Stevenson Rebutted
Sirs:
Tallyho! And the hounds are off in full pursuit of Mrs. Simpson. Men, women and ministers of the gospel, and not a kindly thought from any of them! Too attractive a lady to find friends among the women, too intelligent to arouse the sympathy of the men, and too frankly honest to attract the clergy.
Rev. John Stevenson lived "under the austere reign" of Queen Victoria, "and while her reign was irksome to those who were immorally inclined, she did . . . place her moral stamp upon the English-speaking world" (TIME, Nov. 2). And she did place her moral stamp of approval on the cruel and unnecessary Boer War.
"King Edward VII . . . held to the high standards set by his illustrious mother." But humanitarians like Wilfrid Scawen Blunt who protested against diplomatic blunders which were leading up to the World War were put in jail.
The young lives of Edward VIII, Mrs. Simpson, and millions of others were ruined. Their elders had been too busy with their petty hypocrisies and ambitions for empires, to work towards peace for their descendants.
We know that Edward would have given his young life to have saved the lives of his father's subjects. Before and since Edward became King, he has made every effort to find a basis for peace in Europe. He has been balked by a group which contains some of the very men who failed to prevent the World War. They want the King to be a model of clothes and morals, while they continue to muddle the foreign affairs. Let people choose their own clothes and look after their own morals. After all those are private matters.
For years the bigwigs of Great Britain have sat around the table, like procurers, trying to prostitute the private lives of the royal family for political advantage, according to "the high standards of the past." That, Rev. John Stevenson, was immorality. How in heaven or on earth could such a union be blessed?
I enjoy reading the story of Mrs. Simpson and the King because it is life and it is interesting. I like the stories up to the point when the writer inserts suggestions from his own mind. Whenever a door is closed behind the two, the reading public snickers. "Sex in the head" is, I believe, what Frieda Lawrence calls it. For all we know they may be playing tiddle-dewinks. Why not be charitable? Normal people do sometimes enjoy each other's company, even if they are not of the same sex.
In all the public articles and letters, I have seen no hint of charity or hope that the King may find the happiness which he deserves. Only from young people and working people does one hear the good wishes and concern which one of them put into these words, "I do hope that she will make him happy and that the divorces do not mean that she is changeable." That is something that we all should hope.
In the days when young people learned memory-gems, instead of knock-knocks, there was one which comes to mind today-- "Judge not . . . the working of his inmost heart thou canst not see. What seems to our dim eyes a flaw may only be a scar, brought from some well fought field where we would only faint and yield."
BEATRICE ABBOTT
Melrose, Mass.
Syphilis Problem
Sirs:
Please accept my hearty congratulations for the fearless and courageous discussion of syphilis that appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of TIME. Syphilis is undoubtedly the greatest single solvable health problem which confronts the Amencan people today. Solution, however, depends primarily upon shifting public consideration of the disease from social to scientific grounds so that a patient with syphilis will be regarded merely as the victim of a serious communicable disease rather than a social outcast. This achievement, in turn, depends much more upon bringing the known facts impressively to popular attention than upon the acquisition of any new knowledge about syphilis. Your feature in the Oct. 26 issue is the most important contribution toward that end which has come to my attention. . . .
In my opinion you have performed an outstanding public service in lifting the subject of syphilis to the level of the respectable public consideration on a National scale.
FRANK J. JIRKA M. D.
Director of Public Health
Department of Public Health
Springfield, Ill.
Pajamarino
Sirs:
Tucked into your football columns last Friday was a little item devoted to Stanford's annual Pajamarino following the Stanford-Southern California pre-game rally.
That Southern California's football team beat ours 14-to-7 was the only truth in the entire story.
You say: "300 exuberant Stanford youths smashed the doors of a theatre, did $300 damage inside, were prevented by police with tear gas from breaking into Roble Hall, girls' dormitory, to climax their annual 'pajamarino riot.' "
The truth: 200, not 300, Stanford freshmen left the Stanford Pavilion, clad in pajamas, after the rally. They streamed across the campus to Roble Hall where they serenaded first-year women who hung out the windows. Campus policemen stood in front of the door, as they have every year, just "in case." They had no tear gas (at Roble or in Palo Alto) and there was no trouble.
Then the freshmen climbed upon a score of automobiles, headed toward the town of Palo Alto, mile and a half away. Every year it had been the custom for the management of the Stanford Theatre, one of the Fox West Coast chain, to allow freshmen in night clothes free admission to the nine o'clock show. But this year the theatre changed its mind, had a squad of Palo Alto police to meet their 200 "guests."
