Monday, Mar. 18, 1940
Purge
In your March 4 issue, p. 22, col. 1 you say: "The job used to be held by Stalin's 'Dear Friend' Sergei Kirov, whose bumping-off in 1934 gave the world a new word: purge."
In Julius Caesar, in justification of the proposed murder of Caesar, Brutus says:
"This shall make Our purpose necessary and not envious: Which so appearing to the common eyes, We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers."
--Act II, Scene 1, lines 177-180.
DANA L. FARNSWORTH, M.D.
Williamstown, Mass.
Tax Facts
Sirs:
The burlesque picture and humorous story of me in your magazine of Feb. 26 resulted in a complete sell-out of that issue in Memphis.
News dealers are hollering for more copies.
A few additional facts about the protracted and diversified court contests of the Colliers over their taxes might be equally interesting. . . .
Our refusal to pay taxes was because of exorbitant assessments. The litigation extended through a generation. The amount involved finally grew to about $750,000. The controversies went through all the Courts of Memphis ; five times to the Supreme Court at Jackson, Nashville and Knoxville. I was rammed in every jail in Shelby County. Nevertheless, my daily salutation to my opponents was: "Good morning, boys. You haven't got me yet." The tax collectors were finally glad to accept full payment in "dirt." . . . We gave the City 200 acres of ditches, gullies and ravines--most of which area was inaccessible on account of three diagonal railroad rights of way, cuts, fills and bridges.
We retained 100 picturesque acres in the heart of Memphis--one half being virgin woods with massive oaks 250 years old. As additional compensation to us, the State and City built a scenic parkway through our tract 100 ft. wide, 3/4 mile long, complete in every detail, costing them $175,000. So Old Tom didn't lose much of his family's inheritance by the tax litigations after all.
I am over 60 and I'll challenge any one of your millions of readers half my age to a bare-foot race, one, three or five miles.
I am sending you a recent photo of myself, not that its publication will again exhaust your sales in Memphis; but merely to convince you that I am not so much like a "nigger prize fighter" as your burlesque made me appear.
TOM COLLIER Memphis, Tenn.
SPCSCPG (Cont'd)
Sirs:
It is difficult to believe that Elmer Samson can have been serious in inquiring of TIME
(Feb. 19) if the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters George does "exist in actuality," since our famed brotherhood now includes thousands of members throughout the U. S.
That it is far from being unknown abroad also must be evident from the fact that King George VI and the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd Grorge, of Great Britain, are two of its representatives in Europe; as, I might add, the late King George V and that great French statesman, George Clemenceau, were for many years. I do not know if the officers of our illustrious organization will feel at liberty to tell anyone who does not bear the name of the Father of our Country about the work of our Society. If, however, Elmer Samson's wish to know more about this is not prompted merely by idle curiosity, but rather by a sincere desire to cooperate with it--and in spite of the fact that he himself is not eligible for election to it--I would suggest that he write to our Founder and Perpetual Secretary, Mr.
George W. Dulany Jr. (Yale Ph.B. 1898) whose address is South Second 1100 St., Clinton, Iowa.
GEORGE PARMLY DAY Treasurer
Yale University New Haven, Conn.
Sirs: . . . Most of our 33,000 members are proudly christening new sons George Jr. or George III and applying for membership cards at the same time they get birth certificates.
The death of the late George Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago leaves us with the office of Chaplain vacant, and we are asking for nominations. . . . Senator George of Georgia certainly is still our very appropriate President. . . .
GEORGE W. DULANY JR.
Secretary SPCSCPG
Clinton, Iowa
Sirs:
I note your allusion to Senator George and SPCSCPG. If the presidency of same goes by priority,* may I call your attention to a ballad I printed in the old Bowling Green (Saturday Review of Literature) some time in 1927 or maybe 1928. I give you only one stanza: Obedient to the phobias of the regimented herd, To the dictates of the masses I have properly deferred: I always sent out Greeting Cards, and Mother's Day I kept, I never wore my panama beyond the 15th Sept.
And if I wished to send a girl a birthday wire, poor clam, I'd use a Western Union predigested tele gram--That'll show you what I am: Just a boob, a Simple Sam, But I have my one rebellion, and I stick to it, by damn--For in one thing, I insist, I'm a misbehaviorist, As heroic as they were at Valley Forge: With amazement hear me speak My accomplishment unique, I NEVER CALLED A PULLMAN PORTER GEORGE. If you want the other stanzas, you can find them in the files of the SRI.. Will not Senator George accept the madrigal as the marching song of his society?
