Sport into Egypt

Sirs:

In your issue of Oct. 12, under Education, you credit me with introducing basketball into Egypt and with writing the first basketball rule-book in Arabic. The fact is that I was only one of several who cooperated in promoting the sport in its early days in Egypt, the active direction of the basketball league and the editing of the rulebook having been done by Mr. G. M. Tamblyn, the physical director of the Y. M. C. A. in Cairo and now secretary of the Y. M. C. A. at Rutherford, N. J.

WILLIAM A. EDDY

President Hobert College Geneva, N. Y.

Cup Comments

Sirs:

In your comments on the Vanderbilt Cup motor race (TIME, Oct. 19) you implied that the reason the U. S. cars were so soundly beaten was that they were not adapted to the Roosevelt Raceway type of circuit. This opinion, widely held, is only partly right. It is true that the Europeans, with their multiple speed, quick-shifting gearboxes and tremendous brakes had a great advantage, but it is equally certain that they could trounce any of our cars on any kind of a course.

Since Harry Miller, who built nearly all the first-string racing cars in this country, stopped building racing cars two or three years ago, the waves of nationalism that have swept over Italy and Germany have resulted in the development of the most prodigious racing machines ever seen. The Italian Alfa-Romeos and the German Mercedes and Auto Union, which are their match in every respect, have engines of over 400 h.p. in cars which weigh less than half the weight of a Chevrolet, and they have all exceeded a speed of 200 mi. per hour on the straight. They have had lavished on them every available facility of the manufacturers who build them in the way of engineering development and testing, it is said at government expense. They have the most advanced forms of supercharging, independent wheel suspension on all wheels, special transmissions and so on. On the other hand the U. S. cars are all getting along in years, built on strictly conventional lines, most of them not supercharged because of the rules of the Indianapolis Speedway, and dependent for their speed solely on the ingenuity of their owners, drivers, and mechanics who work with only those facilities made available by manufacturers of accessories. It was most remarkable driving that brought them in no farther behind than they were.

Incidentally, the Englishmen should get some kind of cheer. They brought over their tiny cars knowing they would be hopelessly outclassed, and drove a good steady sporting race. They also provided the prize sound effects of the day, making it sound like a real motor race. The opinion has been expressed that we should do as is generally done in Europe by providing a separate class for tiny engines or by giving them some sort of handicap.

F. J. HOOVEN

Dayton, Ohio

U. S. Motormaker Miller now has taken over the old Austin plant at Butler, Pa., where he is experimenting with a small, cheap car to be called the American Bantam.-ED.

Kosher Item

Sirs:

I wish to submit a strong protest against the dilatory manner in which the fellow supposed to rill the column, Miscellany, is attending to his duties. . . .

Of course there is not the depth to the column that we find in other departments of TIME, but I, a longtime reader, consider it a feature included in the newsstand or subscription price, and somehow or other I feel cheated when, upon procuring my weekly copy and hastily scanning the table of contents, I find Miscellany not listed. Once I was enraged to find it in the table of contents when actually there was no such column in that particular issue.

Perhaps the Miscellany column is a fill-in job, shelved during a rush week, and then again, perhaps it is quite a task to find suitable material. Therefore, while kicking I kick in what seems to me to be a kosher item for Miscellany's editor ... and suggest that if he will peruse such weeklies as The Moore County News he will often encounter other unique bits that he will find helpful in reporting All Things:

DREAMER

In Aberdeen, N. C., M. S. Hawkins, tobacco "farmer," was sleeping in the cab of a truck which he had driven into a tobacco warehouse the night before, intending to unload and sell his tobacco the next day. Mr. Hawkins dreamed that he was crossing a railroad track, that his vehicle was about to be struck by an oncoming train. At that critical juncture in his dream a fast freight actually roared by along a track near the warehouse, with a jangle of bell and blast of whistle. Not waiting to open the door, Tobacco Grower Hawkins hastily dived through a glass window of his truck, bumped to the floor, sustained severe bruises and lacerations. A local physician dressed his many wounds.

TED L. FRYE

Managing Editor The Moore County News, Carthage, N. C.

No fill-in job, TIME'S Miscellany column runs when primed with sufficient wonders, when not edged out of the magazine by more important news.-ED.

Slump-Shouldered Self

Sirs:

If the Chicago Field Museum is trying to depict the races of mankind to the best of modern belief (TIME, Oct. 5), why do they depict the typical Nordic male as a bulge-muscled athlete. There is another statue in existence, taken from measurements of typical Americans, which shows the Nordic male in his slump-shouldered, pot-bellied self. The least the Museum could do is to put a rubber abdomen on their statue, to be inflated for anthropologists, deflated for art-lovers. HAROLD WOOSTER JR.

Syracuse, N. Y.