No theatre doors were smashed, either at the Stanford Theatre or at any of the three other theatres which the "exuberant youths" visited. The neon tubes on the marquee of the Varsity were damaged some, but nowhere to the extent you mention, $300. No freshmen broke into any of the four theatres.
Total outcome of Thursday evening's affair (not Friday, as you report): two freshmen jailed overnight because they tore a police officer's trousers, a student boycott against the Fox West Coast theatres in Palo Alto until they reduce balcony prices from 40 to 30-c-¢.
DAVE BOTSFORD
Night Editor
Stanford Daily
Stanford University, Calif.
Local Disgrace
Sirs:
Why don't you criticize new plays when they appear instead of awaiting their arrival in New York City? And Stars Remain opened in Washington Oct. 5 and is being reviewed in your issue of Oct. 26, fairly favorably. It's one of the poorest shows ever to grace, or disgrace, our local stage. It was one of the slowest moving shows ever to open here and if it weren't for Clifton Webb, who is the show, it probably wouldn't have opened in N. Y. C.
What's your reason?
A. E. SMITH
Washington, D. C.
Broadway producers consider a play in the try-out stage up to its Broadway premiere. Had Reader Smith seen the improved version of And Stars Remain which the Theatre Guild presented in its Manhattan theatre, he might have agreed with TIME'S reviewer that the show was a "bright confection."--ED.
McCormick's Heart
Sirs:
Your biting comments on Publisher Robert McCormick (TIME, Nov. 2) may be entirely in accord with the facts. Most Southerners, having scant reason for loving him, are quite ready to believe the worst about him. Nevertheless, members of the Louisiana Press Association are not willing to go along with you when you say: "Publisher McCormick is aloof and domineering . . . possesses such an aversion to human contact that he has himself driven to work from his Wheaton estate in a coupe, in order to avoid having to offer a neighbor a lift."
The reason newspaper men in this State have difficulty in visualizing Publisher McCormick in such a role is this: In 1932 the State Press Association invited Colonel McCormick to speak at their convention being held in this city. McCormick accepted and later wired that an overlooked previous engagement would prevent his attendance. The press had laid great store by his coming and wired back it would change the convention date to suit his convenience, if he would come.
Colonel McCormick was evidently touched. His answer was: "Holy smoke! If you want me that bad I'll come."
He couldn't spare much time, so he took a night Pullman from Chicago to Memphis, chartered a plane there, came on to Monroe, arriving in time to make his speech, hurrying out to the airport immediately he had finished and flew to Memphis in time to get a night train back to Chicago. He paid the entire expense of the trip himself. He lost one day from his Chicago paper, but his good sportsmanship and courtesy to the Louisiana newspaper publishers and editors will not soon be forgotten. Behind that tough exterior you paint in such bitter colors, he evidently has a heart.
FRED WILLIAMSON
Managing Editor
News -- Star-World Publishing Managing Corp.
Monroe, La.
Vanilla
Sirs: . . . I have often wondered why a city like Chicago cannot have a good morning paper. The morning paper reader must choose between Hearst or McCormick, in which case I'll take vanilla.
O. M. HULLINGER JR.
Milwaukee, Wis.
Monitor Hailed
Sirs:
Your issue of Nov. 2 gives over two and one-half pages under heading "Political Press" to the partisanship of the Nation's Press to this Presidential campaign.
In Los Angeles it has been necessary to buy two papers daily to find out via press just what the two major parties are doing and then balance partisan reaction and draw your own conclusions.
In fairness to non-partisan Press (not a fencesitter) believe you should mention a National daily newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, which, for the uninformed, is not a religious paper but a sparkling newsy daily newspaper whose National and international news reports and editorials are forcefully written and give the layman a truly unbiased picture of our National politics.
JOHN ANDERSON
Los Angeles, Calif.
Insulted Norwegian
Sirs:
How long is it since Swedes have been defined as Norsemen? (TIME, Oct. 19).
As much as I admire the Minnesota Squad and TIME (?), I see no reason for insulting us stern and hardy (?) Norwegians. . . .
WILLIAM DAHL
Dedham, Mass.
Webster's Dictionary defines the noun Norse: ". . . Collectively: a. Scandinavians. b. Norwegians." -- ED.
Bigger Post
Sirs:
In the your issue of today, Nov. 2, on p. 13 you quote the circulation the New York Post 121,000. This was the circulation for the year ending Sept. 30, 1935. Circulation for the six months ending Sept. 30, 1936, as reported to the Audit Bureau of Circulations was 205,962.
