Barber's Consternation

Sirs:

As contrasted with TIME-snoozer Brown (LETTERS, Oct. 15), I saw last evening the champion TIME addict. He insisted upon reading TIME much to the consternation of the barber, while being SHAVED. I think that's the limit.

V. G. STRICKLAND

Germantown, Pa.

Subscriber Brown fell asleep in Council Bluffs, Iowa, while reading TIME. He has not stated what bored him.--ED.

Anderson Flayed

Sirs:

I hope Mr. Anderson feels better after plagiarizing a cheap, trashy, vulgar poem and sending to TIME with the suggestion that it is the "Texas version" of the presidential campaign. If I may use language as vulgar as he--what the hell does he know about the "Texas version"? He gives his address as Los Angeles.

I am a firm believer in straightforward honesty and uprightness. I don't believe Mr. Anderson is very confident in his prediction of a landslide for Hoover. I believe he is afraid Smith will be elected. I believe he is another Republican who is afraid of a beating and resorts to the dastardly act of creating vile propaganda to prevent it.

If Al Smith is as bad as some of the "Mr. Andersons" say, then I'm for hanging him. There is little doubt in my mind but Herbert Hoover will be elected: but as to the "Texas version"--well, I'm afraid Mr. Anderson's poem will have no influence.

ZACK ZACKERS

Houston, Texas.

Scurrilous

Sirs:

Please discontinue sending copies of TIME to this address. The tone of your magazine is not only hostile but insulting to members of the Catholic Church as the scurrilous verse on page 4, issue of Oct. 8 proves. TIME was recommended to me by you as a magazine of high standard but I find it unfit to be placed in the hands of our teachers and pupils.

SISTER MARY BASIL, O. P.

Watertown, Mass.

The lines which vexed Sister Mary Basil were:

. . . When Catholics rule the United States

And the Jews grow a straight nose;

When Pope Pius is head of the Ku Klux Klan,

In the land of Uncle Sam--

Then Al Smith will be President

And the Country won't be worth a dam. . . .

(Alvin G. Anderson)--ED.

Putrid Soul

Sirs:

Please print the following as a counter to Mr. Alvin G. Anderson's attack on the Democratic nominee:

When your dear man Count 'Oover

Has won or lost the coveted goal,

And Hell is sizzling pleasantly over

Your bigoted, ignorant, putrid soul . . .

[Succeeding lines unprintable]

Apropos of the little Irish ditty "The pig in the parlor;" has Alvin G. Anderson heard that little one "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

A. LANDERS

San Francisco, Calif.

"Speach"

Sirs:

In a parabolic curve the Hoover procession (mounted on the late models of General Motors) swung through Cambridge from Charlestown to Boston.

At Harvard Square a scattered crowd of Dowager Ladies, shop clerks and students waved their hats and handkerchiefs, shouted, "Speach." The nominee would not speak. The cars moved on. Into the line of march darted a small car bearing across its windshield "Al Smith." Loud were the cheers, and long.

Ten minutes later the Yard Cop was saying to the janitor of Greys, "Yea, I saw him. Yea, looks just like his pichures. He wouldn't speak, his wife was with him. Yea, too bad."

M. H. HILTON

Cambridge, Mass.

Signs

Sirs:

The following signs appeared on an automobile in Boston:

H2OOVER ALE SMITH

A. M. COLTON

Boston, Mass.

Seven Corrections

Sirs:

Issue No. 16. A few corrections:

1. Column 3, page 15. "Dole" is good canonical English and not slang.

2. Column 1, page 16. "Wildebeest" is good Boer Dutch for the South African antelope, which the Hottentots called the "gnu," the spelling being as nearly as possible the English equivalent of the Hottentot nasal sound, and which name the Cape English accepted.

3. Column 2, page 20. Alfonso XIII is not "weak-chinned," either as a part of his physiognomy or of his character. Within his kingly prerogatives and the limitations both of Constitution and precedent, he conforms. Outside of that he has on numerous occasions shown strength of character and purpose.

