Wanted: A Byway Car
Sirs:
Your recent, excellent review of automobile styles for 1935 (TIME, Jan. 14) prompts the following letter. As interested seekers for an automobile in which the primary emphasis is placed upon sturdiness and durability we have become increasingly concerned with the general trend in automobile manufacture toward the production of cars built for speed, beauty, comfort, luxurious appointments and gadgets which fit them primarily for paved highways.
In the good, old days anyone interested in such a non-frilled service car could turn to the Chevrolet or Ford. Now there is no such car, unless one take to a truck! True, the new cars are sturdy and durable--upon the paved highway. But get them out into the unpaved, unimproved roads which we seek both for pleasure and for scientific purposes, and which still exist in abundance (and we hope will still be there for a long time to come) in our western States, and we would be stuck, literally.
On a recent trip into the northern portion of Baja California our little 1927 Model A Ford scraped crankcase and differential many a time as we chugged along at the good rate of 10-15 miles per hour, What good would the 90-mile-per-hour potentialities of the new, low streamliners have done us here? In this long stretch of uninhabited desert with no water, gas or oil for 135 miles, how much of a handicap would have been ours in one of the 1935 model automobiles, whose low-slung bodies, according to one advertisement, "make entrance and exit very easy because the running board is brought in close proximity to the curb"!
We write this letter in protest, and in query, not only for ourselves but for the many others we know who have similar interests. Where can we find a car built for byways and not for highways, sturdy, dependable, durable, and capable of reliable navigation under the poorest of road conditions? . . .
HELEN K. SHARSMITH
CARL W. SHARSMITH
Department of Botany,
University of California,
Berkeley, Calif.
In the scheme of modern motormakers, Nomadic Readers Sharsmith and their kind have no place. Best that the Automobile Chamber of Commerce can offer: Let Readers Sharsmith buy used cars. Or canvass the manufacturers for unused cars of old models, or ask a manufacturer to build a special job with high clearance.-- ED.
Bad One
Sirs:
Mr. Witter Bynner's poetic phizog labeled as Alfred Neumann (TIME, Jan. 21)!
That was a bad one.
GENEVIEVE TAGGARD
Aboard Seaboard Air Line Ry.
Venice, Fla.
For a horrendous clerical blunder (in picture-filing), apologies to Author Neumann, Poet Bynner, TIME'S readers.--ED.
He Boots Himself
Sirs:
In reviewing my last book [TIME, Jan. 14] your critic declares Robert Herrick once said I'd never write a novel worth opening. He did; and judging by the one wretched thing I offered him, his opinion could have been only what his opinion was. Your critic's bald allusion now suggests (but was not, of course, intended to suggest) that I take malicious glee in what was possibly an error in Herrick's judgment. I do not. On the contrary, I boot myself lustily for having released to Houghton Mifflin, years ago, a statement which should have been forgotten as thoroughly as Mr. Herrick has doubtless forgotten it. Caption this, please: He Boots Himself.
VARDIS FISHER
Ririe, Idaho
Sense of Values
Sirs: "For God, for Country, for Bonus" [TIME, Jan. 21]. This thrust at the veteran in general and Messrs. Belgrano & Taylor in particular is so pointedly unfair that you have lost all sense of values, especially the value of the worth of that exploited individual, the ex-service man who stood by his country at a time of stress, when "nothing was too good for soldiers." . . . To add insult to injury you of the press are so intemperate in your attacks upon the veteran that you are not even willing to concede to him average patriotism. . . . You attack him with distortion of truth or outward lies. . . . You have the backing of nearly all the press, as well as a class of rich men who evidently sponsor such a weak organization as "The American Veterans Association." . . .
I do not hold that you have not the right to your own opinion regarding whether or not the so-called bonus should be paid, but you certainly have no right to directly slander or malign the fine record of a body of men. . . . The veteran's "service to the community, state and nation," even with a dogged press snapping at his heels, will live forever. That service was loyal; it was a shining light of truth that will go down through the ages to immortality. But your lies, or worse half-truths, will die with TIME.
Juggernaut: Why this caption? Do you mean that the founders of the American Legion created a vehicle which is crushing out the life of our people? . . . Perhaps you meant to also convey that Belgrano is the Legion's god Krishna and that he is destroying us with the other citizens of our country; that he is doing it without the will of the American Legion being consulted. If he asks for the Adjusted Payment Certificate payment now, remember he has mandate from his organization, and will not sell out even to the press or the vested interests.