We are now guaranteeing advertisers a net paid circulation of 250,000 and our present circulation is much greater than that figure.
J. DAVID STERN
Publisher
New York Post
New York City
All praise to Publisher Stern for transforming a dying Tory sheet into a growing proletarian gazette. Hereafter in stating newspaper circulations, TIME will quote latest available ABC ratings.-- ED.
Reed's Remains
Sirs:
Although no mourner for the U. S. Communist, John Reed. I wish to specifically correct TIME's place of burial for this Soviet sympathizer.
He is not "buried in a niche of the Kremlin," as stated in the Oct. 26 issue under France in Foreign Affairs; his remains lie under the sod in a grassy terrace on one side of Lenin's tomb.
A modest headstone marks Reed's grave, his feet lie toward the ancient Kremlin wall, and his head toward Red Square, therby paralleling Lenin's glass-covered body within the tomb.
Dawson P. Adams
Los Angeles, Calif.
According to U.S. Ambassador to France William christian Bullitt, who married John Reed's widow and served as first U. S. Ambassador to the U. S. S. R. until last August, Harvard Communist John Reed's ashes were interred behind a plaque in the Kremlin Wall not later than 1921. --
Foster Homestead
Sirs:
In the Oct. 26 issue of TIME, under the title "Republicans" on p. 16, your reporter states that when Governor Landon visited Greenfield Village with Henry Ford, "they drove past a little white house with green shutters in which once lived Stephen Foster, composer of Oh! Susanna.
This house, of course, was never the home of Stephen C. Foster--in fact, no member of the Foster family ever lived a day under its roof. My father was Morrison Foster, Stephen Foster's brother, and we have ample records, contemporary and documentary, showing that the '"White Cottage" where Stephen Foster and my father both were born was located on the exact spot where a brick building called the Stephen C. Foster Memorial Home, at No. 3600 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, now stands. The actual little white frame cottage where my father and his brother Stephen were born was torn down in 1865.
The house Henry Ford has set up in Greenfield Village and labeled the Foster homestead is a very stupid and quite inexcusable fraud.
I shall appreciate it very much if you will tell me who it was in Greenfield Village that told the reporter for TIME Magazine that Stephen Foster once lived in the "little white house with green shutters," past which Governor Landon was driven on Oct. 13. I was assured by a Greenfield Village executive last August that they intended to stop calling it the Foster homestead, and the Foster birthplace, and would henceforth represent the house merely as a Stephen Foster Memorial. It is of the utmost importance to me to know whether the building is still being falsely labeled with the Foster name.
(Mrs.) EVELYN FOSTER MORNEWECK
Detroit, Mich.
According to Composer Foster's Biographer John Tasker Howard (Stephen Foster: America's Troubadour), the dwelling at Henry Ford's Greenfield Village was not built when Foster was born in 1826 but erected later on a lot once belonging to Foster's father near the real Foster Homestead. The homestead, since demolished, was, according to best authorities, replaced by the building now called Pittsburgh's Stephen Foster Memorial Home. Nevertheless, the Greenfield Village guidebook still lists its Foster cottage as the Foster birthplace. Says Henry Ford: "There is no doubt of the genuineness of the home."--ED.
Superb
Sirs:
I am sure every Catholic in America feels as I do when I say that your article (in the Oct. 19 issue) on His Eminence Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli was superb. Your always straight-to-the-point, clear, unbiased articles make your magazine TIME stand out as the best ever! Keep up the good work!
JACK DONAHOE
Georgetown University
Washington, D. C.
Resented Reference
Sirs:
This afternoon I was shown pp. 50 and 52 of TIME, Oct. 26, wherein Bishop Stewart of Chicago is referred to not once but twice as "the hawk-nosed George Craig Stewart." For your journal to refer to the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the seventh largest diocese of this Church in such a manner is more than a discourtesy. It is an insult, in vulgar and impertinent language, not only to the Bishop himself, but to the 55,000 or more members of his diocese, among whom I am one. It is intensely resented, and should be immediately apologized for by your office.
JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, D.D.
Rector-Emeritus
The Church of the Redeemer
Chicago, Ill.
TIME, loath to insult any one of able Bishop George Craig Stewart's 37,779 communicants, still maintains its right to call a nose a nose.-- ED.
