Inspiration & Contrast

Sirs:

Thanks for item "Playing Soldiers" in TIME of Oct. 20, in which you mention the fact that most Legionaries never saw front line action and that their convention resembled a gala college reunion, somewhat ribald.

Shortly after this convention a group of veterans of a Regular Army division all of whom saw service at the front as early as Chateau- Thierry, met in the Parker House, Boston, to organize a society. The meeting was a tremendous contrast to the Legion affair. Sixty were present. Many had been wounded in action. None had liquor. The spirit was remarkably matured thought, striking dignity, and intense respectability. Most were not Legionaries. Some were successful businessmen; others more humble; but each maintained the same dignity, the same matured and respectable attitude. It was an inspiration and a contrast.

RUSSELL J. MARDEN

Co. A., 12th Machine Gun Battalion Cambridge, Mass.

Candide Sirs:

Since everyone is taking a crack at Coolidge, columnist cum laude, why not get real low-down and quote from Voltaire in his Candide?

" 'Ah,' said Madame de Parolignac, 'the tiresome creature! How carefully he tells you what everybody knows! How heavily he discusses what is not worth the trouble of being lightly mentioned! How witlessly he appropriates other people's wit! How he spoils what he steals! How he disgusts me! But he will not disgust me any more; it is enough to have to read a few pages by the archdeacon.' "

And if any of you feel particularly like an old meany you can substitute Brisbane for the archdeacon and everything will be fine in the autumn.

G. E. KENNON Daytona Beach, Fla.

Golden Dawn

Sirs:

Though TIME does not vouch for "Golden Dawn" being "WORLD'S FINEST COCKTAIL" the mere fact that the verdict of the international jury to that effect is reported, might cause the thoughtless reader to consider that this cocktail (socalled) is really worthy of such praise (TIME, Sept. 29).

What is a cocktail, and what are the purposes for its consumption?

The steady increase in cocktail drinking in Europe, as well as the considerable circulation of your omniscient magazine on this side makes it worth while to throw a light on this "Golden Dawn" matter.

Cocktails have two uses, social and physiological. As a loosener of tongues, banisher of formality, speeder-up of intimacies, it has no equal, but then any palatable spirituous mixture would serve equally well, if called a cocktail.

Its physiological function is as an aperitif, an appetizer, to a palate which perhaps is jaded; therefore its composition must be such as to give a fillip to the appetite, it must be piquant, to generate hunger.

"Golden Dawn" is not piquant, it is sweet: therefore it cloys, not appetizes.* It may be all very well as a punch, or a liqueur, but never as a cocktail. The popularity of the Dry Martini places it without any doubt in the minds of the majority as the "World's Finest." Let the drinker beware of the European barman--he likes to skimp on his liquors and trust to melted ice to fill the glasses: tell him "pas trap glace" (not too much ice) or, jocularly, "pas trap mouille" (not too wet). GRAFTON D. DORSEY

Nice, France

Rhode Island Boxer

Sirs:

As a weekly reader of your magazine for the past three or four years, I was very much interested in your article and picture of Miss Polly Damrosch with her two German Boxer puppies, and also a statement, that as far as she knew, they were new to the U. S. (TIME, Oct. 13). It is true that these dogs are very little known in this country. I am sending you a picture under separate cover of my dog,/- which I have had now for over a year. It is the only Boxer in this state of Rhode Island, and as far as I know, one of the very few in New England. JAMES SINCLAIR Providence, R. I. To Reader Sinclair all thanks for a portrait. -- ED.

Wonderful!

Sirs:

. . . Re your article concerning the upstanding, two-fisted Col. Randolph who is going to put the fear of God in the Chicago underworld (TIME, Oct. 13). "Terrible Terry," "Three-fingered Jack," "Red Somebody," and a few others are rounded up and presumably life and liberty in Chicago are safe once again, by the simple expedient of locking up a few tenderloin bums. Wonderful!

But how about the elected representatives of the people, the Chicago politicians, the Judiciary, the Police, the Newspaper Community of Chicago who sold out the people to the underworld of Chicago for a share of the swag?

