Royal Visit

Sirs:

Congratulations upon a difficult job performed with a modicum of success. You have managed to introduce a cheap and flippant note even in your account of persons most sacred to Canadians: your story of the Royal Visit to Canada. . . .

Your talk of bullet-proof glass, for instance, is just plain tommyrot. Even though British law has made the gangster's profession a precarious one in this country, still we do know the difference between bulletproof glass and unshatterable or safety glass, with which latter the Royal car and many others in Canada are equipped. Your insistence upon this entirely fictitious bullet-proof glass is one of the most odious insinuations you could suggest against a loyal people.

Again, your article gives the impression that, because in Quebec and Montreal the crowds failed to yell hysterically and throw vast quantities of ticker tape and toilet paper --as happens in certain cities--their loyalty to Their Majesties was very cool. . . .

CHARLES J. BASTIEN

Montreal, Que.

Sirs:

The TIME article on the Royal Visit in the Province of Quebec damaged your magazine's international reputation for accuracy and objectivity.

We, the English-speaking Aldermen of the City of Montreal, are proud of the really wonderful reception accorded Their Majesties by the Canadians of French origin. We also can testify that Mayor Houde acquitted himself with honor and dignity on this memorable occasion.

J. ALEX. EDMISON

LEO J. MCKENNA

JOHN KERRY

MAX SEIGLER

JOSEPH SCHUBERT

J. A. DONNELLY

T. P. HEALY

R. F. QUINN

DAVE ROCHON

F. J. HOGAN

Aldermen's Office

City Hall

Montreal, Que.

Sirs:

Speaking as a Missourian, transplanted recently to Canada, I want to give you a piece of my still American mind.

Your magazine, from its first issue, has been my Galahad--yes, that's mighty sticky, but leave me what's left of my girlish romanticism. Your articles have been fair, direct and intensely interesting, and now you, my Galahad, that I have cheered on in your quest for truth, have (oh, boor that you really are) spit in the Holy Grail. That tacky, smart-alecky corruption of the King and Queen's visit! Bad, bad taste.

Granted you are not privileged to sympathize with the significance behind the British throne, but why can't you acknowledge with dignity the sacrifice two magnificent people are making of their lives?

DOROTHY M. SKAITH

Port Credit, Ont.

Sirs:

Being an American citizen born of American parents and having lived here for the past eight years, I must protest and tell you that I was ashamed of your description of the Royal Visit to Canada.

When the King & Queen came to Montreal, they traveled 24 miles of the city's streets, and all along the route they were cheered and applauded by one and all, including French Canadians. As for myself, I can tell you that I was so much moved by the mere sight of them that I had goose flesh all over me. . . .

H. J. MARCAURELLE

Montreal, Que.

Sirs:

. . . TIME prints in its issue of May 29 the most ludicrous and stupid account of the Royal Visit that I ever have had the unpleasant opportunity of reading.

. . . You should publish a retraction of such unfounded statements which are insulting to a race who, up to now, had always felt that your country was nothing but a good neighbor.

ROGER OUIMET

Montreal, Que.

Sirs:

. . . The dignified ovation in Quebec was entirely missed by your reporters. The eyes filled with tears and the heart was full (as this loyal American can testify) when the tall, handsome King and his most radiantly beautiful Queen accepted the homage due them. . . .

PARALEE PITTS FORDHAM

Toronto, Ont.

Sirs:

. . . The uninformed slap in the face you offer a people as ancient, as proud, as intelligent and definitely as civilized as your own. . . .

T. L. BULLOCK

Montreal, Que.

Sirs:

... To say the least, inaccurate, prejudiced, offensive, and conveys a totally false impression of the loyal French Canadians attitude towards the King and Queen of Canada.

HERTEL LA ROQUE

Montreal, Que.

Sirs:

. . . The malicious reference to the loyalty of French Canada is deeply resented by both races in this cradle of North American civilization. . . .

DR. FRED G. MARSHALL

Montreal, Que.

Sirs:

. . . Your mean and miserable narration of the Royal Visit to Canada. . . .

B. L. HARKNESS Montreal, Que.

>No glass is completely bulletproof, but all four of the cars used by the King & Queen in Canada are equipped with unshatterable, bullet-resisting glass. For the rest, TIME seems to have underrated the fierce enthusiasm for royalty of Canada's loyal French Canadians, British Canadians and U. S. visitors.--ED.

King's Car

Sirs:

Better look again at that "open Buick in a Montreal baseball park." It appears to me to be a Lincoln or possibly a Pierce Arrow, but definitely not a Buick.

JULIAN YOCUM Steubenville, Ohio

Sirs:

TIME erred when it said (May 29, p. 23) "... the King & Queen sat in an open Buick near home plate."

If your writers will mention car makes, they should be capable of recognizing them. The car in question is a Chrysler.

B. S. LONGFELLOW

Hingham, Mass.

Sirs:

The Buick, as you report, in which sat the King and Queen near Montreal's home plate looks like a Lincoln to me. How about it?

R. G. STANSBURY Morgantown, W. Va.

>A Lincoln it was.--ED.

