Dry Hoovers

Sirs:

In TIME of May 4, subject, The Presidency, referring to the attendance of the President of the U. S. and Mrs. Hoover at the Cape Henry Pilgrimage, extract, "President Hoover got soaked.". . .

Raincoats and umbrellas were provided against just such an emergency, which was not unanticipated. Rear Admiral Burrage, Commandant of the Norfolk Naval District (and with the members of his staff, each a subscriber to TIME) had detailed Warren Owens, a Coxswain in the Navy, as orderly to the President to be on hand with the raincoats and umbrellas if necessity arose. While it is true that almost all the Pilgrims were pretty well soaked, the President and Mrs. Hoover, through timely preparedness, suffered little.

C. E. CONEY

Lieut. U. S. N.

Aide to the Commandant Norfolk, Va.

Wounded Narcissist

Sirs:

I am, as your critic suggests in his review of My Flesh and Blood frequently astounded at myself, but I am even more astounded by his accusation that I am "heavily humorless'' (TIME, May 11). Among the gifts which I have received from the fates I value none more than my funny bone. It is because of the delightful humor with which you manage to present the news that I enjoy TIME so immensely. But I don't like your review of my autobiography.

Your critic speaks of the "many ponderous plums" which can be "pulled out of this (my) heavy Teutonic pudding." I like plum pudding but I always thought that it was an English, not a Teutonic dish. His description of me "thick-spectacled, thick-lipped and thick-nosed" wounds my Narcissism. . . .

It is not true that the War put a stop to The Fatherland, and it was resumed later as The American Monthly. Nothing ever put a stop to The Fatherland. It was published uninterruptedly. It is still published, though no longer by me. I changed the name before the rupture of our relations with Germany to indicate its essential Americanism.

And why, in your list of my books, do you leave out the most important ones? Glimpses of the Great, a record of my adventures as an interviewer, Spreading Germs of Hate, an impartial analysis of propaganda with a preface by Colonel House, and my chronicles of the Wandering Jew and the Wandering Jewess, written with Paul Eldridge. ... To list my books without including these is like printing a bibliography of Shakespeare without mentioning Hamlet!

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK New York City

New & Good

Sirs:

I have just seen the excellent drawing of Hubert Lyautey on the cover of TIME for May 11 and should be much obliged if you would let me know who did it.

I am sorry to bother you but he seems to be a new man and a very good one and I should like to get in touch with him.

RAYMOND P. R. NEILSON, A. N. A. New York City Marcel Maurel, able young French artist and gallery-keeper of No. 689 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, drew the Lyautey cover. -- ED.

April Fakery

Sirs:

Enclosed please find illustration from Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, April 5, 1931. The two views of the Los Angeles are supposedly photographs by Sontrick.

Your publication gave no mention of this occurrence. Why?

E. R. HABICHT

Charleston, W. Va.

One of the two pictures enclosed by Reader Habicht shows the U. S. Navy's dirigible Los Angeles moored to the mast of the oiler Patoka at sea. The second picture shows the Los Angeles, blown skyward by a sudden gust, sweeping the16,800-ton oiler after it high out of water. No such incident ever did or could occur. Let Reader Habicht examine his copy Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung more closely. Let him note that it is the annual April Fool's edition. Other pictures in that issue: A "3,000-year-old bas-relief of priceless worth," showing Assyrian gentlemen, playing the saxophone, their ladies drinking cocktails through straws at a bar. Scenes of "Al Capone at Home," showing the gangster's "Louis Quinze" boudoir through an enormous circular bank-vault door; an unwary visitor plunging through a trap door as Capone, sitting at a richly carved desk, presses a pushbutton; Capone's "daughter" stepping into her armored limousine big as a moving van. A similar but not so expert array of faked pictures was published April 1 by the Chicago Daily News Midweek. These pictures showed bathing beauties riding under water on pickerel, an old-time chorus girl on a high-wheel bicycle dropping from a blimp by parachute; a monkey-headed robin perched beside a nestful of dice.--ED.

Sourdough Editors

Sirs:

In your issue of March 2, we saw (under Press) a very greatly interesting article. It was about the two Mussolini boys. And their weekly paper The Boys' Pen. Which says they are 14 and 12 years old. We think you will "be very interested to hear of our Alaska Weekly Herald. Which my brother who is nine years old, my chum, and I have been publishing since January. We do it for fun. We like to do it. Billy is twelve, and I am eleven years. We have had fine support for our paper from all the Sourdoughs and old-timers for miles around. And out the Trail, too.