Barnum was right.

Your report on Senator Couzens was rich. He voted for the fanatical Jones "Five & Ten"' Law, he drinks Wet, he is ruggedly sincere. Ha ha ha. That's a gem.

J. J. POWER

San Francisco, Calif.

How Hell's Angels

Sirs:

Please tell an interested subscriber the technical device used in Hell's Angels in the scene in which the airplane cut into the Zeppelin (TIME. June 29). I understand no models were used. Is this correct? If so how did the pilot of the plane get out in time?

Your reply would help settle one of those irksome controversies that for principle's sake men are loth to leave unsettled.

M. KOSOFSKY

New York City

Caddo Co., the producers, insist no models were used. The Zeppelin was a dirigible one-half the size of the Los Angeles, constructed in Hollywood under the direction of Dr. Karl Arnheim formerly of the German Zeppelin works. The pilot of the airplane, diving into the Zeppelin, jumped, parachuted, escaped with his life. -- ED.

Soloist Garland Sirs: On p. 24, Oct. 13 issue of TIME, you print picture of and refer to Elmer Ambrose Sperry, 36: "After he and his teacher had flown together for only three hours the pupil went up solo, record brevity for civilian flying."

My son, Gerald H. Garland, 22, enrolled as a student in Roosevelt Flying School on August 8, 1930, and spent a month at the city Ground School, 119 W. 57th St., New York. On September 9, at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, he took his first flying instruction, 1 hr. 45 min. or 1 hr. 55 min. with teacher; then made a solo flight. . . . J. C. GARLAND

Dubuque, Iowa

Infra-Red & Fog

Sirs:

SomeTIME's brevity leads to obscurity, even on the subject of light.

Will TIME please explain, for the benefit of the unschooled, how infra-red rays, which are invisible, can aid fog beacons, airfield lights? (TIME, Sept. 29.)

E. P. BAILEY

Tulsa, Okla.

Light can pick its way through fog particles when the particles (water drops) are not greater in diameter than the wavelength of the light. Thus the longer wavelengths, like infrared, are the most penetrating. Since infra-red is invisible, special detectors are necessary to pick up the rays. Often used is the thermocouple or electric thermometer. -- ED.

Live Ware

Sirs:

In your issue of Sept. 15 on p. 43 ... certain manufacturers are mentioned as having passed from the radio picture. Your own phrase was, "no longer to be reckoned with."

Included was the name Ware.

The Ware radio did suffer a temporary eclipse, but it was only temporary, and it is far from dead. The new Ware Manufacturing Corp. has been actively engaged in development work during the past two years. Last year it marketed a small line of high-class receivers entirely representative of the Ware reputation. . . . The Ware company has the nucleus of a strong distributor organization throughout the important sections of the U. S., and is now in production on the Ware Bantam, a diminutive receiver which we will all hear a lot about in the next few months.

The Ware Manufacturing Corp. is adequately financed, has an extremely strong board of directors, a modern factory, and is of course under the skilled and efficient guidance of Paul Ware, President of the company, and as you know, one of the foremost radio engineers in the industry. . . .

HARRISON J. COWAN

H. J. Cowan Co., Inc. Advertising New York City.

Cash Payments to Soldiers

Sirs: TIME is to be commended for printing the letter of Mr. Francis H. Case, relative to the Immediate Payment of the Adjusted Service Certificates (TIME, Sept. 29).

Congress convenes Dec. 1, and what more important business could come before it than the question of immediate payment of these Certificates?

The matter has already been brought to the attention of Congress by Hon. Wright Patman, a War-veteran, who made an extended speech on this subject on April 3, 1930, in Congress.

Congress is now being besieged by veterans throughout the country to give this matter first consideration when it convenes in December and have payment of these Certificates started before Christmas.

Your courage in printing some of the facts, a thing the metropolitan press has refused to do, leads me to believe that you will go the rest of the way and give the country all of the facts.

The Adjusted Service Certificates are nonnegotiable, except in rare instances, and to go beyond those points is a criminal offense.