High Priest: John Thomas Taylor you be smirch with former association, making it appear that wrongs have been committed in the name of the Legion; that birds of a feather flock together. Those former associates have no material bearing on the character of John Thomas Taylor. . . .
Weak Rival: We note under this caption the picture of the leader of our so-called "Weak Rival." . . . You show [Hobart's] portrait to the best advantage; you do not even snap his picture with his hand raised aloft, taken at a time when he was trying to silence enthusiastic friends and admirers. You do not picture him in such a pose, because you think a casual observer will think he were a Fascist or a Nazi. Why do you not come right out in the open and say Belgrano is Fascist? You do not dare, because you know it is untrue. Still you seek to create that as an impression. . . .
Demands: At this point, you change the High Priest's name to Lobbyist Taylor who is demanding two billion dollars. And it was President Roosevelt who called attention to the Legionary's greater earning capacity than that of the average citizen. Mr. Roosevelt later said that the average veteran dies without any asset other than his Adjusted Service Certificate. Was he mistaken? Did he mean the American Veterans Association, perhaps? Or did he believe that the 85% mentioned are not members of the American Legion? I wonder. . . .
I am extremely sorry it should be necessary for the ex-soldier's asking for that which should be gladly given by a grateful country. . . . You now have a free press only so because the ex-soldier stood between you and all the crackpotisms that would tell you when and what to write. Now you are just the instrument of the selfish, vested interests who tell you just as effectively.
PERCY DOBLIN
Past Commander Reville Post
American Legion
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Sirs:
... It appears that the American Legion, as part of the U. S. voting public, has helped to elect the present Congress which is even now preparing to pass upon the appropriation of $4,000,000,000 of tax money for putting men to work. . . .
As one of the average citizens thoroughly I accord with efforts to distribute work relief to those who need it, however, I feel that the distribution of some $2,000,000,000 to the Legion itself, a relatively small group of superior earning power, is not only inconsistent with Legion policy . . . but definitely unrelated to Defense of the Constitution, Law and Order, Memories, Peace; and counter to Individual Obligation to the Community, Right and Justice, Freedom and Democracy. . . .*
MORTON H. SINKS
Cleveland Hts., Ohio
Sirs:
Why should a small part of the population, admittedly better able than the average citizen to take care of itself, be allowed by political threats and browbeating to hold up the rest of us for $2,000,000,000 not due for ten years?
When Congressmen come to a proper sense of their national responsibility, maybe then this vicious lobby will, like the three Presidents you mentioned, be itself once and for all put in its proper place.
ROBERT F. MILLER
Meadville, Pa.
Sirs:
. . . Taking it all in all it was a rather poor article. . . .
JAMES A. STRICKLER Commander
Harrison Quigley Post, No. 72
Palmyra, Pa.
Legionary v. Lobbyists
Sirs:
For the benefit of our weak-kneed representatives in Washington I wish to say as a charter member of the local post of the American Legion that no one knows what the members of the Legion want or how they will vote.
For example, when the bonus question was voted upon by our local post there were approximately 30 members present out of 800. . . .
D. A. JOHNSTON
New Britain, Conn.
Grin
Sirs:
Enjoying as I do the acid, vinegar and prohibition whiskey which you spray impartially and with unfailing accuracy over most groups of Homo americanus, I must grin when the selfsame stream splashes in my eye. Only one favor I ask of your pumpers. Let them stop calling us Legionaries. I don't like that "Legionary," but prefer "Legionaire."
GUS HOUTMAN
Commander
Clayton T. Smith Post, No. 93
Media, Pa.
Legionary it has been, Legionary it shall be.--ED.
Public Debt Per Second
Sirs:
Time-readers may have wondered at your report of my computation that during the hour of my recent debate with Congressman Patman of Texas on the soldiers' bonus the public debt rose $2,015,487 [TIME, Jan. 21].
A failure to retain a qualifying phrase in cutting the speech copy is responsible for what may have appeared to be an error. President Roosevelt's estimate in his budget message was for a deficit of $4,869,418,338 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1935.
In stressing this fact, I wanted to emphasize the additional point that this can be repaid only through taxes on citizens' productive labor. Eliminating Sundays and all holidays, there are only 302 such working days of eight hours each. The figure of 16 odd million dollars a day means $2,015,487 each hour of each eight-hour working day, $33,591 each working minute, or $559 each working second.
