Bananas
Sirs:
I wish to thank you for the very flattering article you wrote about me [TIME, Nov. 7].
Personally, there is only one item I object to and that is where I advocate the players should not eat bananas. This should read "unripe bananas" as I have no objection to the fruit when it is ripe.
I have some very good friends in the banana business and I would not care to say something about their business which is not true and which is unfairly unfavorable.
K. K. ROCKNE
Notre Dame, Ind.
Bratton Flayed
Sirs:
In my humble opinion Mr. C. B. Bratton of Waco, Texas, displays a great lack of information in his letter flaying Mr. Newton D. Baker which appears in your Dec. 5 issue of TIME. In his letter he says something about men that held commissions in the A. E. F. From his letter I am not sure that he knows that General Pershing and Vice President Dawes, held commissions in the A. E. F. They did, however, and I know they will be glad to tell him that his letter is absurd. Anyone that reads at all knows in what esteem these two men hold Mr. Baker. . . .
R. F. BIDDLE
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sirs:
C. B. Bratton in his letter to you has the temerity to attempt to speak for every "man that ever held a commission in the A. E. F." and the effrontery to speak insultingly of a man of whom General John J. Pershing recently said: "No man was ever faced with a greater problem than our War Secretary in 1917. . . . He met the situation with great courage, with great intelligence. ... I think I may say that no Secretary of War in American history ever realized the relationship which should exist between the Secretary of War and the Commanding General so completely and understandingly. Orders were given in plain language when I set out and I think Mr. Baker will bear me out that those orders were never changed and never modified. I was given full confidence. ... I ever shall be grateful."--and of whom Vice President Charles G. Dawes said: "The country is beginning at last to take the measure of the Great War President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, and of the greatest Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker. They protected the American Army from political interference. They insisted that promotion should be on merit and let the best man win. And that's what made the American achievement possible." (TIME, Sept. 19). Certainly neither of these gentlemen is what Mr. Bratton calls a "Yes man," and I believe they were in a somewhat better position to know what went on behind the scenes than C. B. Bratton was. Maybe not. The Encyclopaedia Britannica changed its opinion of Mr. Baker; but, as you know, it uses logic and not spleen in arriving at conclusions. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that there was no C. B. Bratton in the Army nor Marine Corps in France, either as an officer or enlisted man.
JOHN W. LANG
Washington, D. C.
Sirs : In connection with the mention of ex-Secretary of War Newton D. Baker as presidential timber, Mr. C. B. Bratton, Waco, Tex., writes (TiME, Letters, Dec. 5) : "No man that ever held a commission in the A. E. F. would vote for him." Mr. Bratton does not know all officers who were in Europe ! Mr. Bratton does not know one-tenth -- not one one-hundredth of the officers who were in Europe ! Mr. Bratton does not know anything about the voting inclinations of any of the officers who were in Europe, except, perhaps, the comparatively infinitesimal few whom he came in personal contact with. Therefore, Mr. Bratton does not know any thing positive about that which he speaks. . . . Each week, I look to TIME for facts and dislike seeing such foolish and unfounded statements appearing therein, even under "Letters."
J. W. CONNER
Indianapolis, Ind.
Borah Flayed
Sirs :
It has pleased Senator Borah, articulate leader of the dry faction of the G. O. P., to issue the following statement:
"This issue (prohibition) will be in the minds and upon the lips of the voters from the day the conventions adjourn until the day the polls close. Everybody, except the deaf and dumb and the candidates, will discuss it."
Forthwith, the statement went into the newspapers, reached the newsmagazines, covered the country, was widely read, the Senator's acumen felt. Ergo, the deaf and dumb cannot be expected, even by our leading statesmen, to discuss anything. Back fifty, one hundred years goes the science of educating the deaf, in the public estimation.
Until now, we have had considerable respect for Senator Borah. . . .
Taking Senator Borah's attitude of mind towards the deaf and dumb as an index of official Washington, we can well understand why Gallaudet College government supported institution of the higher education of the deaf and dumb, is repeatedly denied the financial support of the government adequate to its sore needs. Even our great national leaders cannot get away from the fallacious conception of the deaf and dumb as social nonentities. . . . They apparently cling to the superstition that the deaf and dumb are inarticulate humans, eking out a miserable existence selling lead pencils on the street corners; or worse, are semi-idiots, confined to asylums.