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY New York City
Pistillate West
Sirs:
Your review of My Little Chicadee [TIME, Feb. 26] reads: "highly staminate Flower Belle, Mae West. . . ."
. . . Dull as the sex-life of flowers may be, they still distinguish between stamens and pistils, and the stamens are indubitably masculine.
LAURA B. ALEXANDER Portland, Me.
Odditorium
Sirs:
IN FEB. 26 TlME, PAGE 42, ARTICLE HEADED "LISTEN GODOY" REFERS TO "WE, THE PEOPLE" AS "SANKA COFFEE'S TUESDAY-NIGHT ODDITORIUM OF THE AIR." MAY I CALL YOUR ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT "ODDITORIUM OF THE AIR" IS OWNED BY MYSELF AND APPLIED TO MY OWN "BELIEVE IT OR NOT" PROGRAM, SPONSORED BY ROYAL CROWN COLA, FRIDAYS OVER 89 CBS STATIONS FROM 10:30 TO II PM (EST).
ROBERT L. RIPLEY New York City
>Odditorium is Ripley's, believe it or not.--ED.
Oh Foul Slander
Sirs: Wait! Since when has your Music editor written your book reviews? In the March 4th issue, under Music (Bach and Boogie-Woogie), he writes of Elliot Paul and makes the remark that he is the author of one good book, The Life and Death of a Spanish Town. Oh foul slander! Has he never heard of Mr. Paul's Concert Pitch, the best damn musical novel I ever read? As an author myself I don't like to see this -- Poet Christopher Darlington Morley is not even eligible for membership.--ED. slipping of your department editors into the wrong pews. We can take what you dish out to us in our proper place--but don't let your Music people write so coyly of books, or your Art people write so well on crime (Art Gallery Mystery in the same issue).
Having met Mr. Paul many times at the offices of Random House, our mutual publishers, I can also state that he is not as barrel-shaped as his pictures show. He is really a small man--who, if you must coin an image around, would be keg-shaped.
For a man who is tone deaf, I don't see why I read your Music section anyway.
STEPHEN LONGSTREET Brooklyn, N. Y.
Information
Sirs:
Beaten to publication by one week was your interesting Feb. 26 article concerning the Carville, La. leprosarium. Closely paralleling it was an article in Collier's by Dr. Victor G. Heiser, in which he differed with yours on one highly significant point.
Dr. Heiser relates that a doctor from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered that the Syrian hamster, a type of rodent, could, by inoculation, be made to support the growth of lepra bacilli. In sharp contrast is your statement that: "Since the lepra bacillus will grow in no other animal but man. . . ."
Information please.
R. B. FREUND Chicago, Ill.
>TIME queried President Perry Burgess of the Leonard Wood Memorial for the Eradication of Leprosy. Says he: ". . . Much excitement was created at the Cairo Conference on Leprosy two years ago by the reports and demonstrations which Dr. Saul Adler of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem made with respect to his attempts to transmit human leprosy to a small rodent found in the vicinity of Mt. Ararat and which is called the Syrian hamster.
Dr. Adler was brought to the conference by the Leonard Wood Memorial because of the favorable reports on his work. Following that meeting a number of scientists visited his laboratories in Jerusalem. I believe it is fair to say that the majority of these men looked upon the work, not with entire conviction but open-mindedness. Until other workers are able to duplicate what Dr. Adler hoped he had accomplished, his results cannot be accepted as definite.
I spent much time with him in Jerusalem. He is a careful and conservative scientist. He was aghast at the publicity which had been given to the work he had been doing in his laboratory. There was no scientist who visited him who was more restrained in his opinion as to his results than he.
"So far as I am informed, despite the fact that a number of scientists in various parts of the world have attempted to confirm Dr. Adler's work, only one man feels that he possibly has done so --a French worker, Dr. Etienne Burnet.
"To date we have no laboratory animal, although many have been and are being experimented with, which has been accepted scientifically as susceptible to human leprosy."--ED.
*Poet Christopher Darlington Morley is not even eligible for membership.--ED
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