LETTERS
Lawyer Dawes
SIRS:
On the twenty-first page of TIME, Aug. 5 there is a the reference to Ambassador Dawes as a lawyer. I would like to be corrected if I am mistaken, but I am under the impression that he is a banker, well known in Chicago financial circles. . . .
JOSEPH ROSENSTERN Far Rockaway, N.Y.
Banker, violinist, politician, student, diplomatist, orator, composer, Charles Gates Dawes is also a lawyer. He practiced from 1887 to 1894, as neighbor and contemporary of William Jennings Bryan and John Joseph Pershing, in Lincoln, Nebr.--ED.
Idaho's Thames
SIRS:
Your a recent review of Hanky and myself contains a hideous pair of errors. Won't you please correct these?
In the first place, let us deny that "Novelist Williamson's" first name is pronounced as you have said. Thames is pronounces with a "th" sound, as one syllable, and to rime with James.
In the second place, I was born in Idaho, not in Iowa. I refuse to be born in Iowa.
THAMES WILLIAMSON Sitka, Alaska
Hawaiian Guidebook
SIRS:
. . . The lack of a reliable guide book was met last Fall through publication by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin of a very complete tourist guide titled All About Hawaii, very amply illustrated with photographs, maps and tables, carrying also historic and contemporary facts and statistics. . . .
S. P. TROOD Los Angeles Steamship Co. Advertising Department Los Angeles, Calif.
Fearless "Record"
SIRS:
AS EDITOR OF LOS ANGELES RECORD I ASK CORRECTION OF STATEMENT IN SOUTHEAST CORNER OF PAGE THIRTY AUGUST FIFTH ISSUE THAT QUOTE LOCAL NEWSPAPER LONG FOES OF LABOR UNIONISM CONTINUED TO SUPPRESS NEWS UNQUOTE STOP WHILE AMBIGUOUS THIS EVIDENTLY WAS MEANT TO AND WOULD BE READ AS INCLUDING ALL NEWSPAPERS STOP LOS ANGELES RECORD MOST INFLUENTIAL OF ALL SIX ENGLISH DAILIES HAS NEVER BEEN QUOTE FOE OF LABOR UNIONS UNQUOTE AS ANY LABOR LEADER CAN TELL YOU STOP LIKEWISE IT HAS NOT SUPPRESSED NEWS OF EQUITY STRUGGLE BUT HAS FULLY PROMINENTLY AND FEARLESSLY PRESENTED NEWS OF BOTH SIDES STOP ASK FRANK GILMORE AND WILL HAYS STOP
H. B. R. BRIGGS Los Angeles, Calif.
White Dominicans
SIRS:
In TIME, July 15, p. 4, Mr. Louis Estell Fagan II, writes: "You might remove Abyssinia and substitute Dominican Republic."
I am ashamed to have to explain to a major of the U. S. Army (I am an American citizen) that the Dominicans as well as most of the population of Latin America are descendants of Spaniards, and consequently, it denotes quite a limited knowledge, the one who says this is a Negro republic.
Maybe Mr. Fagan ignores this was the first white settlement in the New World: that the first university and the first church in this continent were established in the Dominion Republic. He may also ignore that Columbus' remains are kept in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo.
If Mr. Fagan was in Santo Domingo during the American occupation he was witness of many a wedding of his fellow-in-arms with native girls, not blacks but whites.
There is of course in the Island, as well as in the U. S. and all other countries of this continent, a small percentage of Negroes, descendants of slaves brought in by white settlers.
If Mr. Fagan was here during the American occupation, he might be able to write something about the assassination of the 3,000 natives by the American soldiers in less than two years; this will be of interest to many American citizens residing in this country who never have been able to understand such a slaughter.
HENRY HAMMOND Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
White Pants
SIRS:
We are enclosing an article, from the July 23, 1929 issue of the Ashland Independent which we feel will be of special interest to your readers. Certainly the wearing of white pants by workers around a steel mill is an innovation. . . .
RALPH PEARSON Middletown, Ohio.
Birth of Dada
SIRS:
In the issue of TIME for Aug. 5, it is stated in the review of The Eater of Darkness that Dadaism was "born at the Cabaret Voltaire, Paris, 1916." This would give rise to the erroneous impression that Dada was a movement of French origin.
The Dada Movement was founded in the Cafe Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916 by a group of five literati; two Germans, two Rumanians and an Alsatian. The word, Dada (which is apparently a child's name for a hobby horse) was first applied by this group to one of the female singers in derision, and afterwards to a movement that derided the contemporary arts. Later the centre of the movement was shifted by Tristan Tzara, one of the founders, to Paris where it became united with a French movement of a somewhat similar nature.
HUBERT WILCOX
Howell Refreshed
SIRS:
I was greatly pleased to find in TIME, Aug. 5, your comments on the dismissal of George Lloyd as High Commissioner of Egypt.
