Points of View

Herewith are excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain either supplementary to, or corrective of, news previously published in TIME.

The TIME News-Magazine Sept. 5, Pittsburgh, 1925 Pa. Sirs:

I see you have got to putting adv'ts in the front of TIME. Hurrah I Congratulations! I've been reading TIME since the first. I take pride as it has grown up. You deserve all success.

SOL P. COHEN TIME Brooklyn, N. Y. The News-Magazine Sept. 4, 1925 Sirs

I ought not to write at this I time because i am angry and disappointed. I have just picked up the latest copy of TIME. i feel as if I had lost a good friend.

I am nearly eighty. At my time of life one does not make many new friends. For years one of my best friends was the New York Evening Post. My father used to every know Mr. evening when Bryant.* I bought the Post every evening when I left the office. After I retired it was brought to my home. About two of years ago it was bought by Mr. Curtis of Philadelphia, who published the Saturday Evening Post and other caviar. Then I felt as if I had lost a friend.

I don't know what Mr. Curtis did to it. In some way he tried to popularize it. But ever after that I felt that it was not the same, it was commercialized.

About that time. I became acquainted with TIME. It seemed independent and it seemed human in spite of some failings in my sight, and I said to myself: "I've lost one friend, but I'm not too old to make another." From that day to this, TIME has been my friend.

Now my complaint may seem picayune. I find in this week's copy of TIME several pages of advertisements inserted ahead of the reading matter. It looks to me as if TIME, too, is becoming commercialized.

What I have to say to you is this: I have been in business and now I am out of it, and I have seen a good deal of life. I have made "profit" --enough to keep me alive to this age--but what matters to me most now is my friends. You are in business for profit, of course. You doubtless count yourselves lucky get as much advertising as you do for a paper that compared to me in years is a youngster. But do you think you will make any more money will amount to if you lose your friends?

I am not cancelling my subscription, but I am going to watch my friend TIME closely to be lure whether I can recognize him in the future.

POMEROY SMITH

With due deference to the opinions of Subscriber Smith, TIME does not feel that it is becoming "commercialized" by inserting a small amount of advertising in the first of the magazine. With the amount of advertising which TIME now carries, it is felt that the magazine would be better balanced with a certain amount : advertising placed in the front. True, TIME is in business for profit -- enough profit so that it, like subscriber Smith, may grow ripe with years. But it does not toady to advertisers. TIME aims to maintain editorial independence by maintaining financial independence. --Ed.

Chandler Scored

TIME Chicago, Ill. The News-Magazine Aug. 28, 1925

Sirs:

Though I have but recently become a subscriber to TIME, I am already enthusiastic.

I disagree with ex-Subscriber Frank K. Chandler, who, in his letter published in is the a issue of Aug. 31, states that TIME is a "weekly magazine of newsclippings and advertisement, requiring no literary ability" in its compilation.

The account of the disturbance in East Las Vegas, N.M., in the issue of Aug. 31, Page 20, is remarkable for its comprehensiveness. I read a much longer, but less detailed account in the local newspapers detailed account in the local newspapers, but it was left for TIME to give me the facts of the case leading up to the "fracus."

MORRIS W. FINKELSTEIN

TIME Greenville, Miss. The News-Magazine Aug. 30, 1925 Sirs:

I cannot forbear protesting the absurd criticism of TIME which you saw fit to publish in LETTERS, Aug. 31 issue -- from which circumstance it derives its only claim for consideration. Never did I see a more inane, vacuous assertion than that the editing of TIME "is purely a mechanical operation requiring no literary ability." For it seems to me that more cleverness, more brains, go into the composition of a single issue of TIME than any other journal I know. It's so bright, for one thing, that I have definitely decided to cancel my subscription to "our leading humorous, satirical weekly" in its favor, coming to this decision upon reading your delectable excerpts from Harold Bell Wright's latest classic.

What your querulous critic really needs to fulfil his exacting requirements is Liberty--though even there he could not find advertising on the first page of reading matter.