DONALD ATKINSON HOBART
National Commander
American Veterans Association, Inc.
New York City
Sembrich's Gesture
Sirs:
Your thoughtful, tender treatment of the death of beloved Marcella Sembrich, both in TIME [Jan. 21] and on The March of TIME, has found quick and appreciative response among San Franciscans. For San Francisco remembers its singers, both native and adopted, and Sembrich's great gesture of 1906 is not forgotten.
Your reference to the night before the earthquake and fire of 1906 recalls a bit of little-known history. Two aunts and an uncle of my mother's were staying at San Francisco's famous Palace Hotel; and the first thing the aunts heard after the quake was an impromptu concert by Caruso. No bathtub singing was this: the great but temperamental tenor was investigating to see whether his voice had been injured by the shock, as he explained to them in the corridor-balcony a few minutes later. They all dressed, then heard there was a fire nearby.
They went out to see it, carrying only their handbags. When the aunts & uncle, found by our coachman cooking beans over a street fire in the outskirts and taken to a nearby suburb, returned to the Palace Hotel weeks later, it was to a pile of ashes. Caruso never returned to the new Palace Hotel, but my aunts insisted that he never sang better than he did that morning.
Referring to San Francisco's love for and remembrance of its singers & players, it is coincidental that the present Palace Hotel produces this week in its Grill Room Theatre, San Francisco-born David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West, in which Lola Montez and Lotta Crabtree are characters; a stone's toss from the Palace is Lotta's Fountain, given by Lotta Crabtree; and it was there that Tetrazzini sang on a holiday eve, to packed thousands in Market, Third and Geary Streets, one never-to-be-forgotten year before the War. Surely it is small wonder that Sembrich, like the other, perhaps greater, perhaps lesser, singers and players, is remembered and loved in great-hearted San Francisco.
W. A. BREWER
Berkeley, Calif.
Good Things Panned
Sirs:
AREN'T YOU BEING A LITTLE UNFAIR IN YOUR REVIEW OF BATTLESHIP GERTIE [TIME, Jan. 28]? YOUR INFERENCE IS THAT PLAY WAS DESIGNED TO BE SMUTTIER THAN SAILOR BEWARE. AS ITS AUTHOR I ASSURE YOU THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE SMUTTY LINE IN ENTIRE SHOW WHICH MAY ACCOUNT FOR DISAPPOINTMENT EXPRESSED BY CERTAIN TIPSY CRITICS. MESSRS. SOBEL, DUDLEY AND BENCHLEY GOD BLESS THEM THOUGHT GERTIE FUNNY THOUGH CLEAN. AND MAY I REMIND TIME THAT MANY A GOOD THING HAS BEEN PANNED ON BROADWAY. YOU SHOULD HEAR WHAT BROADWAY SAYS ABOUT TIME. FOR THAT MATTER YOU SHOULD HEAR WHAT I'M SAYING ABOUT BOTH BROADWAY AND TIME.
FREDERICK HAZLITT BRENNAN
St. Louis, Mo.
North Western Gentlemen
Sirs:
I read with great interest your article in TIME, Jan. 14, in which you described our new train, The 400, operating between Chicago and the Twin Cities. The article was very fine except that it stated, among other things, that the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad officials claim the North Western Railway had ''jumped the gun" on a gentlemen's agreement between the Milwaukee, Burlington and North Western.
Under the agreement to which you refer it was provided that any road changing schedules should give 15 days' notice in writing before the schedule is inaugurated. This notice was given in due form and manner. . . .
Perhaps you would, therefore, be willing to correct the statement that the North Western violated any agreement.
FRED W. SARGENT
President
Chicago & North Western Railway Co.
Chicago, Ill.
Well aware of North Western's plans was its competitor, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific R. R. Milwaukee will meet that challenge this spring, when its trains streak between Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis behind streamlined oil-burning steam locomotives capable of more than 100 m.p.h.--ED.
Coincidence
Sirs: Last night I was rereading the old number of TIME dated March 14, 1932 and carrying the first story of the Lindbergh kidnapping. On p. 42 TIME told of the activities of the Press in the case and across the page -- on 43 -- a story and picture of Gerhart Hauptmann, "famed German dramatist." Not the same fellow, of course, but that name -- what a coincidence!
FRED W. PERABO
St. Louis, Mo.
* Avowed Legion purposes.--ED.
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