Non-Gold-Bricker

Sirs:

I should like to join a society of World War Veterans devoted to the following propositions:

I. No pensions at any time to any soldiers who came through the war unscratched.

II. Every consideration for those who were actually disabled by war wounds or disease.

The motto of this society might be: "We consider the honor of having been selected for the Army a sufficient reward." I think that such a society could recruit hundreds of thousands from among the non-gold-bricking element of the late A. E. F.

W. M. PALMIERI

Newark, N. J.

Wheat Down, Flour Up

Sirs:

The farmer is selling his wheat here for about 60-c- now. A year ago he received $1.20. Flour is the same price. Every bushel of wheat milled since Aug. 1, 1929 made the miller or someone 60-c- more than he made before. The Farm Board has 20,000,000 bushels of old wheat. Why not buy a few mills instead of elevators and give the people the flour based on present price of wheat? Flour retails here about $2 for a sack of 48 lb. When wheat was 60-c- some 15 years ago we bought flour at 85-c- per sack. If our Farm Board will mill its wheat one of two things will happen, wheat will go up or flour down. My guess is the millers will take over the wheat at cost of production. If wheat flour could be bought at $1 the people would consume more flour. It will also help to eliminate the cheaper by-products now mixed with wheat flour. So long as the Board merely stores wheat, the miller will pay 60-c- for wheat and maintain the flour price based on $1.20 wheat. The Farm Board so far has been a Millers Board.

AUGUST WAGNER

Columbus, Neb.

Largest Canvas

Sirs:

Referring to your article entitled "Largest'' in TIME, July 28, let me ask if the canvas mentioned is not less than half the size of the famous Cyclorama canvas of The Holy Land now at Ste. Anne de Beaupre, outside of Quebec. The dimensions of this are, as I remember them, 40 ft. by 360 ft. This canvas then has an area of 14,400 sq. ft. Six men worked four years to complete it.

L. R. MOSES

Arlington, Mass.

TIME used the word "canvas" in the sense of a decorative work of fine art. Cycloramas (spectacle pictures stretched circularly so that the spectator is surrounded by the scene) are far larger than Rockwell Kent's 6,400 sq. ft. ceiling at Dennis, Mass. Paul Philippoteaux, painter of the Holy Land cyclorama, was most famed for his cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg (20,000 sq. ft.).--ED.

Montgomery Ward

Sirs:

Mr. A. Montgomery Ward was founder of Montgomery Ward & Co. and there is properly no comma between the two names as printed in your issue of July 21.

F. EVERITT*

Evanston, Ill.

As a clerk in a small general store in St. Joseph, Mich., A. Montgomery Ward learned from his farmer customers of the lack of good markets and of the difficulty experienced by producers in obtaining proper returns for their labor. Endeavoring to eliminate as far as possible the profits gained by the middleman, in 1872 he founded, with the help of George R. Thorne, the present mail-order house.--ED.

Rumanians & Jews

Sirs:

It seems to me you are all wrong in your estimate of Rumanian opinion toward the Jews and even more in your statement that "Jews" (what Jews? Where?) "continued to rejoice that during his protracted exile King Carol took a Jewish mistress."

It has taken long years of unrestrained incitement by popularity-seeking Orthodox priests and by loafing "students" who refuse to work for a living to incite some Rumanian peasants to attack Jews. The Bratianu government, like the Tsarist, used these attacks to divert resentment from itself and probably encouraged, perhaps instigated them.

I should be interested in finding out who writes your foreign news, especially that in regard to Jews.

What Rumanian Jews need to do, I think, is to kill a few of the cowardly hooligans who attack them. Violence is the only medicine for them.

I want your apology for this "rejoicing" you assume.

MARTIN TALL

Brooklyn, N. Y.

In stating that Rumanian Jew-baiters are egged on by "popularity-seeking" priests, Subscriber Tall answers most of his questions. As TIME stated, there is no doubt that in Rumania Jew-baiting is "popular" (i.e. sanctioned and encouraged by public opinion) nor is there doubt that Carol's alliance with a Jewess brought all Jews closer to his heart.--ED.

July 4 in Siberia

Sirs:

After a month in Kasaktan I just received my first mail from America including TIME of June 9. This is the first number I have received though I subscribed before leaving the States in April.

My delight with old friend TIME was increased by the contents concerning this locality. As I write I can look from my window through the shimmering heat waves, and see a half mile away the new Turksib Railway of which you have written in this issue.

There are other romances than Turksib in Siberia. I myself am trying to build a flour mill and grain elevator mostly from thin air. So far as I know I am the only American within 1,000 miles but I am having a celebration of the (Glorious Fourth by writing my friends including TIME.

May it come regularly.

FRED R. HESS

Klebostoi Chief Engineer Janizemai

Semipolatinsk, U. S. S. R.

