When Is a Child?
Sirs:
In TIME, Jan. 9 the statement is made that the Board of Tax Appeals reserved decision on the question whether Y. M. C. A. Wilson's embryo offspring was fiscally a child because the board lacked a precedent to go by.
Militarily, Mr. Wilson has a child.
Instructions for filling out the draft questionnaire in 1917 permitted a married man to state that he had a child if his wife was pregnant. I was a member of a county draft advisory board, and so advised a friend whose marriage took place later than a certain date after which marriage was considered a means of evading or deferring military service. His statement that he had a child because his wife was pregnant, was challenged, but it stood up, and he got a deferred classification because of offspring, not spouse.
Since the Federal Government made such a ruling then, perhaps the Board of Tax Appeals would consider it a precedent now.
DON C. ROGERS
Chicago, 111.
Sirs:
The outcome of Lloyd Wilson's appeal interests me very much. A very capable and highly regarded local C. P. A. is of the opinion Wilson's case will be considered a "frivolous appeal" and that he will be fined $500. He has been unable to find the case in the Board of Tax Appeal Service.
SAM PARK
Beaumont, Tex.
> Because the Bureau of Internal Revenue grinds slowly, the Wilson case (No. 96577) will not be decided for some time. But it is unlikely that Lloyd Wilson will be fined for frivolity. Of some 96,000 cases heard since 1924, only two have been held frivolous.--ED.
"& Power"
Sirs:
In your report on my debate with Mr. Gannett [TIME, Jan. 23] you refer to "International Paper Company, which once owned stock in Gannett papers. . . ." According to all reports, including that of the Federal Trade Commission, the name of the firm is International Paper & Power Co. I must insist upon this point because, in the course of the debate, Mr. Gannett, too, tried to make a distinction between the Paper and the Power Company, as if they were separate enterprises.
TIME in particular should know that this is not so. I quote from TIME'S sister, FORTUNE (May, 1930, Vol. I, No. 4, p. 67):
"But for the last few years President Archibald Robertson Graustein has fought the battles of paper and pulp with one hand, while with the other he has built up the second enterprise equally gigantic, and at first glance unrelated. International Paper is now the world's chief producer of newsprint; its new (1928) parent, International Paper & Power Co. is one of the world's largest producers of power.
"On March 27, 1929, Mr. Graustein announced that I. P. & P. had bought 82 per cent of the common stock of the New England Power Association. . . ."
Let me repeat: It is International Paper & Power. . . .
HAROLD L. ICKES
Secretary of the Interior Washington, D. C.
Hitler's Den
Sirs:
There has been no New Deal in arithmetic, TIME'S January 23 comparison of Hitler's and Mussolini's sanctums to the contrary. If Hitler's den in the Nazi Chancellery is 88 x 47 feet, his elbow room must be 4,136 square feet, and Mussolini's 60 x 40 cubbyhole gives him 2.400 square feet, a difference of 1,736 square feet in favor of the other end of the Rome-Berlin axis.
In spite of these unavoidable statistics, the photographic cut of the Chancellery of the Fiihrer tops the information that Hitler's room beats Mussolini's by 28 x 7, or, if another calculation is permissible, 196 square feet. The difference between 1,736 and 196 must be an error of 1,540 square feet, or expressed as a ratio, an error of 88%. Five percent would be a reasonable allowance for a margin of error.
ERNEST S. HOBBS Washington, D. C.
> TIME should have said: "Hitler's den is 28 ft. longer and 7 ft. broader than Mussolini's."--ED.
Population
Sirs:
Can you give me any information concerning the approximate Jewish population in Germany at the time the Hitler Government came into power in 1933?
P. F. SEARLE
Indianapolis, Ind.
-- About 500,000.--ED.
Poets, Poetasters, Poeticules
Sirs:
... I have been reading and examining and weighing the contents of literary magazines for about 20 years: and I have nowhere met with such a clear sure note in the reviewing of poems as that which was struck in your Books section of Dec. 26. You have in fact, in my opinion, set a new standard for the journalistic treatment of literature, one that the profoundly "literary" papers would do well to adopt. I hope that you will regard this as a "pure" comment--something apart from my own share in the section as one of the poets reported on. (Indeed, the other ten poets dealt with were more explicitly "identified" than myself.)
LAURA RIDING La Chevrie, France
Namby-pamby Roly-poly
Sirs:
Can you not find a more expressive adjective for Howard ("Associated") Hopson than roly-poly [TIME, Jan. 23] ?
When I happen upon one of Mr. Hopson's numerous and worthless "bond" progeny among my papers (for which I plunked out hard-earned coin), I think of far more potent names for this person than your namby-pamby roly-poly.
GEORGIA BRIGHT BALL Sanford, Fla.
Destroyers as Seals
Sirs:
Realizing that our country is trying to establish better relations with our friends of South America and also preparing to uphold the Monroe Doctrine in full, may I make the following suggestion for what it may be worth.
Living in Coronado as I do, I see tied up in San Diego bay some 60 to 80 fine looking decommissioned destroyers. I would suggest that these be placed in commission and five or six be given to each of our southern neighbors. They to man them with their own officers and crew. We to have aboard each one an American Naval officer, preferably some young graduate from the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis of diplomatic turn of mind. Through them we could seal our friendship and at the same time show any and all foreign powers that teeth were being put in the Monroe Doctrine.
