LETTERS

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.

Applesauce

Sirs:

I am growing old but duties require me to keep in touch with momentous issues of the world. TIME for two years has spared my feeble eyes much labor among papers and magazines in sifting for me the gold from the sand.

I have noticed letters of complaint but heretofore I have had none to make. But how cruelly you have betrayed my trust in you. With your flippant sarcasm!

In your issue for Feb. 22, p. 18, you have an article on the sincere religious words of Bishop Brown. Why must you show your irreverence, your sacrilegious snippery by appending to it in parenthesis, "Applesauce?"

Gentlemen, may the Lord deal gently with you and forgive you. I am too human.

SILAS R. CLINTON

Columbus, Ohio

The word within the parenthesis was NOT "Applesauce." Let Subscriber Clinton look again. The word was "applause." - Ed. Indispensable

Sirs: Enclosed find a Calendar with my subject for next Sunday, "Time's Titillations." This does not refer to TIME but to "Father Time." However TIME is such a fine revelation of Life's reactions that I consider it indispensable each week before going into the pulpit. I do not speak hastily but as an "original subscriber." TIME not only titillates. It reveals for inspiration the Soul struggle of humanity.

FRED ALBAN WEIL

Church of the Presidents Quincy, Mass.

*Completed in 1828. So named because President John Adams, his son, President John Quincy Adams and their wives are buried therein. Quincy, Mass., is named after John Quincy, maternal greatgrandfather of John Quincy Adams, and donor of the town's site. - Ed.

Uncluttered

Sirs:

I am enclosing your TIME subscription card signed.

It is indeed a pleasure to get an introductory plan of a magazine, uncluttered with a million free offers, for which of course we pay.

F. RAEMOND CHANT

Jamestown, N. Y.

Nerves

Sirs:

... I have yet to see any reference in TIME to things German that wasn't "guttural." For instance in TIME, Feb. 22, p. 12. ". . . an official condemnation of Mussolini which they voted with guttural acclaim." Of course the German language is guttural, but did the adjective improve the above sentence one bit ? I rather think it didn't. It "gets on my nerves."

HARVEY S. BRAND

Detroit, Mich.

Ass

Sirs: Why call a man an ass when there is always the ever-present danger that there is another one hanging around for you to ride, as G. A. Tibbetts,* Bangor, Me., might as well do, when he speaks of "the battle of Valley Forge," (TIME, Feb. 22). Who ever before heard of a battle at Valley Forge? It was a camp ground.

MALCOLM H. GANSER

Norristown, Pa.

Spawn of Treason

Sirs:

Kindly have my name withdrawn from your subscription list.

Attached article on "Bergdoll" is in first number received by me.

Your editorial policy would appear to be one of sympathy and pity for this "arch-slacker." You also apparently know as little as I do about the motives or backers of "Sachs," yet you are ready to impinge him as a persecutor of this spawn of treason and desertion.

I don't care to have a paper of such un-American spirit in my home.

WALTER M. LEONARD

Captain M. R. C., U. S. A., Member American Legion, Member Sons of the American Revolution.

P. S. This opinion was concurred in by a half dozen people whom I discussed the matter with.

Cleveland, Ohio.

Evidently the ex-subscriber misinterpreted the item. TIME has no sympathy for Slacker Bergdoll, - ED.

Yacht

Sirs:

CONVENTION ! With what complete sway it rules us! How inexorable its mandates I refer to the footnote on p. 20 of TIME, Feb. 22. It, in turn, refers to a man who spends most of his time on his yacht, at sea.

When this man of eminence found that life at sea served his personal and business aims best, he had a yacht especially constructed for his purposes. (It is not unlike all other yachts except in the matter of strength, reserve engines, large fuel and water-storage facilities, and provides a comfortable, humane habitation for all on board, inclusive even of the sailors. No, there are no "padded decks!")

When he boarded his yacht, he gave but one instruction: that its discipline and etiquet should be that of a well-ordered HOME, rather than that of a ship of any sort.

What more natural? And yet, because it isn't customary, it has dumfounded everyone.

Convention! Bow down and have peace.

H. L. SMITHTON

Secretary to E. W. Scripps Cincinnati, O.

TIME commented as follows re E. W. Scripps: "He founded the Scripps-McRae syndicate of 28 newspapers. Aged 71, he is a hermit-millionaire, a sea hermit (like the late Publisher Joseph Pulitzer) sailing the seven seas on a yacht with padded decks. Again like Pulitzer, he cannot bear noise; his officers run his crew by dumb show. He smokes 50 cigars daily, sits in the saloon while two women alternately read to him. Satiated, he calls for his checkerboard. He cruises a course mapped to keep the Ohio in balmy climes. Last week he was forced to go ashore at Cape Town while the Ohio was dry-docked." - ED. Anti-Tobacco

Sirs:

The magazine, TIME, which is coming to the Chaffey Library and highly appreciated by our student body, is carrying advertising matter of tobacco and especially cigarets. I want to be frank and tell you that I do not think this is right when the magazine goes before thousands of boys and girls, young men and women of our schools. It would, no doubt, do for older people but for young people it is a different matter. We have more than a thousand young folks in our school and a large percent of them read TIME. We are doing all we possibly can to overcome these evil influences and to have a paper or magazine in our library that advocates just what we are working against is something we do not plan to uphold.

TIME carries so much advertising matter that it seems this small amount given to tobacco and cigarets might be eliminated. We hope you will give this question some consideration and will see your way clear to discontinue that feature of advertising matter.

WILBUR A. FISKE,

Librarian, Chaffey Library Ontario, Calif.

Let those who believe that children should be completely separated from the grown-up world hide from them each copy of TIME.- ED.

*Subscriber Tibbets called Rupert Hughes "stupid ass." - Ed.