Like an insurance policy, they may be borrowed on, but the following shows where this practice brings the War-veteran:

On a $1,000 Certificate, to illustrate, the veteran, after his certificate is two years old, may borrow annually thereunder, and during the 18, loaning years, he will receive a total of $988.15 -- But.

Of that $988.15, he will pay back to the Government IN INTEREST ON THESE LOANS, the sum of $478.28, so that he actually receives only $509.87. On Jan. 1, 1945, he will turn in his Certificate, get $46 and the Certificate will have been cancelled, giving him a total of $555.87 on a $1,000 Certificate. Spreading that over 18 years, he gets an average $30.88 per year, and one can imagine what benefit that annual stipend will be to any War-veteran. As a matter of fact, on the $1,000 Certificate, he actually gets $88.15 on his first loan, when the Certificate is two years old, and a net of $26.80 the third year, down to $19.28 the 17th year, because of interest deductions. The ex-soldiers are not asking anything out of the way when they ask that these Certificates be paid IN CASH NOW IN ONE LUMP SUM. And it will not be the burden on the Government that it might appear at first thought. The Veterans Bureau, through whom these Certificates are issued and handled, ALREADY HAS 700 million dollars on hand for the purpose of retiring these Certificates as they become due through death, or expiration.

The Government recently borrowed money, to the public knowledge, at a rate as low as 2 3/8%, and for the purpose of retiring these Certificates doubtless could borrow at a lower rate.

It would be economy for the Government to do so, as it is paying at the rate of 4% compound interest on the Certificates, and in addition to the saving in interest, the present high cost of administering the handling of the loans (at 6% to the veteran) and other details would be eliminated.

These Certificates are not a bonus. They were issued to adjust the pay of the soldiers for their work, the Government conceding that the soldiers did not receive pay in proportion to what those not in the service were able to earn during the War.

At the conclusion of the War, when the Government turned the railroads back for private operation, it found itself owing the railroads 1600 million dollars. Did the Government ask the railroads to take a non-negotiable note, payable in 20 years, and on which the Railroads could borrow only to their loss?

No, they paid the railroads in cash.

Likewise, when the War ended and the War contractors found their contracts ended and their profits stopped, and they appealed to Congress and Congress replied with a two billion-dollar settlement, did they ask the War Contractors to take 20-year, non-negotiable notes?

Again, No. They paid them in cash.

The whole question in the minds of the ex-service men today is this:

If the Government, at the end of the War, when the U. S. Treasury was in debt to the tune of many billions more than it is today. COULD PAY THE RAILROADS AND THE WAR CONTRACTORS--THE ONES WHO PROFITED BY THE WAR--IN CASH, WHY THEN SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT NOT PAY THE EX-SOLDIERS --THE ONES WHO FOUGHT, SUFFERED, AND LOST THROUGH THE WAR--in the same way that it paid the profiteers of the War--OR IN CASH IN A LUMP SUM?

The immediate payment of these Certificates would be--not only an act of justice to the War-veterans, but would, as Mr. Case has so clearly pointed out, bring a revival of prosperity to the U. S. immediately.

Congress CAN give this matter priority and it WILL if the citizens of the country TELL it to. TIME can do much to help, and I am convinced that it will. T. J. LEARY

Secretary-Treasurer Veterans' Association of the Second Regiment Air Service Mechanics, A. E. F. Chicago, Ill.

TIME has not checked the accuracy of Subscriber Leary's analysis, will investigate the subject only if interest therein appears to be keen among TIME-subscribers.--ED.

Adult

Sirs: One of the things I have admired about your excellent magazine, is that it is "adult."' In the Oct. 6 issue, I note an attempt to introduce things juvenile into it by a fond mother. There are many places and many children's magazines where the relative values of children's literature may be advertised and discussed--I trust you will not use any of TIME'S so limited space for such purposes. MRS. E. F. BROWNE

Kansas City, Mo.

But only adults may be proper parents. --ED.

* Recipe: one part orange juice, two of Calvados gin, one of apricot brandy, a dash of grenadine. -- ED.

&$134; Name: Foch Von Stronheim.

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