It is very refreshing to me to observe that all I have said concerning him in my book: Egypt's Past, Present and Future (just off the press) has been verified by his own Governments--Baldwin's and MacDonald's. ''Howellhaven''
J. MORTON HOWELL* Bellefontaine, Ohio.
"49 to 0, Favah Them"
SIRS:
Your chat about batting batsmen, TIME, July 29, p. 41, reminds me of a story that Dan Logan tells. It may interest TIME-readers.
The chocolate cotton pickers from Riverside Plantation had come down to Vanceville to play the also-dark potato diggers of Sunny Side for the colored baseball championship of Bossier Parish, La.
The game was noisily underway when Mr. Eugene G. Morehead, accompanied by Mr. Harold Levy, then but recently come South from Down East, drove up. To a young and enthusiastic looking darky who approached, Mr. Morehead asked for the score.
"49 to nuthin', Boss, favah them.''
Mr. Levy, not used to our darkies, but desiring to appear sympathetic, ejaculated:
"My Gracious, they have you hopelessly beat!"
With an indulgent but respectful smile their informant explained:
"Naw, suh; dat's all right. We'll beat de stuffen out'n dem. Us ain't got to bat, yet."
VAL IRION New Orleans, La.
Amicable Life
SIRS:
Since nobody from Waco has called your hand regarding skyscrapers in U. S. containing 21 or more stories (TIME, July 15) and believing with Texas Power and Light Co. that Texans should talk Texas, I hasten to inform you that the home office building of the Amicable Life Insurance Co. of Waco, Texas, has 22 stories.
This building is a landmark in this part of the state and the following story is told of a stranger in Waco asking the best way to go to San Angelo:
Stranger: "Friend, how can I get to San Angelo?"
Native: "You know where the Amicable Building is. Well go to that corner and turn west for exactly 500 miles and you will be in San Angelo."
J. H. LANDERS Temple, Tex.
Cow Town Diesel
SIRS:
In Ashland, Kan., a small "cow town," is an 120-h.p. semi-Diesel oil burning engine, connected direct with a generator supplying electric current for the town's municipally-owned electric light plant which a few years ago operated continuously for one year and three months. When shut down neither the engine nor the generator had developed any faults.
I have often wondered if this performance was not a world's record for continuous performance by a practical, everyday piece of power machinery. Has TIME cognizance of a longer one?
EDWARD S. KENNEDY Kansas City, Mo.
Have TIME-readers such cognizance?--ED.
Tacoma's Clulow
SIRS:
On May 13. or thereabouts. W.C.T.U. state vice president, Mrs. Clulow, Tacoma. Wash., at a district convention held at Winthrop, Wash., stated that the reason why the Volstead Act has so much been enforced and and so many more convictions were being made under the admirable "Five and Ten Act'' was because the prohibition enforcement had been taken out of the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department and had been put into the hands of that fearless, God-fearing little Methodist, Mabel Walker Willebrandt. That the reason why Andrew Mellon did not enforce prohibition was because he had large stores of distillery goods which he was anxious to dispose of and was slowly doing so and because he still held a large number of distillery stocks.
TIME made the statement that he had long since disposed of his stocks. If he does not have the distillery goods, please notify Mrs. Clulow to that effect, so that she may cease to go about the country making false statements, that she may learn to verify statements before making them.
(Mrs.) HILMA M. NYE Miles City, Mont.
Tacoma's Clulow is doubly in error. Secretary Mellon long since sold his distillery stocks. Prohibition enforcement has not yet been transferred from Treasury to Justice.--ED.
Buzzardless St. Louis
Sirs:
"The buzzards that soar over St. Louis" (TIME, Aug. 5, page 47) may have been "perplexed" but their existence is real news to residents here. I have lived in St. Louis 27 years and have yet to see a buzzard within 50 miles.
These must be figments of the imagination of a writer who has yet to visit the far West. No doubt he pictures these foul birds of prey feeding on the bleaching bones of horses shot down by painted Indians in attacks on covered wagons just outside our Forest Park. We do keep our mongooses there but they don't fly.
Ask him to look us up on the map the next time he comes home from a movie shot on the Mojave Desert and see how far we are from the haunts of the "buzzard."
GEORGE H. SHARE
St. Louis, Mo.
Zoologist William Pursley of the St. Louis City Zoo attests the fact that St. Louis has buzzards. Lambert Field airmen agree that "the St. Louis Robin played tag with plenty of them."--ED.
"Lexington's" Run
SIRS:
In the first column on p. 22 of TIME, July 29, as a part of your article about the BREMEN, the following statement appears, "Last week the BREMEN, on her first day out from Cherbourg sped 687 miles for a new world's one-day record."
Perhaps this means a record for passenger-carrying ships; because the LEXINGTON, on her record-breaking run from San Pedro, Calif., to Honolulu, T.H., June 9-12, 1928, ran the entire distance of 2,226 miles in 72 hours and 36 minutes, the record day's run being 768 miles. believe this is still the world's record for any type of ship.
JOHN K. YOUNG Storekeeper second class, U. S. Navy U.S.S. Lexington San Pedro, Calif.
* U.S Minister to Egypt in 1929.