We did not see March 2 TIME before, because the railroad was tied up between here and the Coast. It was glaciation and snow. So we did not have any train for more than seven weeks. Usually we have a train here two or three times a week and get mail from the States once a week. Or every ten days anyway. During the tie-up we sometimes got letter-mail by Gillam Airways. We did not get 2nd class mail nor magazines. So please excuse us for not writing sooner.

At the first we made our newspaper entirely by hand on an old second hand typewriter of our father's. And used carbon paper. But its circulation increased so fast we bought a mimeograph on instalment. It is a $131 machine. But we got it at wholesale. At present we use the typewriter only just to print our stencils.

You will be glad to know that we have 87 paid subscribers on our out of town mailing list. And that we sold 220 copies this week. We think that is good because there are not that many population in this town. Some people buy two or three to send Outside to their friends. Billy, Philip and I are the only boys in town except babies.

Our mother says she could correct our newspaper work and censor it. Each week. But she does not. The reason: the Alaskan people and Sourdoughs all like it better just exactly the way we get it out. They say they don't want it changed from the way we make it.

All three of us boys are real Alaskans. Sourdoughs as they say. As Billy was born at Cordova, Alaska. I was born at the Kennecott Copper Camp. Philip came up here when he was only five months old. We have all had a trip Outside, one summer. Billy went to Illinois and we went to the Atlantic Coast. And stayed quite a while in California on the way back. All three to visit relatives. Billy's Daddy is a foreman on the Alaska Road Commission. And is in charge of Camp of the Road Commission, on the Fairbanks Trail. Our Daddy runs the water system here. And the hydro electric plant. And is the U. S. Commissioner.

. . . We enclose a few editions. When you have read them you will have a pretty keen idea of the way Alaskan people live right now. Here in the Interior of Alaska at least. ADRIAN C. NELSON

Editor Chitina, Alaska

To Editor-Publisher Nelson & associates, all praise for a newspaper far more honest, vivid and entertaining than most. Excerpts from its columns:

HOUSE BURNS Mr. John Gravdahl's house burned up on Feb. 17. The fire started at 15 to 4:00 in the early morning. Mr. Gravdahl woke up at about 4:00. He opened the door into the living room and the flame hit him in the face. He slammed the door, broke his bedroom window with a chair and tossed his clothes out of the window, and then jumped out himself. It was the coldest for several nights. It was ten below zero. He stood in the snow and dressed himself and ran up and down the trail yelling FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! In half an hour after it caught the hut water tank in the bathroom blew up. This explosion blew out two of Dean Kelsey's windows. Some people thought it was an earthquake. It got so much of a start that no one could do anything about it. So it burned down flat to the ground. It would cost about 3,000.00 or may be more, to build another as good. It was built by Tom Holland. It was moved from its location on the top of the hill at the northwest end of town. It was moved to a location between Moore's and where the old Overland Hotel was. They moved it with cats. Mrs. Gravdahl had some valuable furs which she took outside with her. She shot and trapped some of them herself. She would be sorry to lose them. The only thing he saved was a chest of drawers which he was painting, and which was outdoors. Everything was burned. Except a ladder that was standing against the house. The house burned so fast that the ladder was left standing there. He had $1,800.00 insurance on his house.

Gus WILSON LOST MISSING SINCE DEC. 25

Gus T. Wilson, the Copper River fur trapper has lived along the river for the last fifteen or more years or his life. He has been missing since Christmas day. No traces of him have yet been seen. He lives right across from the old Indian village of Taral which has been battered down. It is about 4 or 5 miles down the track from Chitina, which is M. 131. The R. R. boys have very frequently seen him get his mail because he has to walk across the ice to the Railroad side of the river to get to his mail box. When he did not get his mail at Christmas they surely expected him to get it at New Years anyway. When the New Years past and still he had not come, they began to watch for smoke issuing from his chimney of his cabin. When this proved a failure, they decided that they would have to get volunteers to go to find him. Fred Berling, called Swagger, Geo. Todd and Andrew Swanson offered to go.

As two of his pairs of snow shoes and other trapping and hunting parifinalia were still found in his cabin, they claim he may have fallen into the river. Experienced trappers say that the Copper River has been very soft as this has been a warm winter for Alaska. The volunteers were seen going down the R. R. on a gasoline speeder toward the south-end again yesterday. The search will be continued.

Soph.: "What is an iceberg?" Freshman: "Oh, it's a sort of permanent wave."

--ED.

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