4. Column 3, page 25. It was not Cartoonist Powers whose pen identified the late Marcus Alonzo Hanna with the dollar sign. It was Homer Davenport.*

5. Column 2, page 40. "Hoofs" is the more acceptable plural for "hoof." Incidentally, less is known about the slumber habits of horses than of any other domestic animal. I have been around horses for over sixty years and do not remember ever to have actually seen a horse asleep. Certainly they require very little sleep.

6. Occasionally TIME uses "verbal" when --oral" is the correct word for a spoken statement.

7. I wish you would have your type-founders get you up a lower-case "&." It would ease the pain of many of us old-time printers, and decidedly improve the appearance of the couplet. The Spanish use of "y" as in "Gomez y Soto" to indicate the paternal and maternal names of an individual gives a much better appearance than would the use of a capital "Y."

HERBERT JANVRIN BROWNE

Long-Range Weather Forecast Service

Washington, D. C.

Wailing Wall

Sirs:

In your issue of Oct. 8, under the caption "Palestine,'' you indulge in ridicule of what millions of Jews and of sympathetic Christians regard as a custom worthy of respect. It is the religious service observed for centuries by the Jews of Jerusalem at the "Wailing Wall," the last remnant of Solomon's Temple. . . . You have treated the occurrence as humorous, and, apparently greatly pleased with the term, have at least three times in a short article referred to the outraged worshippers as "ululators," and, to subject them to further contempt, say "They screeched, they snorted, they piped, they yauped."

Am I wrong in believing that there is a limit which should restrain the efforts of professional humorists?

Louis MARSHALL

New York City.

TIME, never professionally humorous, regrets the semblance of humor which marred its factual report of what occurred when Jewish worshippers were dragged (some by the beard) from the Wailing Wall by brutal Arab police. The report chiefly concerned physical violence. It concerned only incidentally a religious custom which, on other occasions, TIME has described to the satisfaction of many a devout Jew.--ED.

Malice or Idiocy ?

Sirs:

For some time past I have noticed in TIME some earmarks of antiSemitism, but it is not my habit to rush into print. However, I could not pass by in silence your last issue (Oct. 15) where at least one of your editors seems to have thrown off the mask.

In reporting the Massena episode (which, by the way, you placed in the department of Religion as if ritual murder really had any connection with the Jewish religion) you say: "Long after the death of Moses Jews celebrated their Passover with the death of lambs, and in the Ghettos of walled cities, there were bloody marks upon the doors."

Now permit me to enlighten your omniscient Religious Editor. The command to put the blood of the pascal lamb on the two door-posts and on the lintel (Exodus 12, 7) was meant only for that one time, i. e. the time of the actual exodus. This is the accepted opinion of all Talmudic authorities and it is also self evident, since the mark was meant as a signal for the destroying-angel who killed the first born of Egypt to pass over the houses of the Israelites, hence, in subsequent generations when there was no destroying-angel killing Egyptian first born, there was no need of marking Jewish doors.

However, we will let this pass as pardonable ignorance. But there is something also in the same article which can only be attributed to downright malice or idiocy. Your Editor says further:

"In the middle ages when the Jews were hated most bitterly by Christians, the legend arose that the blood upon their doors was that of Christian children whom Jews deemed the most suitable sacrifice to their Jehovah."

And on this your learned Editor comments: "True or not, to the legend can be traced many recorded persecutions, etc."

"True or not," ye gods! So your learned Religious Editor is not really certain in his own mind whether or not Jews slaughter Christian children to their Jehovah! And it is he who is charged with providing religious information to your Christian and Jewish readers!

SAMUEL RABINOWITZ

President of Rabbinical Seminary of America

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Subscriber Rabbi President Rabinowitz is unduly sensitive, hence unduly caustic. Pogroms were organized by Christians who believed that Jews killed children, which is all that TIME intended to indicate.--ED.

* Cartoonist Powers claims credit for this famed identification.