LETTERS

Conniving, Self-Aggrandizing

Sirs:

I have just read your biased account of political events under the head of The Presidency, in TIME, July 31, and I want you to know how your account of the defeat of the Neutrality Bill appears to one who has got more respect for honor than he has for conniving, self-aggrandizing politicians. . . .

Christ had his Judas, Washington his Benedict Arnold and Roosevelt his John Garner.

E. J. COWARD

Aitkin, Minn.

Presidential Masons

Sirs:

In your otherwise complete article on Paul McNutt, you failed to mention whether he was a Mason. I have recently heard from both Masons and non-Masons that no man will ever go to the White House who is not a 32nd Degree Mason. If true, here is a political factor far more important than the Legion. How many of our Presidents have been Masons, and how do the prospective 1940 candidates stand in this respect?

ROBERT M. DODDS

Omaha, Neb.

>>Of the 31 U. S. Presidents, twelve have been known Masons: George Washington (Past Master), James Monroe, Andrew Jackson (Grand Master), James K. Polk (Royal Arch), James Buchanan (Past Master), Andrew Johnson (32nd Degree), James A. Garfield (14th Degree), William McKinley (Knight Templar), Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Warren G. Harding (33rd Degree), Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd Degree). (Whether Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were Masons is a moot question.)

Of the 1940 Presidential possibilities, Masons are Thomas Edmund Dewey, Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg (32nd Degree), Paul Vories McNutt (32nd Degree). No Masons are Robert Alphonso Taft, James Aloysius Farley, John Nance Garner, Cordell Hull, Harry Lloyd Hopkins.--ED.

"Care and Feeding"

Sirs:

This is written so that you may know I am not oblivious to the generous fashion in which you dealt with me in TIME, August 7.

The only reward I may offer you (probably the only reward you would accept) is a copy of my address on the "Care and Feeding of Politicians."

HENRY F. ASHURST

U. S. Senate

Washington, D. C.

>> TIME's thanks to non-oblivious Senator Ashurst for his gift, excerpts from which are printed below.--ED.

". . . As to diet: the politician just before an election should be allowed, at public expense, all the pork he wishes, and he should use plenty of applesauce, as that is the only commodity of which the supply can never equal the demand. . . .

"The politician who expects to survive every storm that blows should simulate a flurried, harried demeanor, and a nervous--yes, I shall say irritable--nature, as such persons are generally regarded as sincere. . . .

"Above all things, he should not forget that voters never grow weary of illusory promises. . . .

"It is possible that the politician may be afflicted with that devastating malady known as 'presidentitis,' which is a burning, itching desire to become President. . . .

"The symptoms of 'presidentitis' are pronounced and unmistakable and are as follows: The patient's vocabulary is reduced to the personal pronoun 'I.' There is an acute sensitiveness to newspaper criticism, then come irritability, thirst, unhappiness, loss of sleep, and extreme suspicion of all other statesmen. . . ."

Oomph

Sirs:

So it's the "Oomph" girl now [TIME, July 31, P. 24].

If the Oomph represents the current vogue, I'll take vanilla.

ANGUS MACTAVISH

Allentown, Pa.

Bravery

Sirs:

In the newspapers of the last week and in TIME, July 31, p. 22, there are accounts of Mr. C. J. Bradley of Brooklyn, telling of his bravery in receipt of the news that he has incurable and inoperable cancer. . . . I would not belittle his bravery except that I have received the same shock. I came home from medical examinations about the first of April with news similar to that given Mr. Bradley except that I had been operated on and, I thought, cured, two years ago. Also, I claim the greater shock for I am not yet 40 years old and could use the 13 years difference in our ages to very good account in my position as electrical engineer and in educating my four children. My salary is nowhere near $25,000 per year but it seems to me that only makes it harder because of the more uncertain financial future of my wife and four children.

I do think more cancer sufferers should be told of their condition. Most doctors labor under the impression that patients will commit suicide if told and that they are doing a service by "stringing" the patient "along," as they did with me for some months before I was able to force the truth from them. Knowing my condition now I am able to recognize normal progress of the disease and do not worry over every little upset, wondering what I have done to weaken myself again. Knowing my condition I have spent more time with my sons, I have visited and entertained more of my friends, and I have put my affairs into such shape that my wife can administer the estate. Now I am confined to the house all the time and to my bed 75% of the time and I am appreciating the care and attention lavished on me.

Because my case could have been cured if properly diagnosed when I first went for medical attention, I would feel more content to die if I felt that my experience would encourage doctors to make earlier diagnosis of other cancer cases.