ORVILLE A. WILLIAMSON

"Go Back"

TIME Norfolk, Va. The News-Magazine Aug. 29, 1925 Sirs:

I can't say why it is so, but we don't like our magazines published in the "sticks." For purposes of cheaper printing, etc., you may have TIME printed in Cleveland, or in any other place that may strike your fancy, but give us a New York date line for the home office.

New York is the place we look to for all of our large and best publications, and the most of us do not care to read magazines of the first class emanating from Cleveland, or any other burg. Why, even the back of the first issue received by me from Cleveland came off before I could get the magazine out of my post-office box.

If you want to continue to live and prosper, go back to New York, for your date line at least. It's the psychology of the thing: Ask Harper's, The American. W. S. MORRIS JR.

P. S. Just look how much more address one has to put on the envelope for Cleveland !

TIME believes Subscriber Morris' fears to be unwarranted, because:

1) TIME maintains a New York office -- a better one than it ever had before--part of its staff is still in New York, its editors do and will make frequent trips to New York and Washington, its sources of information are as reliable as ever.

2) TIME (which aims to be national--and even cosmic) prefers to have no date-line--not even a New York one.

3) For address, it is unnecessary to write more than "TIME, Cleveland."

4) TIME has already attended to the matter of faulty cover paper, has sent Subscriber Morris a fresh copy.--ED.

"Strange Words"

TIME Franklin, Mass.

The News-Magazine Aug. 25, 1925

TIME is ever welcome and almost an unalloyed delight, and altogether indispensible. But it would seem if your magazine is to inform the busy man, then the use of simple current English, so far as possible, should be the constant rule. I come across in the issue of Aug. 24, Page 18, Column 2 a very strange word--"bathysophical". What meaning that can convey to those who have little Latin and less Greek I should not venture to say. Search in the dictionaries and Concise Oxford, Webster Century is in vain. The contex would give to one knowing its Greek roots the meaning "deep sea enthusiast". Then why not use that adjective? But "bathysophical" requires some mental conjuring. And then you are uncertain.

I have written you at some length because I value TIME and so have subscribed for two years. And though you did not give a former communication fairest consideration, but rather captious treatment, I am writing again. When 1 write I know whereof I speak and care not to waste both your time and patience as well as my own. But let us be lovers of truth and always verify our references.

CHARLES F. WESTMAN

Original subscriber Westman's point seems to be well taken. It is not TIME'S aim to confuse its readers, but to smooth the way for them. Hereafter (wherever practiced) words difficult will be edited into the lowest terms.--ED.

Two Errors

TIME No. Charlotte, N. C.

The News-Magazine Sept. 1, 1925

Sirs:

In your issue of Aug. 31, Page 16, under the heading EDUCATION -- subheading "Three Cantabs," there are two errors which probably would be passed without comment and absorbed by an unsuspecting public.

First "H. H. Thomas of Sidney, Sussex..... " should be written "H. H. Thomas of Sidney Sussex (college)." As you have it, it would appear that the gentleman lived at Sidney in the county of Sussex, whereas you probably wish to convey the idea that he is from Sidney Sussex college.

Again in the footnote you say that the term "Tripos" is applied especially to mathematics. I think you are confusing this with the term "Wrangler," which was used in the days when the results of Tripos examinations were published in the order of marks gained and in the Mathematical Tripos the men were referred to as "Senior Wrangler," "5th Wrangler" and so on, depending entirely on their position in the list.

Today a man can take a Tripos in almost any set of -ics and -ologies that he may select, it indicates a higher standard of examination than the "Special" and it is only by taking a Tripos that a man can gain an "Honours degree."

GEOFFREY C. BROWN, Christ's College, Cambridge

At the Mouth

The TIME News-Magazine Peoria, Ill. Aug. 28, 1925 Sirs:

Permit me very courteously to observe that Campobello Island is not at the head of the Bay of Fundy as declared in TIME of Aug. 31, Page 17. It is at the mouth.

C. T. BARKER.

"William Cullen Bryant Proprietor New York Evening Post in 1827.-- ED.