Hopkins Origin

Sirs:

Would you like the origin of the traditional saying about Mark Hopkins and the log [TIME, Oct. 19]? In addressing the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association in Washington, D. C., December 11, 1877, James Abram Garfield said:

"It has long been my opinion that we are all educated, whether children, men or women, far more by personal influence than by books and the apparatus of schools. If I could be taken back into boyhood today, and had all the libraries and apparatus of a university, with ordinary routine professors, offered me on the one hand, and on the other a great, luminous, rich-souled man, such as Dr. Hopkins was 20 years ago, in a tent in the woods alone, I should say give me Dr. Hopkins for my college course rather than any university with only routine professors. The privilege of sitting down before a great, clearheaded, large-hearted man, and breathing the atmosphere of his life, and being drawn up to him, and lifted up by him, and learning his methods of thinking and living, is in itself an enormous educating power."

But Dr. Hopkins at one end of a log and a student at the other have survived, in condensed form, as the very epitome of an ideal university. And perhaps it is just as well.

JOSEPH HOLLISTER Pittsfield, Mass.

Morals & Monarchs

Sirs:

TIME continues to be my favorite News Magazine for the simple reason that I want the news. Some of the news is unpleasant to take, especially for a Minister of the Gospel-but I can take it. I was born a Britisher, and as blood is thicker than water, I still have a warm place in my heart for the British Isles. For this reason the escapades of King Edward VIII, and especially his relations with Mrs. Simpson, while almost revolting to a strict Churchman, seem to me to have a far deeper significance than that which is generally attributed to them.

The King seems to be a national symbol of the moral decline of the English-speaking people of the world. I lived under the austere reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and while her reign was irksome to those who were immorally inclined, she did in a most decisive way, place her moral stamp upon the English-speaking people of the world, and while in many cases the imposed morality was nothing more than a veneered hypocrisy, on the whole, the standards were high, and the British Empire attained its Golden Age under this noble monarch. I also lived under King Edward VII, and witnessed the expectancy of those who desired a looser morality. King Edward VII, although known as a wild Prince, nevertheless held to the high standards set by his illustrious mother, although he contributed nothing to the high morality of the British Isles. Since then I watched the trend of the English under the easy-going morality of

King George V, and noted with interest and sorrow the readiness with which the subjects of King George accepted the new morality which was ushered in with the Jazz Age.

And now, we see upon the British Throne a monarch who seems to sneer at conventions which have long since demonstrated their worth, and ... is openly revolting against the tried and tested virtues of the English-speaking people of the world. As an interpreter of history who believes there is a vital relationship between peace and morality, between prosperity and decency, between high standards of living and Godliness, I believe the present moral decline of the British monarchy and the English-speaking people is symbolical of their failing influence in the affairs of the world, and unless there is a speedy return to the high standards of the past, the peoples of India and the Orient will not remain subject to the present leadership, but will throw off the shackles of those whom they can no longer respect. . . .

JOHN R. STEVENSON

Minister

Grace Presbyterian Church San Francisco, Calif.

Congratulations on your Oct. 19 issue, amazingly free from half-excited references to the new chatelaine of Balmoral, Buckingham, and Belvedere. . . . Anyway, don't you think that all this chit-chat about a man's personal affairs is better dished up verbally in a soprano chorus, along with marshmallow salad and other hen-party delicacies?

ARTHUR TUCKERMAN

New York City

. . . Edward VIII is guilty of indecent exposure.

GLENN SWOGGER

Topeka, Kans.

Sirs:

All I've got to say about this report that the King of England may abdicate (resign over here) and tie up with Mrs. Simpson, is that the latter will be cold-decked-drew for a king and caught a jack.

ABE CLAWHAMMER Beaumont, Tex.

. . . Every wife and mother in every English-speaking country will be harassed by hussies swinging their loose hips like Mrs. Simpson. Public opinion is the only thing that will stop the gals who are borned to prowl and stop the American Mrs. Simpson from breaking the heart of the kind, proud man whom the whole world has come to love, Edward the Eighth of England. . . .

Lois B. ARTHUR

Indianapolis, Ind.

Sirs:

For "Man of the Year" I respectfully nominate Mrs. Ernest Simpson, otherwise known as Mrs. Wallis Simpson.

JOHN B. EHLEN

Sausalito, Calif.

Who Is Tom Smith -?

Sirs:

Will you be kind enough to find out and tell us who Tom Smith is? He speaks over WOR for the Democratic Committee and if he is not Alexander Woollcott, he is more than a double to him. . . .

OSCAR LEONARD

Harmon-On-Hudson, N. Y.

Tom Smith is the University of Chicago's famed Philosophy Professor Thomas Vernon Smith, who doubles as an Illinois State Senator. He agreed to make ten radio campaign speeches for the Democratic National Committee, chiefly over the Mutual Network. The striking resemblance of Alexander Woollcott's and "T. V." Smith's voices has caused such wide comment that this week, as a stunt, Polemist Woollcott stepped up to the microphone as Professor Smith left it, identified himself and came out for Roosevelt.-ED.

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