This would surely serve a double purpose by making more room for our" Annapolis graduates and also saving to the navy some of our fine officers of middle age now being passed over. . . .
NATHANIEL GARDNER
Coronado, Calif.
Dilemma
Sirs:
Is there anyone in TIME'S reader-audience who can solve this dilemma? . . .
Before each issue is read it is a mint of worthwhile information, but what in the world good are several hundred copies in my basement ? I can give them away ... or better, solicit TIME'S help, among its readers, for a better, more profitable method of disposition. Is there some rich, retired seaman, or world-traveler, who would like an index of all these books, willing to pay for them, ship them to some far away place?
ARTHUR R. OLESON
American District Telegraph Co. Council Bluffs, Iowa
Cancer
Sirs:
... I am writing to call your attention to the article published on p. 38 of TIME, Dec. 26, concerning the report made by the Committee on Fundamental Cancer Research. We are afraid that some of the statements made in the article will mislead the public. . . .
1. "Cancer may be started by syphilis germs, certain viruses and tapeworms, or by application to the skin of simple chemicals . . . and coal tar substances."
It would be unfortunate for the public to get the idea that any one of these agents is of major importance in causing cancer, as present scientific knowledge does not bear this out. . . .
2. "But continued irritation does not cause cancer."
This statement without explanation tends to be misleading. Experimental studies indicate that chronic irritation alone does not cause cancer, but that chronic irritation plus some other factor in the body may cause cancer. . . .
3. "A tendency to cancer in a specific organ may be inherited. Thus lung cancers run in some families, breast cancer in others."
The statement in the Committee's report on this subject dealt with "families of mice" only. These facts have not been proved in man. . . .
CARL VOEGTLIN Chief
National Cancer Institute Washington, I). C.
"Silo" Coughlin
Sirs:
After listening to Father Coughlin's radio broadcast of yesterday [Sunday. Jan. 29], let me congratulate TIME on its dirty sneaky attack on a Christian Catholic Priest.
May I commend you on having someone on your staff such as the flagitious reprobate who wrote that cowardly article [TIME, Jan. 30] ? May I also praise you and your atheistic masters for allowing an attack on the Catholic Church through your unwarranted and scurrilous article referring to the Church of the Little Flower as a silo ?
I would like to call to your attention the fact that the whole staff of TIME Magazine would contaminate any church by merely entering its doors, therefore it is just as well that it stays away.
Further, not a member of your staff is worthy of cleaning the shoes of Father Coughlin, in fact, any one of them would befoul the shoes beyond cleaning.
Now, in closing, I suggest that you have your hoodlums look me up and come out here to wreak their and your vengeance on me. I'll be awaiting them. Hail America
JAMES B. MCLAUGHLIN
Rumson, N. J.
Sirs:
I am writing you a line in regards to, Silo, Coughlin. Now just remember I will never buy this magazine again, and I will put my self out of the way, to ask my store keeper never to handle it. I am writing a few letters two your advertisers and ask thim in the name of Christianity two Boycott you. . . .
JOSEPH ALEXANDER Johnstown, N. Y.
P.S. I belive you have Stuped two the lowest level of all times, Pugh.
Sirs:
. . . Your insulting and unethical remarks about Father Coughlin and the Little Flower Shrine, are resented by me and many of my friends, and if an apology is not forthcoming in your publication at a very early date we shall boycott TIME, and will start a strong and active campaign against your magazine. . . .
JOHN F. SKELLY Brooklyn, N. Y.
Sirs:
The boycott, an invention of those whom you would designate as (Roman) Catholics, is a powerful weapon for use against those whose standard is the greasy dollar, and, thank God, Christians are being educated to the use of it. . . .
JAMES V. SHIELDS New York City
Sirs:
. . . Already a petition is going the rounds in New England, which will carry signatures of seventy-five to one hundred thousand people demanding that the TIME Magazine be kept off every newspaper stand in this section. . . .
A FORMER READER Boston, Mass.
Sirs:
. . . Watch the circulation of TIME go down, down & more power to us good American Catholics.
ELIZABETH T. KENNY New York City
... I spit on you and your kind.
STEPHEN A. BENDICK Plymouth, Pa.
> TIME respects Christians, not Coughlinites, prints these letters (from the 500-odd so far received) as a fair sample of the sense and sensibility of the admirers of Reverend Charles E. ("Silo Charlie") Coughlin.-- ED.
Sirs:
The "Reverend" Charles Coughlin's distortion of your comment regarding his labor activities is a typical example of his viciously ingenious style of demagogy.
Half-truths, unfounded innuendoes, hate-stirring insinuations, uttered with sanctimonious fervor, influence such mentalities as became panicky during Orson Welles's radio dramatization of the conquest of the Martians.
If these were not jittery times, we might safely ignore windbags of the Coughlin or Heflin ilk, who have a tendency to explode of their own inflammable gaseous content --or are discarded by a weary public to the obscurity ash heap. . . .
EDWARD G. BLONDER Attorney at Law Chicago, 111.
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