Father Ayer's Part
Sirs:
TIME errs in asserting (Nov. 2, p. 55) "there never was an N. W. Ayer in the old Philadelphia advertising firm of N. W. Ayer & Son." For nearly three years N. W. Ayer held a half interest. The business was founded in April 1869, by Francis Wayland Ayer who gave it his father's name, possibly as a personal tribute to his father, possibly because he himself barely turned 21, had less than a year's experience in business, and may have feared that his youth would count against him when he solicited business from Philadelphia merchants. The father had agreed to join the firm as soon as his duties as teacher in a "female seminary" terminated in the following June. From June 1869 until his death in 1873, N. W. Ayers gave as much time to the business as his poor health permitted. That his contribution was more than nominal is proved by a letterbook of F. W. Ayer's for the period and by the fact that he recieved half the profits, as shown by the firm ledgers.
There are no Ayers in the firm today because none of F. W. Ayer's brothers lived to manhood and the founder himself produced no sons. Wil Wilfred Fry inherited the control of the business because his wife was F. W. Ayer's only surviving child, but not until he had amply proved his ability to manage the agency wisely and well. In June 1936, Wayland Ayer Fry, fresh from Colage University, went to work for N. W. Ayer & Son to learn the business from the bottom rung, as his father had done before him. . . .
RALPH M. HOWER
Assistant Professor of Business History
Graduate School of Business Administration
Harvard University
Boston, Mass.
Eagle's Red Face
Sirs:
Re TIME'S mention of attempt of Berkshire Eagle to ascertain vote of New Ashford 18 hours before opening of polls by means of straw ballot distributed to all 48 registered voters of the village (TIME, Oct. 9), should like to ask Literary Digest's Funk what he does for red face.
The unhappy (for this newspaper) returns of the next day showed that, while the town had given Landon 32 votes and Roosevelt 12 in the straw, which roughly tallied with the town's professed political inclination, the legal vote on the dawn of election morning showed 26 votes for Landon, 19 for Roosevelt.
Explanations? Who cares but Berkshire Eagle!
LAWRENCE K. MILLER
Berkshire Eagle
Pittsfield, Mass.
For Publisher Funk's remedy for red face, see p. 64, -- ED.
Bulow Over Gurney
Sirs:
TIME erred on two counts in issue of Nov 9, p. 25. col. 2. Bulow was re-elected and not Chandler Furney. That is excusable. But Bullow's names are William John (in that order) and not John William. That is inexcusable. What do you say?
HERBERT BULOW ANSTAETT
Librarian
Franklin & Marshall College Library
Lancaster, Pa.
For a cleanup report on last week's election results, see p. 28.-- ED.
Singular & Sensational
Sirs:
Texans are wondering, and so am I, how TIME, Nov. 9, got into News Dealers' hands here in San Antonio at seven o'clock Friday morning and contained such late coverage on the election. . . .
Permit me to remark that it was a singular and sensational accomplishment.
HOLLAND McCOMBS
San Antonio, Tex.
Sirs:
Have you folded? Brace up. You didn't conduct a poll or did you? Let's hear from you when you have TIME again.
GEORGE STEPHENS
Douglas, Ariz.
TIME'S production schedule was retarded 24 hours to carry election results in the Nov. 9 issue to 750,000 readers. Those copies which arrived more than 24 hours late were unavoidably delayed in the mail by week-end delivery schedules.-- ED.
Snowshoe Switchback
Sirs:
In the Letters department of TIME for Nov. 9 Mr. George C. Whitney writes of the switchback in the H. T. & W. Railroad as being reputed to be the only one east of the Rocky Mountains.
There is a switchback on the branch of the Pennsylvania R. R. between Snowshoe and Snowshoe Intersection, Pa. This is standard gauge track, & carries only freight traffic now.
The Pennsylvania R. R. recently ran an excursion for railroad enthusiasts from Harrisburg, Pa., which included a trip over this switchback.
JAMES L. SOMMERVILLE
Alton, Ill.
Lehigh Valley, Norfolk & Western, Central of New Jersey are among other roads that have switchbacks.-- E D .
Capone's Cadillac
Sirs:
In your issue of Nov. 2, under People, you say that public enemy Al Capone's old armored limousine was junked in Moab, Utah, after a wreck. Last week I paid 5-c- to see "Al Capone's $20,000, bulletproof, V16 Cadillac limousine" which was in a side-show at the Louisiana State Fair in Shreveport. I don't begrudge the nickel, but I would like to know if Al had two such automobiles or if what I saw was just another Fair farce.
CLIFTON BUTLER
Shreveport, La.
Contrary to first reports from Moab, the Capone Cadillac was not junked but repaired after its accident. Reader Butler apparently was not cozened out of his nickel.--ED.
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