Greatest Flight

Sirs: Will TIME kindly report the greatest flight-- as to number in air at one time--of airplanes on record? See TIME, p. 12, issue of May 19, third column, last sentence: "Never before had so large a fleet of planes flown so far or so well together." Correct perhaps as to "so far" and "so well together" but not as to number. While stationed at Nixville, near Verdun, late in 1918 (September or October, I believe), many American and Allied soldiers including the 5th U. S. Division and others in battle around Montfaucon enjoyed the thrill that came from a flight reported (London Daily Mail, Army Edition) to include 310 Allied planes of all kinds and descriptions. First came a wave or "v" formation of seven planes. This was not unusual. Slightly interesting. In a moment, another similar formation-- still not too unusual. Within a few minutes, dozens of such formations--the air was full of them. Hats, mess kits and everything else were going into the air--we felt certain the end of the War was near. The only report I ever read on that flight was the one referred to in the London Daily Mail, about a half-dozen lines regarding the flight of 310 planes over the enemy lines to offset a counterattack and drop food supplies --as near as I recall it. Reports among the troops were to the effect that they had gone to rescue the "Lost Battalion" and most general and probably the most correct was the report that they delivered some supplies where they were badly needed; directed brief but effective resistance to an unusually vigorous counterattack planned by the enemy; in what seemed like less than 15 or 20 minutes, returned, the entire body of planes, it was later rumored-- without the loss of a single plane. W. L. WESSEN Denver, Col.

To W. L. Wessen, plaudits for a TIME-worthy report. One U. S. airplane was lost in the sky show to which he refers. U. S. War Department reminiscence:

"There was a formation of 353 planes operating together on the afternoon of Oct. 9, 1918. This formation was of the following composition:

"200 (or more) bombers

100 pursuit planes

53 triplace planes (probably heavy bombardment planes).

"They rendezvoused in our rear area and passed over the enemy lines in two echelons. A total of 32 tons of bombs were dropped on the cantonment area between La Wavrille and Damvillers. This formation was strongly attacked by the enemy but our flyers brought down 12 enemy and lost but one of their own airplanes. . . . "Both at Rockwell Field, San Diego, Calif., and at Payne Field, West Point, Miss., there were flights involving a large number of planes at the post-Armistice Day celebration on Thanksgiving Day, 1918. At both of these places at least 200 planes were flying together in the formations. These were practically all training planes. "At the close of the Air Corps Maneuvers at Kelly Field, Tex., in May 1927, over 200 service type planes flew in a formation in an aerial review."--ED.

Brawls, Failures

Sirs: Few countries envy our moral reputation. Granted it is unjust but who is to blame? Out here the cinema is the popular entertainment for the evening. Most of them show American pictures. Pictures that we Americans see and soon forget. Pictures from which our foreign friends form their conception of the average American life. The ordinary picture fan out here sees our fair America--not once, but some fifty or sixty times each year--as a place where every seventh door is a speakeasy, where racketeers and gangsters clean the streets of all humanity every day, where all stock transactions are crooked, where each college is just four years of drinking, where each dance is a brawl and each marriage a failure. Is it not possible to export pictures which are more typical of American life? Out here hundreds of proud Americans will continue to explain that OUR COUNTRY IS GOOD but our advertising is BAD. W. SCOTT HOKE Singapore

Bibles, Soup

Sirs:

On p. 37 (TIME, June 9) I notice the American Bible Society sent more than 5,000,000 Bibles to wartorn, starving China last year. Because the Chinese make soup out of bird-nests, does the Bible Society think they can turn Bibles into Campbellite gumbo? For the money that these Bibles cost, at least 50 million cans of Campbell soups could have been sent to starving China. . . . BOB LYLE Biloxi, Miss.

(Continued on p. 8)

Scribble Reader

Sirs: TIME, May 19, p. 34, heading "Artists." Do Yale's Arthur Hiler Ruggles and Hamburg's Wilhelm Weygandt know of Louise Rice, New York graphologist, and her collection and studies of scribbles? Nationally and internationally known people, big business organizations, detectives, lawyers, unhappy couples, misfits, underworld characters--all take odd drawings and bits of scratchings to her. She's done farming, showboating on the Mississippi, reporting in the Bowery and Chinatown 35 years ago before modern artificial atmosphere, worked behind "Five and Ten" counters--now writes and graphologizes. You scribble. It's unconscious. Rounded lines indicate a gentle, tactful person; angularity tells of shrewdness. Flowers and leaves show a friendly, unassertive person. A head profile comes from the salesman type. Mussy scrawls are due to disordered, scrambled minds. The little house with smoke curling from the chimney is drawn by the lonely, sad, disappointed-in-love, childless person. You never scribble? Then your wish, desire, will, ability all flow into the same channel. ELISABETH THOMAS Graphologist Los Angeles, Calif.

