No Law Evasion

Sirs:

The article in TIME for Nov. 25, dealing with the impeachment of the Secretary of State of Colorado for irregularities in the collection of Colorado liquor stamp taxes unfortunately failed to contain a complete account of the events leading up to the impeachment proceedings and accordingly did not make clear the position of McKesson & Robbins, Inc.

Since the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment McKesson & Robbins, Inc. has been engaged in the distribution of wines and liquors on a nationwide scale. Since its earliest connection with this business, the policy of the Company has been to comply strictly with the spirit as well as the letter of every regulatory and taxing measure. In accordance with this policy, as soon as it became apparent to the executive officials of the company that there were irregularities in the collection of Colorado State liquor taxes, the Company communicated with the Governor of Colorado placing in his hands all of the facts at its command. He advised the Company to communicate with the State Attorney's Office, and as a result of this step State operators and McKesson officials arranged for a "trap" on McKesson property, as a result of which a "go-between," alleged to be working in the personal interest of the discredited State official, was arrested. Immediately upon the completion of a special audit of the affairs of the Colorado branch of McKesson & Robbins, Inc., the full amount of all taxes due to the State of Colorado was promptly paid.

The Company feels that the above facts were not clearly set forth in the article in TIME and that accordingly, there may have been some implication that McKesson & Robbins, Inc. was dishonorably involved in the affair. The management of the Company has not tolerated in the past evasiveness in regard to laws affecting the Company. It will not tolerate such evasiveness in the future.

F. D. COSTER President McKesson & Robbins, Inc. Bridgeport, Conn.

Potential Threat

Sirs:

One wonders if the Power of Trinity has considered the potential threat that exists should he be victorious in this Italian incident. If he has thought of the effect on the great colonial powers were his tribesmen, savage, and untutored in modern military strategy, to defeat the well equipped, tactically superior legions of Rome. Does he not know that the white nations most powerful in Africa will look with deep concern on this native triumph? That prominent Britons will look askance at this hitherto unconsidered puissance which commands the Lake Tana and which may, by example, menace the British hegemony in Africa? Can he not realize that maintaining a strong and independent native African state and at the same time showing the rest of Africa that the white man's shoes may sometimes encase clay feet is a blow to the prestige of the dominating races in Africa that will cause Downing Street and the Foreign Office to break out in a rash of "incidents"?

The skirts of the Imperial Victoria will swish and the unctuous tones of Disraeli will whisper in the council chambers as Britain girds its loins to once again resume the "white man's burden." Gouty lords and Cockney navvies, with tongue in ruddy British cheek and sturdy British finger crossed, will cheer King and Empire as the British Army arrives in Addis Ababa to save the black man from himself and to collect the taxes. England will self-sacrificingly exploit the natural resources of the country and grant the natives splendid positions paying as high as 3C4-- a day. . . .

History can repeat the story of the South African Kaffirs and if Haile Selassie expects his affairs to return status quo ante after the shooting dies down he is likely to receive a smart rap on the "kisser." Indeed it would appear that the Newshawk Negus had better send his "obit" to the linotyper for the coin of fate may be tails on both sides.

JAMES MCCARTHY Oakland, Calif.

For another estimate of Man of the Year Haile Selassie, see p. 13.--ED.

Intellectual Skater

Sirs:

In your article on Miss Maribel Vinson, the celebrated skater [TIME, Dec. 23], you give a long list of her extracurricular activities while at Radcliffe, but you fail to mention that in spite of all her outside interests she received the Degree of Bachelor of Arts With Distinction in the Romance Languages. This shows, it seems to me, that she uses her head as well as her legs.

ALFRED M. TOZZER Division of Anthropology Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.

Mislaid Years

Sirs:

. . . On p. 39, TIME, Dec. 23, under Business & Finance, I read where Marjorie Post Close Hutton Davies was a tall woman of 52, but on p. 49 under Milestones I find the same lady listed as 48. Is it possible she could have mislaid four years of age in ten pages of printing?

TIME must be going back.

S. A. MONTGOMERY Philadelphia, Pa.

Through a typographical error TIME, not Mrs. Davies, mislaid four of her years. Her correct age: 48.--ED.

Composer to Critics

Sirs:

Several times during the past year TIME has, in its own inimitable manner, made very free and impudent references to me and my work. It might possibly be more civilized albeit less amusing to print something on the other side. Would it do violence to your sense of humor to pay some public attention to facts?

The outburst with which the New York reviewers received my opera In the Pasha's Garden was a symptom of a concerted attack and generally understood as such. The adverse comments leveled at the music were false and contradictory to the most obvious facts, as musical New York was perfectly aware.

The scene was atrocious. Mr. Gatti-Casazza personally assured me of his entire disapproval of it, and the whole staff despised it. I was informed that the Metropolitan had pledged itself to an experiment in modernist sets, and that they had regrettably tried it out on my opera, which, as any reader of the libretto could see, required a setting both realistic and decorative.