The man whose neighbors are a deaf and dumb couple, owning their home and keeping it up a credit to the neighborhood, sending a flock of well-dressed children to the public school, doing their full duty to society as citizens, supporting the whole by a pay-check truly earned and regularly banked, may think of the couple as an exception. If he will multiply this couple by ten thousand, or more, he will have a more exact conception of the public status of the deaf and dumb.
And as for discussing public questions, the deaf and dumb not only do this intelligently, ,but they are capable even of discussing Senator Borah and his very evident deficiencies.
TOM L. ANDERSON
Editor Midwest News Magazine for the Deaf and popularly classified as "deaf and dumb."
Council Bluffs, la.
"Noses for Character"
Sirs: How many TIME observers were present on the floor at the opening of the U. S. Senate so ably and minutely described in your last issue? My three boys and I much enjoyed reading what each Senator did at the moment when he entered and took his chair. Your men have noses for character--no doubt of that.
ROSCOE E. BURROUGHS
Philadelphia, Pa.
TIME was represented (in the press gallery) by one able observer & assistant.--ED.
Abolish V. of F. W.?
Sirs :
I quote from a recent letter to TIME (Dec. 12) : "The Veterans of Foreign Wars . . . is different from all other ex-service organiza tions in that we still continue to obtain new possible members and are a continuing body. Those last five words, which I have under lined, are of a sinister import. What does the "Junior Vice-Commander" of this organ ization who wrote you mean, if not that the V. of F. W. expect and hope that our country will wage yet another foreign war ? My late husband, the Rev. Jason Parks, was a saintly man devoted to works of peace, and I should not be properly cherishing his mem ory did I not write this letter to you, pro testing with all my might that any organization which proposes to swell its membership with the veterans of future foreign wars should be forthwith abolished! ADA JASON PARKS
Baltimore, Md.
Hearst & Mexico
Sirs:
In the last three weeks the Hearst newspapers have been printing facsimilies of letters reported to have been written by General Calles of Mexico, indicating activities in Nicaragua and Russia, which are interesting, if true, although possibly untimely.
I do not enjoy reading the Hearst papers; I rather rely on "TIME" to keep me informed of news, which is not given by the rather conservative newspapers which I read.
I have found nothing about these "disclosures" in "TIME," and therefore have been put to a good deal of trouble to read them up in the Hearst papers.
Do you not think that this was news ? Certainly if the documents are genuine it is news. I confess a fake dispatch in the Hearst papers is ordinarily not news, but if these are fakes it would seem that the persistence with which they have been brought forward makes them news.
Less important are comments on your current issue of Dec. 5, 1927. On p. 9 your footnote states that John Coolidge visited Miss Florence Trumbull on Thanksgiving. I may be old fashioned, but it seems to me more probable that he visited Mr. and Mrs. Trumbull. . . .
You may remember that last spring I called in question your statement that the Archbishop of Canterbury repeated the Lord's Prayer in Latin at a Convocation. I was so sure that the Archbishop of Canterbury would not use Latin in public that despite your confirmation of the article, I wrote him about it, and received a very polite letter from his Chaplain explaining that the Lord's Prayer always was repeated in Latin at Convocations of the Anglican Church. . . .
ARTHUR HALE
Washington, D. C.
Virtually no notice has been taken by sober publications of the huge Hearst headlines regarding anti-U. S. activity in Mexico. The New York World expressed itself in a derisive cartoon; demanded editorially to know why, if Hearst held authentic documents regarding Mexican bribery of the U. S. press, all names and other possibilities of verification were blacked out when facsimilies appeared in Hearst papers. Mr. Hearst thus dodged his only chance to prove the truth of his "news", and by so doing to force reputable publications to print it or such facts about it as their investigators could assemble. Mr. Hearst published no justification for the dodge. TIME will glorify Hearst enterprise when it is justified--ED.
Opus Maius
Sirs:
You and your staff are usually accurate to the point of trickiness in the use of words. [In the Dec. 5 issue appears: "His message to the 70th Congress was the opus mains of President Coolidge's week."]
I seem to recall, however, that while "major" or "maior" is the comparative, "magnus" is the positive, as "opus magnus" and not "opus maius." Unless there be some trick reference here to Maia, the goddess or month May.
I may be wrong. I am on a newspaper myself and notice that the reporters have a hard time with English, but a terrible time when they wander into a foreign tongue, alive or dead.
R. M. KAUFFMANN
Washington, D. C.
"Maius" is indeed the comparative. TIME gave the President's survey of the whole state of the union the title which Roger Bacon used for his "encyclopedia and organum of the 13th Century," and had TIME meant "great work" it would have said magnum opus, not opus magnus,--ED.