Wrong Professor

Sirs:

On p. 17 of the June 9 number of TIME you have an article, "Primary and Pupils," in which you display a carelessness with facts that causes one to wonder if your articles are usually so lacking in reliability. You state in the next to the last paragraph: "Responsibility finally filtered down to Professor Kirby who innocently said: . . ."

In no other published article I have seen has the authorship of the sentence in question been attributed to any one but its real author, Professor Carpenter, so I can only conclude that the misrepresentation is entirely of your own fabrication. . . .

I trust you have the courtesy to make a correction of your misstatement in as public a way as you published it ... THOMAS J. KIRBY Professor of Education State University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa

To TIME'S correspondent at Des Moines a thoroughgoing reprimand for an inexcusable error in attributing to Professor Kirby the work and statements of M. F. Carpenter of the English department at University of Iowa. To Professor Kirby, a much-merited apology.--ED.

Virginia & Vermont

Sirs:

In your issue of May 19, p. 24, under "China," you make the following statement: "Vermonters do not mix well with Virginians."

We are inclined to disagree with this statement, as the activities of this Chamber have proven quite conclusively that there is a good bit of friendship existing between Virginians and Vermonters, and New Englanders as a whole. On April 11, 1929, about 75 persons on the train known as the Vermont Special visited Richmond. This party included the governor of the state of Vermont and members of his staff. They were met by representatives of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce and while they did not remain long enough for an elaborate reception, the governor and his party were entertained by Governor Byrd of Virginia at the executive mansion. A large number of Richmonders visited the train and acquainted themselves with Vermont products. . . . R. P. SAUNDERS Secretary Richmond Chamber of Commerce Richmond, Va.

Bones of Columbus

Sirs:

In your issue of June 2, footnote on p. 24, you repeat a very common but erroneous statement that the bones of COLUMBUS were taken to Havana and later to Spain. The bones hastily removed by the Spaniards in evacuating Santo

(Continued on p. 12)

Domingo were not those of Christopher Columbus, though they had been supposed to be such since 1795. The actual remains of the great explorer were discovered under the floor of the cathedral at Santo Domingo City, the oldest in the New World, in 1877. Among other things, a silver plate, clearly engraved and perfectly preserved, establishes the identity of this lead coffin and its contents beyond any reasonable doubt whatever. Christopher Columbus still sleeps in Santo Domingo, where he wished to be buried. . . . M. M. KNIGHT Professor of Economics university of California Berkeley, Calif.

Krishnamurti Not Beatified

Sirs: India's "complexity"--quoting Mr. James Critchell-Bullock, in TIME, May 26--is not unique, is it? The human herd has its groups and differences in America. And here, as there are those who must deify something, who insist upon their mysteries--the tinkling of the Ephod bells behind the altar curtains. . . .

California is taking her place in the sun as the home of a steadily widening citizenry drawn from the world's erudite. When several thousand of these will saunter daily for a week toward the ancient oaks of Ojai, and sit on the grass to listen to a cool, critical summing up of a world's peculiarities--many crossing continent and sea for this--it must mean that the speaker has something to say. . . .

Out of the present welter of things, "Krish-naji sees something saner and finer emerging and a rather soul-sick intelligentsia turn to the astonishing and uncanny vitality of this stripling-scholar, not for bromidic guesswork, but for a bracing challenge to women and men to shake off ''bribe of Heaven and threat of Hell " and stand on their own feet.

The immense Castle Erde estate in Holland presented to him, is but one of many means of great revenue that he gave outright to the work. Another loss of his was in his dissolution of the Order of the Star, because a spiritual or theologic organization conflicted with his contention that walls stopped progress and meant decay. A modern Socrates, he but asks that the world stand out of his sunshine. Krishnamurti is poor.

Of pure white blood, of the Aryan race, the Hindu traces his culture back 25 centuries (See Woodbridge Riley's Story of Ethics) settling in India where its hot sun darkened the skin, as it does that of our lifeguards today. And it was Emerson, Thoreau and Walt Whitman who first brought Hindu thought to the United States.

Today, friendly enemies, our verbal tilts have not prevented my becoming one of those to whom he can come, where he will meet neither beatification, canonization nor misunderstanding. Yesterday he came for an ave et vale, and when I solemnly assured him that TIME had him beatified, he registered the correct screen despair. Then he protested wistfully: "Can't they accept me for what I am? Just a man, with these clothes and a few others?" That he will pass palatial, welcoming mansions for an hour with a friend years older than himself in a little redwood cabin near the foothills, clad as always in business clothes of American cut attests to the simplicity that asks little of the world, and offers much--a simplicity that, to Main Street, speaks in an unknown tongue. ETHELYN LESLIE HUSTON East Hollywood, Calif.

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