"Morituri"

Sirs:

In speaking of David Starr Jordan's pacifism in 1917, TIME said (June 8), that "In New Haven, Yale students hooted and jeered him." I was present at the meeting he held there, and this statement is not so. It is true that there were rumors of disturbance before the meeting. On the afternoon of it the Student Council posted signs about the campus urging fair play. This was observed. The meeting began in Lampson Lyceum. Jordan entered with Professor William Lyon Phelps who courageously had promised to introduce him. As they mounted the platform, Mr. Phelps said (with pardonable nervousness), "We who are about to die, salute you."* This mollified the dogs of war, and Jordan began his speech. The crowding in the hall and the clamoring of those outside to be admitted necessitated the sudden transference of the meeting to Woolsey Hall. This was accomplished with noble confusion, but no "jeering." At last installed in Woolsey, Jordan recommenced his speech which was listened to politely for perhaps 20 minutes, when the crowd began drifting outside. There it formed itself into an inevitable parade behind an inevitable band, and marched off about the town to the strains of martial music--a comparatively mild and unobjectionable performance for a student body committed to a war that was to end all wars.

WlLMARTH S. LEWIS

Farmington, Conn.

TIME'S authority: Thomas Beer's The Mauve Decade. But Subscriber Lewis' version, minimizing hoots & jeers, is perhaps more exact.--ED.

Seventh Day, Fourth Story

Sirs:

In your issue of TIME, May 25, I notice on p. 64, in your section devoted to Books, you give a short review of Behind Moroccan Walls by Henriette Celarie. Mme Celarie states that this is a collection of true stories and sketches and forthwith you narrate the incident about the woman who had succeeded in cuckolding her husband, returns too late one night, to find him awake, angry, suspicious, herself locked out. Pretending despair, she says she will drown herself in the well if he does not open the door; throws a big stone down the well and hides. The husband, hearing the splash, comes out to investigate; the wife slips in, bars the door. Now it is her turn to shout abuse and call on Allah and the neighbors.

If you will refer to the Decameron of Boccaccio, Seventh Day, Fourth Story, you shall find this tale narrated exactly as above; the characters being Tofano and his wife Madam Ghita which makes me think that if this story, related to Mme Celarie is true, then this is a case where history repeated itself, almost verbatim.

GEORGE GOULD Boston, Mass.

Sirs;

. . . Someone must have been kidding Authoress Celarie if she tells this as a true story, else some Marocaine, a devotee of Boccaccio, called on her knowledge of his works to pull herself out of a nasty jam.

The same story appears in the Decameron, and is the fourth story of the seventh day.

JOHN V. SANDERS

Morgantown, W. Va.

Authoress Celarie introduces the interlude by asking Marocaine Batoul "How can a woman among you deceive her husband . . . [when] the houses are so shut in, the women so well guarded?" Batoul replies with several personal anecdotes and a story of which she is not sure "whether it is true. It is a very old one." When Mme Celarie begs for another "story," Batoul complies with the stone-in-the-well tale. Mme Celarie's equivocal comment on these narratives: "These old stories, recalling those gusty ones of our ancestors in the Middle Ages, seldom fail to bring a laugh in native homes."

Other alert Readers who recognized the source of Mme Celarie's story were: James W. Gaynor, Albany, N. Y.; Howard Hildebrand, Lisbon, Ohio; Lee Keidel, Lawrenceburg, Ind.; James L. Stern, Philadelphia; Nelson H. Brooks, New Haven, Conn.; Cyril J. Bath, Cleveland; Edward H. Sapt Jr., Wenonah, N. J.; Gerald V. Strang, Berkeley, Calif.; David H. Shearer, Rochester, N. Y.; Q. L. Quinlivan, Arlington, N. J.; W. A. Gardner, Evanston, 111., Lewis C. Hawkins, Fair Haven, N. J.--ED.

Providence Garbage

Sirs:

Kindly permit me to call your attention to a misstatement in your June 1 magazine on p. 12 where it is stated in connection with garbage disposal that "the cost of incineration runs from 26-c- per ton at Florence, S. C. to $5 per ton in Providence, R. L, where the plant is a quarter of a mile from City Hall."

The cost of collection and disposal of rubbish and garbage in the City of Providence for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1930 was $4.869 per ton; $1.662 per ton for incineration and disposal including administration and maintenance of building, furnaces, grounds and disposal equipment and $3.207 for collection including administration and maintenance of collection equipment, garage, stable, etc., a total as above stated of about $4.87 per ton.

It is apparent that the cost of incineration at Florence, S. C. is based upon an entirely different system of cost accounting from ours and does not include the various items that we include, so that comparative costs unless based upon the same system of accounting have no value.

For your information I am enclosing a copy of report of the operation, appropriation and expenditures of the Garbage and Rubbish Disposal Department of the City of Providence for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1930.

FRANK E. WATERMAN

Commissioner of Public Works Providence, R. I.