No Bumpkin

Sirs:

In your May 29 issue is a map showing the angling spots on the Atlantic coast, including Nova Scotia. There is a serious omission in it as only Wedgeport is mentioned for tuna fishing, whereas Shelburne, Liverpool, Lunenburg and Jordan Ferry are noted for this kind of fishing.

In an article on angling published on the same page there is rather a nasty fling at a very respectable young man of this town, Alfred Kenney, who holds the record for the largest tuna ever caught on hook and line. He is described by your writer as "a village bumpkin." Mr. Kenney belongs to a respectable family, is far from being a bumpkin, and I feel that in justice to him and his many friends here that someone should at least make an apology. . . .

W. H. CURRIE

Shelburne, N. S., Canada

> To Nova Scotia's Angler Kenney, apologies. No bumpkin, Champion Kenney is also his town's foremost photographer and baseball pitcher.--ED.

Sirs:

In TIME [May 29] you have religiously plugged the fishing ports of Montauk Pt., Peconic Bay and Manasquan, while for Maryland you merely show a weakfish. Did you know that one of the best fishing grounds in the East lies off Ocean City, MARYLAND? That there are to be had silver marlin, tuna, blues, and, so several veterans insist, blue marlin? . . . And also, if you think that Cape Hatteras has channel bass, why not try down around Chincoteague? Otherwise, your article was pretty good.

HUGH BENET JR.

Ocean City, Md.

> By the same token that there are many good fish in the sea, many a good U. S. fishing ground was necessarily omitted from TIME'S map.--ED.

Squalus' Door

Sirs:

Regardless of what crippled the ill-fated Squalus and sent it to the bottom, one thing is evident--its designers are at least 27 years behind the times.

In the press reports we are informed that those rescued owe their lives to a "superman," who with Herculean strength closed the forward bulkhead door while the water was pouring through and the submarine sinking at a 45-degree angle.

All of this is very fine until we ask why the door had to be closed by hand at all. . .

Can well-informed TIME tell if all the watertight doors in our Navy are manually operated? Has the new $90,000,000 battleship Washington got to depend on a few heroes if she is hit below the water line ?

JOHN J. COLLINS

Troy, N. Y.

> Because the U. S. Navy's experiments with mechanically operated doors seemed to show that they are complicated and apt to jam, all doors for personnel in Navy ships are worked by hand. The U.S.S. Washington, which will cost $66,000,000 when completed, will be no exception.--ED.

Baptist Conviction

Sirs:

TIME gravely erred in the paragraph entitled "Indignation" [TIME, May 29]. Senators George, Logan, and Bailey signed no such pronouncement as that referred to. We did sign a pronouncement on religious liberty. Nothing therein related to the President's sending Mr. Kennedy as a personal representative to the coronation of Pope Pius XII, to the adjourning of the Congress upon the death of Pope Pius XI or the employment of any of the branches of our national defense in connection with religious services. . . .

As for those resolutions, they are not the expressions of "a hot, hard-shelled, bone-picking mood." Baptists are devoted to the principle of absolute separation of Church and State. Their protests arise from this devotion. I assure you that the protests were without the slightest disrespect for the Catholics, the Catholic Church, or the exalted Heads of that Church. . . . The protest was an expression of the Baptist conviction derived from the Holy Scriptures and confirmed by bitter experience that absolute separation of Church and State is indispensable, and that every beginning in the direction of connection of Church and State ought to be resisted. . . .

JOSIAH W. BAILEY

United States Senate

Washington, D. C.

>From "A Pronouncement upon Religious Liberty," passed unanimously by the Southern Baptist Convention in Oklahoma City, Okla., on May 20: "We oppose the establishing of diplomatic relations with any ecclesirstical body, the extension of special couresies by our Government to any ecclesiastical official as such, and the employment of any of the branches of our national defense in connection with religious services that are held to honor any ecclesiastical leader. . . ."--ED.

Fourth Hutchins

Sirs:

On p. 49 of the May 15 issue of TIME, you have an item entitled "Three Hutchinses." What about the fourth, William Grosvenor Hutchins, instructor of English at Western Reserve Academy, Hudson, Ohio?

It was my good fortune to be a member of Mr. Hutchins' sophomore English during the spring of 1936. I don't believe any English teacher ever lived who could read the Lady of the Lake as he did. Tall, dour in appearance, Mr. Hutchins loves a good game of golf and wields a wicked garden spade, and best of all, has a swell sense of humor.

JAMES GREGG JR.

Bell Buckle, Tenn.

Drinkers' Lives

Sirs:

Proud should Mr. Francis W. Dunn be of his heavy-drinking, nameless friend about whom he writes in the May 29 issue of TIME (p. 11). His entire life must have been happily spent in an alcoholic stupor. . . .

Not only is this bounder "minus 14 years and 7 months old" but he is also "steadily going backwards." This astounding phenomenon can be accomplished only by averaging better than one drink every 25 minutes.

He must be as busy as he is dizzy.

ASHBEL T. WALL, 3RD

Haverford, Pa.

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