$750,000 Grade
Sirs :
TIME of Feb. 28 prints an article about Grade Fields in which the following is stated: "Miss Fields last year received a reputed $750,000 for being both undignified and vulgar." The word vulgar constitutes a grave injury to Miss Fields, her friends and public in England, where she is greatly beloved as your article states. I am a great admirer of TIME and know that it does not intend an affront but in England the epithet used will have a different implication and will have an injurious result. I have received a protest from Miss Field's manager in England and as the producer of her pictures I appeal to your sense of fairness to right the harm done her in this matter.
MONTY BANKS
20th Century-Fox Studio
Los Angeles, Calif.
TIME was using "vulgar" to indicate a hearty British, not a self-conscious U. S. phenomenon. Fortnight ago from Capri Miss Fields telephoned the London Daily Express regarding TIME'S story. Sensibly, good-humored-ly she commented: "The customers are satisfied, aren't they? Besides, I'm not vulgar. When I'm trying not to be vulgar, everybody tells me off. I don't care what they say about me. People who see me like me. That's all that matters. I just go on in my own sweet way. My act has changed little in the past six years."--ED.
Pages
Sirs:
TIME'S book reviewer should review his arithmetic. After mentioning [TIME, March 7] that Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse contains 1,224 pages, TIME'S critic states that writing at the rate of two pages a day it took Author Allen five years to complete his masterpiece.
At the rate of two pages a day, assuming that Mr. Allen labored five days a week, took a two-weeks' vacation each year and yearly observed the seven national holidays, it is mathematically apparent that Anthony Adverse should contain 2,430 pages. . . .
DERMOTT V. HICKEY
Annapolis, Md.
No printing press, Author Allen turned out two pages of manuscript (not printed pages) a day.--ED.
Cerebellum
Sirs:
Structurally or functionally speaking, TIME left itself wide open for a sock on its figurative cranium when describing the physical and mental examination of teachers (March 7) as extending "from toe to cerebellum."
Might I humbly suggest that either your reporter revise his terminology, or examiners of teachers revise their routine to include a cursory perusal of that important area devoted to the function of thought, a few anatomical notches above the cerebellum? I wager many a sagging cortex, many a short-circuited corpus callosum will thus be disclosed.
ARTHUR O. HOFFMAN
St. Louis, Mo.
Reader Hoffman has caught TIME a glancing blow on the glabella.--ED.
Name
Sirs :
As a comparatively new subscriber to TIME and a cover-to-cover enthusiast I am interested in how and why the name TIME was taken for your News magazine. . . .
STEVE WOODSON
Shelby, N. C.
Because the name is brief, pithy, sonorous; because the thing is all- inclusive, essential.--ED.
Editor
Sirs:
We all know that you are a very Bitter severe common Enemy to all the War veterans in the U. S. . . . Damn you Editor go to Hell the sooner the Better. I'm sure there will be Plenty Billions be left over in the U. S. Treasury to Burry you. . . . Go to Hell Editor you are a Nazi Fascist and An Anti-semit. . . . Damn you Editor go to Hell the sooner the better: so the Treasury Raiders are Ruining the U. S.? Would Like to see you 100 ft. in Hell the sooner the better, and you are calling yourself An American. . . . Go to Hell Editor Damn you. . . .
M. J. LEVITAN
Chicago, Ill.
Belbenoit
Sirs :
Here in Oxford all the best people read TIME every week. Your reviewer did us a disservice when he told us [Feb. 14] that Dry Guillotine was "heavy with unrelieved nightmare." I finally read it and now walk on air, feeling "What a piece of work is man!"-ish and convinced that among yeggmen, politicians, editors and college freshmen there may be--must be--something of the spirit that carried Rene Belbenoit to his goal.
Please go after that reviewer with your sharpest invective and "stab his spirit wide awake."
MRS. F. G. RICHARD
Oxford, Ohio
For TIME'S reviewer no reproof: He did not say Belbenoit wrote a bad book. Stranded in San Francisco last July, Rene Belbenoit wrote Explorer William LaVarre in Manhattan, who took him East, arranged for publication of his book. His first job was to pass on the accuracy of Devil's Island scenes in The Life of Emile Zola. If he gets a pardon from the French Government, as he hopes, ex-Convict Belbenoit plans to go back to France, return to the U. S. under the quota.--ED.
Hereditary Traditions
Sirs:
The recent attacks and insults that were published upon the three Albanian Princesses on the good-will tour to this country were outrageous [TIME, Feb. 28]. The statement concerning Their Highnesses' visit to this country in search of rich husbands not only is untrue but it is an insult to the entire Royal Family of Albania and also to the Albanian nation.
If the same thing would be written about the daughters of our American President while touring Albania, I am sure that the American Government would also consider it a pure insult. . . .
No one knows the true nature of the Albanian Princesses' visit. One thing I am sure is that they did not come here to get married, because such a visit is contrary to Albanian hereditary traditions.
RAMO CHIKA
Albanian Press of New York
New York City
For the nonmarital activities of Their Highnesses, see p. 41.--ED.
Alarmist
Sirs:
Thousands of Americans use salt and pepper shakers made in Japan and Germany. Because they are small and because they have a stopper in them, they are hardly ever washed before using. Could it be possible that a coating of poisoning is applied to the inside of these and other dishes made in those countries? Or perhaps disease germs? . . .
MRS. PAT MORGAN
Bristol, Va.
Buck's Verification
Sirs:
Just catching up with my reading due to a Florida vacation, I came across your article "Races" (TIME, March 7).
The story was more than interesting to me since I was one of some 25 visitors at Musa Island on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 24, 1938.
John Billy Ibad Seminole who had been shot at close range with a shotgunl caused some commotion until a sweet old lady among the visitors insisted the alligators had killed him. When skepticism ran high she turned to a huge Indian buck, who in response to her plea for verification of the story replied, "Ugh, ugh!"
E. M. HOEHN
Philadelphia, Pa.
No One Misled
Sirs:
"TIME would never mislead a generation of school children," say you.
When TIME comes to grant a like dispensation to a generation of oldsters, I shall be happy to help you on Wall Street terminology. I have been 35 years in newspaper work and much of that time have been a student of markets. The point is this:
Clarence Hebb (TIME, March 14) has not announced that he will continue a column as a broker's "tip sheet."
There is a U. S. Government agency known as the SEC. The Securities & Exchange Commission, I believe, will welcome any information you may have on "tip sheets" or contemplated "tip sheets."
CLARENCE HEBB
New York City
TIME, regardless of what its article implied, has no information about Reader Hebb that would be of interest to SEC.--ED.
Extraordinary Assemblage
Sirs:
It seems to me that one of the most newsworthy features of the recently appointed Solicitor General of the U. S.. Robert Houghwout Jackson, is his fantastic middle name. Can TIME, in its omniscience, furnish the correct pronunciation of this extraordinary assemblage of letters ?
T. E. DOHERTY
Glastonbury, Conn.
Robert Jackson pronounces his middle name How-att.--ED.
Never
Sirs:
In your issue of March 7, you stated that I "gave financial assistance to struggling John T. Dorrance."
This is not true. Dr. John T. Dorrance bought Campbell's Soup Co. from his uncle, Mr. Arthur Dorrance, and paid for it with his own money. In a close personal business relationship with Dr. John T. Dorrance of over 30 years, I have never known of a time when he needed financial assistance from any person. I never heard of such a thing. . . .
F. WALLIS ARMSTRONG
Aiken, S. C.
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