The cost of garbage disposal in Providence, Florence and 40 other municipalities was set forth in Municipal Sanitation. Of the $218,000 Providence spent last year on garbage & rubbish, $142,000 was for collection. $73,000 for incineration. Among the collection costs were $107,000 in wages, $6,263 for gasoline, $4,450 for feed and hay, $1,104 for wagon repairing and horseshoeing. Incineration wages (cranemen, firemen, hoppermen et al.) totalled $54,000.--ED.

Not Ex-Cathedra

Sirs: TIME, June 1, p. 18 stated "Upon corporations great & small Pius XI made this infallible* pronouncement:" Also footnote same page, "When speaking ex-cathedra or in an encyclical, bull, etc. the Pope assumes a formal infallibility not attaching to his lesser, daily remarks."

The recent encyclicals were not ex-cathedra although involving matters of faith and morals. Unless ex-cathedra, encyclicals, bulls, etc. are not infallible. (See Catholic Encyclopedia, Volumes 5 and 7.)

MILES F. MCDONALD FRANK S. EASBY-SMITH

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Sirs:

I would call attention to an inaccurate statement appearing in TIME, June 1. It is there incorrectly stated that "Pius XI made this infallible pronouncement: 'The regulations legally enacted' etc."

The Holy Father is there merely stating a fact of common observation; he is not speaking ex-cathedra and consequently the declaration is no more infallible than the same statement would be if made by anyone else possessed of the same information concerning the economic conditions in question.

The Pope speaks ex-cathedra, and in consequence infallibly, when and only when he defines formally that a doctrine is of faith. I will give but one example of such an ex-cathedra pronouncement. It may be found in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of Pius IX. Rather too long to be quoted verbatim and in full, it runs substantially thus: "By the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ ... we declare, pronounce and define" that the doctrine which holds the Blessed Virgin Mary to have been "preserved . . . immune from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and is therefore to be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful."

C. A. PRINDEVILLE, C. M., D. D.

St. Mary's Seminary Perryville, Mo.

TIME erred in stating that in Pope Pius XI's encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, he was speaking ex-cathedra. The encyclical was issued too late to be subjected to TIME'S usual checking procedure.--ED.

Fight On & On & On

Sirs:

Appreciating your desire to be correct in all statements in your magazine, I call your attention to an article on p. 21 of your issue of May 25, headed "Arizona Overruled" and starting with the words "Angry Arizona."

Arizonans, like the 100 Colonial patriots who dressed as Mohawk Indians and threw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor, are not angry but terribly in earnest.

There are too many old pioneers in Arizona who in the early days made their way through cactus and thorn, hunger and thirst, their flintlock rifles ready to repel attack, in order to make Arizona a safe and pleasant place in which to live, for them ever to see Arizona surrender her State rights. While false propaganda has fooled many in the Colorado River fight, and has unwittingly led you into error in the article referred to, yet right must finally triumph, and

(Continued on page 10) in that knowledge we fight on and on and on, regardless of every obstacle.

ANNIE CAMPBELL JONES

Member of House of Representatives Prescott, Ariz.

No Feud

Sirs:

In the issue of TIME under date of June 8, on p. 31 the following appears: "

In Louisville last April, says Editor Edward A. Jonas of the Louisville Herald-Post, were many, a great many, piteously at loose ends, pathetically seeking guidance. ... A personal feud had ruined great institutions, closed banks, precipitated a general bankruptcy. And still its fury raged. . . .' "

In the footnote referred to at the bottom of this column containing the above article, appears this note: "

"* Between Judge Robert Worth Bingham, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, and James B. Brown, editor & publisher of the Herald-Post. Publisher Brown is president of National Bank of Kentucky which, involved with the Caldwell-Lea crash (see p. 19), was closed along with other local banks. Now to reopen, it promises payment in full."

As attorney for Judge Robert W. Bingham, I desire to call your attention to the fact that the above article is untrue and libelous and does him grave injustice and injury. As a matter of fact, any investigation will prove that the closing of the National Bank of Kentucky of this city was not the result of any so-called "personal feud," alleged in the article as existing between Judge Bingham and Mr. James B. Brown, President of said Bank, nor did any such "personal feud" exist, nor did any such alleged "feud ruin great institutions, close banks or precipitate a general bankruptcy."

The failure of the National Bank of Kentucky was due to mismanagement, and precipitated by final affiliation with Caldwell & Co. through control by BancoKentucky Co., and the receiver of said Bank, appointed by the Comptroller of the Currency, now has pending in the Federal Court a suit to recover some $14,000,000 from the directors of said Bank for alleged mismanagement of its affairs.

In view of these facts, which as we have said can be easily verified, we assume that you will promptly publish a retraction and correction of said article. . . .

ARTHUR PETER

Peter, Lee, Tabb, Krieger & Heyburn Louisville, Ky.

Between Louisville Publishers Bingham and Brown exists professional and political rivalry. The editor of Publisher Brown's newspaper called it a feud but TIME was not warranted in accepting this description. TIME deeply regrets the implication that Publisher Bingham had any connection with the collapse of Mr. Brown's National Bank of Kentucky.--ED.

*From the salutation of Roman gladiators on entering the arena--Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutamiis.--ED.

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