BRISBIN

Pullman, Wash.

Ducal Rhubarb

Sir:

I enjoyed your article about the Clameur de Haro in the Isle of Guernsey [TIME, May 8] . . . Perhaps you should have added some notes.

. . . In the shadowy world of loth Century legend, there were also the Duke Haroux and Childe Harolde, and the origin of the clameur probably is shared by some grouping or syncrisis of several of these noble characters.

The characteristic cry, "Haro! Haro!" . . . became the especial property of the troubadours, clowns and jongleurs . . . Today, it is the familiar circus cry, "Hay Rube!" or "Hey Rube!" which calls on everyone connected with the circus to come to the aid of the one to whom wrong is done.

And when Leo [Durocher] the Lip dashes onto the field to claim "Somebody done me wrong!"--or "On me fait tort!"--he is likewise raising the clameur, which is still known on the sport pages and the radio by a vestige of the original phrase: it's a "Hay Rube Bob !"--or a "Rhubarb" . . .

ADDISON SMITH

Los Angeles, Calif.

Contented Lions

Sir:

TIME, May 1: "In western India's Forest of Gir where lions roam"--LIONS? Sir!

D. H. CLIFFORD (Ex-Indian Army)

Ismailia, Egypt

P: At last count, some 200 lions were roaring contentedly in the Forest of Gir, their last stronghold on the subcontinent, where they are protected by the state government.--ED.

Street Scene

Sir:

What happened to "critically wounded" Jacob Wasserman, the Manhattan jeweler shot in a holdup [TIME, May 8] ?

ARTHUR DOLE

Columbus, Ohio

Sir:

Not just another "Manhattan Street Scene"--and far more than mere dramatic photography: Jacob Wasserman died of the wounds he received.

Wasserman had survived the Nazi holocaust in Europe, but had lost his entire family. He came to the U.S. in 1946, and for four years he and his wife struggled to retain some form of economic security. Six weeks ago they had opened that little jewelry shop.

What six years under Hitler could not do was so neatly accomplished on that Saturday in Manhattan.

RABBI ASHER DOV KAHN

Tulsa, Okla.

Brahms, Bop & BBC

Sir:

Mr. George Lasker of [Boston's] WBMS lays the blame for the abandonment of Brahms for bop squarely at the feet of the American advertiser [TIME, May 8]. But he errs in stating that radio commercials offend the esthetic tastes of the listening audience. It is not the esthetic tastes that are insulted, but rather the normal, ordinary, human intelligence . . .

Although I am definitely against the welfare state in any form, if government ownership [of] radio stations . . . can raise the American networks to the intellectual and cultural level of the BBC, then I would be the first to advocate such a measure . . .

JOSEPH A. MORAN

Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Oo! La! La!

Sir:

French actress Paula Dehelly may "dub" [French dialogue] for Bergman, Hepburn, et al. [TIME, May 8], but you were wrong to include Merle Oberon. I recently completed an on-the-set writing assignment for a made-in-France film (Pardon My French) starring Miss Oberon--a double-version with each scene shot first in English and then in French--and I can vouch for Miss Oberon's mellifluent rendition of my English speeches in French translation . . .

ROLAND KIBBEE

Los Angeles, Calif.

P: TIME did not say that Merle Oberon, Ingrid Bergman or other stars could not speak French. Nevertheless, Paula Dehelly was Cinemactress Oberon's French voice in Temptation, That Uncertain Feeling and This Love of Ours.--ED.

News That's Fit

Sir:

TIME, the best news magazine in the country, featuring [May 8] the New York Times, the best newspaper in the world, constitutes a rare journalistic treat for any avid reader.

Perhaps if more newspapers and magazines followed policies less divergent from those of TIME and the New York Times, there would be a higher type of public official occupying governmental positions from the local to the international levels.

Congratulations . . .

R. H. ADAMS

Nashville, Tenn.

Sir:

Your story was as dull as the Times.

A. SWET

Chicago, Ill.

Sir:

. . . Six days out of the week I would read the Herald Tribune; Lester Markel wins on the seventh.

I would suggest that for a week--but no longer--the Times and the New York Daily News interchange their editorial staffs. It would be refreshing to see Dick Tracy and "Voice of the People" in the Times. Both papers would be better for the transfusion . . .

If you would like to see a really good newspaper, subscribe to the Kansas City Star.

DAVID C. BRAIN

Mission, Kans.

P:TIME does.--ED.

Sir

. . . Your article brought back memories of my days at the Columbia University Journalism School, where the Times was our 'Bible," and where, when our Timesmen-instructors' backs were turned, we sang:

There is no sex, there are no crimes,

Featured in the New York Times;

Of entertainment not a hint

In all the news that's fit to print.

MINA COSTIN

South Bend, Ind.

Sir

. . . During the war a friend of mine was temporarily located in a certain city, and due to housing conditions, had to take residence in a section of the city--to say the least, not of his choice. His wife, being the type who makes the best of any situation, one morning said to her neighbor, as they were both weeding a flower bed. "We take the Sunday New York Times, and if you would like it, we will be glad to let you and your husband have it after we have finished." To her complete astonishment, her neighbor said: "No thank you, as we don't know a soul in New York" .

CALDER B. VAUGHAN

Bexley, Ohio

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