JOHN LAURENCE SEYMOUR Sacramento, Calif.

TIME, Nov. 25 said: "In the worst U. S. opera ever produced at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House there appeared last winter a soprano so shapely, so vividly blonde that she seemed more like a transient from Hollywood than a potential singer of real grand opera. In the Pasha's Garden was such a flaccid, sterile piece, offered such feeble opportunities that critics would only say that Helen Jepson was unusually pretty. . . ."--ED.

Master of Music

Sirs:

I wish to correct the statement in TIME, Dec. 16, that the University of Wichita's only claim to fame is its Omnibus College. Wichita University has a much greater claim to fame in the fact that the Dean of the College of Fine Arts is the foremost contemporary U. S. composer, Thurlow Lieurance, master of Indian music.

His best-known composition, By the Waters of Minnetonka, is known and played throughout the world. . . .

MRS. ROBERT E. ISRAEL JR. Wichita, Kans.

TIME gladly salutes Wichita's Composer Thurlow Lieurance (pronounced Leeur-aunce).--ED.

Grunt

Sirs:

What a fine exhibition of bad taste the "tycoons" of utilities displayed when Mr. McCarter proposed a toast "To the President of the United States!" as reported in your Dec. 23 issue. Makes me believe the old saying, "Expect nothing from a pig but a grunt," holds good.

ELIZABETH SAMPLE West Englewood, X. J.

Nasty

Sirs:

The dental profession wonders where the author of the following lines, ''like a dentist trying to get his pliers into the mouth of a terrified, wriggling patient" (TIME, Dec 23, p 26) has his dental work done. Let me inform him that modern scientific methods have eliminated all pain during the operation of extraction. These nasty unfavorable comments, which the author seemingly takes absolutely unjustifiable inasmuch as they are untruthful and have a detrimental influence on the innocent reader.

The members of the dental profession devote their lives toward the alleviation of pain. So next time won't you please give us a considerate word; and if the author still insists that he was telling the truth when he made such a statement I would suggest that he have his next tooth extracted by an up-to-date dentist. What a pleasant surprise in store for him!

F. P. PEIK D. D. S. President-Elect North Dakota State Dental Association Carrington, X. Dak.

Niceties

Sirs:

In TIME, Dec. 16, under the report of the trial of Lord de Clifford, you say, "Under the Magna Charta it is the right of every Briton to be tried by his peers--i. e. . . . a lord by the House of Lords." Why does TIME imply that this right originated in the Magna Charta? The right of a lord to be tried by his peers was just as much the law during the reign of William the Conqueror as during the reign of King John. This custom originated in the early Middle Ages and was the right of every vassal (lord) that held his land by feudal contract.

As a student of English Constitutional History. I am expected to respect the "niceties" of historical principle. As an authoritative news reporting magazine, TIME should do the same thing.

STANLEY V. JACOBSON University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minn.

More on Mitchell

Sirs:

Many thanks for news of my nephew, Hewitt Frenyear Mitchell, airmail pilot, Shanghai to Peiping, who shared with a news correspondent a diplomatic resistance to Japanese searchers of his plane [TIME, Dec. 9]. Will you now give his correct name, and perhaps a few other facts? Born of New England ancestry, raised among the raisins of the San Joaquin Valley, he worked his way through Stanford largely by radio repairing, overcame parental doubts, took army aviation tests and found eyesight deficient in one minor point. His oculist, who had helped prepare army tests, advised special exercises for a year. Doggedly Hewitt exercised, satisfactorily passed, trained at March Field where about three-fifths of each crop is "washed out." He worked with Paul Mantz at United Airport, joyously signed three-year contract with China National Aviation Company.

Lieut. Mitchell, after a year on the Shanghai-Peiping run. was sent inland to develop the Chungking-Chengtu route. Diary notes, written on back of weather reports, describe a primitive area where transportation has jumped from sedan chairs and wheelbarrows to airplanes. His passengers were Chinese merchants and military men, women going for operations, an American explorer aiming toward Tibetan Mountains, a German doctor, a U. S. Congressman hunter, a reclamation engineer, a woman archeologist, a Chinese envoy of British government carrying 110 Ib. of silver to Lhasa. . . .

Hewitt Mitchell is now married to a former school friend and rearing a baby daughter who traveled some 10,000 mi. during her first three months. Back in Shanghai, flying through the fogs of the Yangtzekiang, and meantime training Pilot McCleskey for the new Shanghai-Chengtu Express, he is looking forward to a vacation and home next summer.

On hearing of the Tientsin incident his mother in Fresno said, "Can't you just see him bristle!"

ELSIE XUTTIXG Los Angeles, Calif.

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