CHARLES A. STORMS

Rogers City, Mich.

Sirs:

When I read of Claude Joseph ("Brad") Bradley under TIME'S heading Medicine, it just makes me enjoy the days that I have lived all the more and forces me to extend my hand in admiration to "Brad" and you.

CHAS. P. HOLMBERG

Chicago, Ill.

Xantippes, Yahoos, Zaneys

Sirs:

Does this advertisement that appeared in a Buffalo newspaper 93 years ago hint that history repeats itself?

"Mr. Winchell,

"Dialectician and Delineator of Eccentric Character.

"Respectfully begs leave to announce to the Ladies and Gentlemen of Buffalo, that he will appear at McArthur's Garden EVERY EVENING NEXT WEEK, commencing on MONDAY, August 31.

"On which occasion he will introduce a variety of Amusing Burlesques, Comical Delineations, Enlivening Funnyism, Gleesome Humors, Innoxious Jolities, Kindling Levities, Mirthful Novelties, Outjesting Palliatives, Queer Reminiscences, Satirical Truisms, Ubiquitous Voices, Wags, Xantippes, Yahoos, Zaneys, etc. etc.

"PERFORMANCE VARIED EACH EVENING."

ROBERT M. BOLTWOOD

Buffalo, N. Y.

Gad-Sir-the-Empire

Sirs:

False is Letterwriter-to-TIME Kimball's assertion that the government-controlled British Broadcasting Corp. is Red [TIME, July 17]. Correctly he charges that its newscasts are inaccurate, biased, anti-Axis.

B. B. C. English language news, intoned in bland Oxford accents, is insidious because smooth, therefore, to the unsophisticated, impartial. Consistently the B. B. C. represents the pseudo-democratic viewpoint of Britain's ruling caste, now belligerent because its habitually quiet but nevertheless arrogant assumption of omniscience in Europe and in Asia is effectively challenged by the Dictatorships.

Britain's Magna Charta gave the power and prerogatives to the barons, who have held them ever since--the backdoor of the peerage-cum-charmed political circle always being carefully left wide open to "commoners" who have the dough and can read without moving their lips, also, for safety's sake, to an occasional pale pink radical with an orthodox Imperial slant to his ideas. The country's masses, politically ignorant and acquiescent because they are continually mesmerized by a puppet press masquerading as democratic, have yet to realize that they are on the outside looking in. Apart from occasional darts to the Left, dragging a red herring, and aside from plenty of cockney and dialectal comedy, which is really a "front," the British Broadcasting Corp. is essentially Gad-Sir-the-Empire Tory, and uncompromisingly for all that the Empire does not mean to Britain's underprivileged millions.

ALFRED C. MOORE

London, England

Peculiar Parallelism

Sirs:

Of three literary men whose careers show a peculiar parallelism you have in recent months reported the marriage of one, the poem of another.

Eliot and Waugh joined the Catholic Church*. . . . But in so doing they committed themselves to nothing.

Huxley, on the other hand, finding an answer in a religion composed of all the best that's been thought and said, committed himself a couple of hundred pages worth in Ends and Means. . . .

Following its publication, Huxley edited a pacifist pamphlet, in great part a restatement of the book. But what else has he done, what is he doing now? Is he by any chance preparing a novel, foreshadowed in Eyeless in Gaza, of an unattached man? There is no such character in fiction, he claims. Or is he merely continuing with the practical work of the pacifist movement? Had he been very active during this period it seems probable that he would have gotten into enough trouble to make the news, and hence have appeared in your pages. Has he been suppressed? Or has he gone underground?

I appeal to you as the only likely source of this information. The local library has only an American Who's Who. I trust that you will feel the subject of sufficient general interest to publish at least a sentence in answer.

HANSON KELLOGG

Tallahassee, Fla.

*T. S. Eliot is an Anglo-Catholic, Evelyn Waugh a Roman Catholic.--ED.

>>Neither suppressed nor underground is British Author Aldous Huxley, now living in Pacific Palisades, Calif. His nearly-completed novel, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, is scheduled for publication this fall. A realistic fantasy, it tells of a rich man who tries to prolong his life scientifically, eventually reverts toward an ape.--ED.

Heaven & Earth Mover

Sirs:

I should appreciate your advising me if the rumor is true that the New York World's Fair will be held over until next year. . . .

I had planned to attend the Fair this fall . . . but now find that it will be practically impossible. However, if the Fair isn't to be available next year, I'll move Heaven and Earth to get there before it closes. . .

EDITH C. MCINTYRE

Missoula, Mont.