P. S. Hurrah! My interpreter just brought two more numbers May 26 and June 2.

F. R. H.

No-Nation Girl

Sirs:

... A short time ago, while I was located in New Orleans, I went to the book store to buy a book to present to a friend and the latest issue of TIME. . . . The saleswoman said: "We have another book here that might interest you. It was written by a southern man--in fact I hear he went to Tulane here in New Orleans. Most people here in the South object to it very much. It has aroused considerable ire. We have sold a great many copies though, even though we can't advertise it much. You know when it first came out--a few months ago--the Times-Picayune reviewer said it was 'very near over the border in this section.' " Of course, I bought the book and took it to my hotel to read myself. . . .

My traveling soon took me out of New Orleans but wherever I went from then on I inquired of the people I met--literary ones, of course--what they thought of The No-Nation Girl. And I don't believe a book has aroused so much discussion in the South since Uncle Tom's Cabin. Some of the people approve it-- particularly the women. But others violently disapprove it. One man, a professor in Louisiana State University, said: "I don't see how a southern man could write such a book." . . . Ada Jack Carver, winner of several Harper prizes in the past few years told me ''It is a book that one does not know exactly how or where to place, but it is a book that will make history." And while talking to one of the most aristocratic old ladies that I met I asked her what she thought about it. The question seemed to embarrass her but she said: "I didn't really like the book. But I do hope it will show those northern people what our Negro really is. Of course we realize that we can't do without the Negro here in the South but you northerners have no idea at all what they are really like. Then too, I happened to know of a very sad case where one of our nicest young men did kill himself and a mulatto girl. Perhaps Mr. Wall had the same case in mind when he wrote the book."

While in Baton Rouge, I had the opportunity to meet some of the author's relatives and found that they also, oddly enough, were divided in their opinions. Some of them would not discuss the book at all. One of them--a doctor-- said: "Well--Evans certainly did call a spade a spade. I lived right at the edge of the swamp for a good many years and those conditions really did exist--and I suppose they still do."

C. J. PENFIELD

Port Arthur, Tex.

The plot of The No-Nation Girl by Evans Wall (published by Century Co. July 1929):

In a Mississippi swamp to a white father and a black mother is born Precieuse. In childhood her appearance and instincts are almost white. At 14 her Negro aunt gets her drunk, sells her to a white swamper for $30 for the night. Precieuse's mother, thwarted in a deal to sell her as a virgin to a white river trader for $300, horsewhips her from home. She boards the shanty boat of one Cliff Dale, young white man from the North who took to the swamp temporarily when a southern inheritance failed. For five years through Precieuse's ''beauty days," they live and love in the swamp, mingling with Negroes and "low down" whites along the slimy waters. The girl's Negro blood is fired when once in Cliff's absence a "buck nigger" beats her into submission. Alone in the shanty boat, she bears a baby, drowns it blindly for fear it may be black and thus rupture her relations with Cliff. The baby was white. Her body becomes a battle ground between her white and black blood. The black gradually predominates. Cliff, catching her in an infidelity with a Negro leaves her and the swamp. On the theory that a Negro never commits suicide, Precieuse drowns herself to prove she is more white than black. Drawn back into the swamp by love of the girl, Cliff shoots himself to death on her grave. Far better than the repulsive story or its unreal characters is Author Wall's treatment of the swamp background, with its rank decay, its hot ooze, its suggestive resemblance to African jungles. The story's problem of miscegnation is authentic, widespread in the South. Evans Spencer Wall, about 40, born in Mississippi of good white stock on the edge of the swamp country, rolled from job to job* newsgatherer, plantation manager, railroad worker, deckhand, taxidriver. Married, father of a daughter, he has spent seven years as a short-story writer before publishing this, his first novel.--ED.

Blue Ribbon

Sirs:

Blue Ribbon Malt announced through Columbia Chain and Chicago newspapers that the Hunter Brothers ("Spartans Triumphant" article under editorial column "Flights & Flyers," TIME, July 14) would be given $1 for each minute they remained aloft after 6 p. m., July 1.

One hour after the Hunter Brothers landed, while still wrapped in blankets in one of Chicago's Loop hotels, they were presented with a check for $4,342 by a Blue Ribbon Malt representative. No mention of this amount was included in your story. . . .

N. B. LANGWORTHY

Chicago, Ill.

Americanism

Sirs:

I noticed with interest your comment in TIME of July 14 on the Chicago American Dictionary, and your footnote stating that the first use of the word "Americanism" occurs in the Pennsylvania Gazette of 1797.

The word was invented by President John Witherspoon of Princeton and was used by him in his Druid Essays as early as 1781. The circumstances are mentioned in the second volume of my biography of Dr. Witherspoon (pp. 113-115). The Oxford Dictionary credits him with the creation of the word, but misstates the date.

V. LANSING COLLINS

Greensboro, Vt.

The above, and any other corrections reported, will be forwarded to Lexicographer Sir William Craigie.--ED.

Tom Thumb's Address

Sirs:

Bully story on Tom Thumb from Tennessee (TIME, July 14).

Interesting, of course, but you didn't tell me where I could get in touch with Garnet Carter. . . .

JAMES L. WOOLSON

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Tom Thumb Golf of Tennessee can be reached thus: No. 405 Lexington Ave., New York City. But last fortnight, Garnet Carter sold his Tom Thumb Golf interest.

*No kin. no employe of President George Bain Everitt of Montgomery Ward & Co.

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