Sirs:

TIME might better criticize the pig-headed public in general and the boycotting New Yorkers in particular, instead of Grover Whalen and the World's Fair organization for lack of patronage at the World of Tomorrow. Perhaps the statement made by TIME in its July 24 issue, p. 54, that no U. S. world's fair ever charged more than 50-c- is true. But was there ever a fair, or any other show, which offered the public such superb entertainment from 9 a.m. until far into the night ?

When you go to the theatre you pay more than 75-c- to get in to see one show. At the Fair you see hundreds. . . . How many times have you seen a big-league baseball game, a doubleheader, even for an admission price of only 75-c-? . . .

Why, it's worth the price of admission to see first-hand what Grover Whalen and his gigantic organization has accomplished and how efficiently the enterprise continues to be managed.

OLGA H. WEBBER

Washington, D. C.

"Irreligious Solicitude"

Sirs:

I cannot but send a word of thanks for your courage in reporting the recent goings-on of the Buchmanites ("Oxford Groupers") on the Pacific Coast with such insight and accuracy [TIME, July 31]. I know I speak the minds of many plain, ordinary church members, who hesitate to sound anything like a harsh note . . . when I say that the ballyhoo of these spiritual high-pressurists fills them with something akin to nervous suspicion and mistrust.

During recent years I have talked to many ministers about Buchmanism and, without one exception, they had reached the conclusion that the worthy and helpful values in this manifestation were painfully outweighed by its negative and unconstructive aspects. One minister (a very eminent man, whose books are best sellers) told me that he had had to take two members of his congregation to ah asylum--so grievously had they "gone off at the deep end" through jettisoning orderly processes of judgment, mental discipline and sound common sense and substituting therefore the capricious thaumaturgical foibles of these doctrinaires. Several friends of mine became "Groupers" (they like to add the erudite "Oxford" to the label) some time back but beyond a lopsided fanaticism, a persistent proclaiming how terrifically bad they were before and how "absolutely honest, absolutely unselfish, absolutely pure and absolutely loving" they are now, one fails to detect any particular difference. At any rate, not pragmatically, although I could not venture to appraise the mystical transformation.

There is nothing particularly new about religious high-pressurism and I think one of the most perfect rejoinders to all that sort of thing was that made by St. Hilary of Poitiers, many centuries ago, when he spoke of a contemporary Buchmanite, so to speak, as having "an irreligious solicitude for God." St. Hilary went on to explain that an observer of the cosmic processes soon learns that the Almighty has His own spacious way of doing things, and that often He plans to take many thousands of years to accomplish some far-reaching purposes. . . . Cannot one venture to conclude, accordingly, that even Herr Buchman and his projected 100,000,000 adherents are not likely to stampede Jehovah into a general upset of His vast cosmic processes ?

ALEXANDER W. ARMOUR

New York City

Foul Record

Sirs:

TIME, Aug. 7 states, "For the past two years Japan has bought from the U. S. well over half the high-test motor fuel, motors, machinery, scrap metals and scrap rubber essential to her Chinese conquest."

Is it illogical to state that if Japan has wantonly slaughtered one and one half million Chinese, three quarters of a million Chinese men, women and children were murdered by the Congress and President of these States ?

If your statement is true, this country which spends half of its waking hours yowling at Hitler's persecution of the Jews and Czechs, should hang its head in shame at a foul and disgusting record.

Your statement, in the interests of National Honor, should either not have been printed or it should have been given a full-page spread and dedicated to a degenerate Congress.

HUGH WILSON O'NEILL, M.D.

Santa Ana, Calif.

Hole-In-One

Sirs:

TIME readers are writing to me, alternately criticizing and applauding my reasoning (TIME, Aug. 7) that a hole-in-one is not an accident, requesting amplification:

The problem is not sufficiently abstruse to require the services of a logician. A mere student of semasiology will recognize the employment of the word accident in this case as being entirely dependent upon the motive and intent of the golfer. . . . The result of the manner in which he uses his clubs is one of perfection or imperfection, not chance.

If, on a par 3 tee, your club strikes the ball with the force and angle which you intended, hits the green short of the flag and rolls into the cup, it did so in obedience to certain laws of physics which you set into action. Every molecule was doing its duty. This was your motive and intent. . . .

Therefore, it must follow that since the hole-in-one was the result of planned deliberation on your part, your failure to get a hole-in-one at any time is necessarily the result of an accident. The ball does not conform with your plans since you struck it in a manner other than that which you intended. . . .

FRANK L. MOORMAN

Captiva Island, Fla.

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