Herewith are excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain either supplementary to, or corrective of, news previously published in TIME.
"Stand for Good English"
TIME Princeton, N. J.
New York, N. Y. May 21, 1925.
Gentlemen:
. . . Look at Drums by Jim Boyd and The Carolinian by R. Sabatini and two little sketchbooks, Isles of Eden and A Winter of Content by Laura Lee Davidson of Baltimore, a lady whom I don't know.
I read for pleasure. But few of the "new" books give it. The books I mention have been (to me at least, a normal old human) both enjoyable and profitable.
Can't we get away from the Neurotics? And from the Filmotics? Can't we appreciate good and simple and nonexplosive English?
You men must help us. You must gently steer the blessed-fool reading public away from puffery and quackery and prurient prudery. You must stand for good English. Not for me, you understand. I am settled, fixed and determined in my way, forward I hope, but not adrift. But I love the venturers who are seeking something real and better.
HENRY VAN DYKE
No Bridge
American University,
TIME Cairo, Egypt.
New York, N. Y. Apr. 23, 1925.
Gentlemen:
This correction will reach you late, but I must set you right concerning the election in Egypt. In your issue of Apr. 6, Page 10:
"Ziwar Pasha, narrowly elected over his opponent, ex-Premier Saad Pasha Zaghlul,"
"At the polls, Ziwar had eked out a small majority. . . ."
Surely the news did not get so distorted in the U. S. A. as all that. Zaghlul polled a clear majority, both at the primaries and in the returns to Parliament, where his party secured 126 out of 214 seats. The British (who granted the Constitution), through their pawn Ziwar, compelled the dissolution of Parliament. Ziwar and his party have never been elected to office and they remain unpopular with the Egyptians.
In your issue of Apr. 13, Page 9, you state that the Earl of Balfour went to Cairo,
"whence he entered a special railway car . . . and was whisked off across the Suez Canal to Palestine. . . ."
Interesting, if true. There is no bridge across the Canal, but only a ferry. The special train waited for him on the east bank of the Canal.
You have an enthusiastic and a growing following among the Americans here.
WILLIAM A. EDDY
According to first advices from Egypt, the elections to Parliament gave the Zaghlulists 101 seats, the Ziwarists 105. The Zaghlulists subsequently contradicted this statement, claiming 111 seats, although three constituencies had still to be heard from and five had to hold a second ballot.
With regard to the Earl of Balfour, a despatch from Cairo stated that Balfour's train was ferried across the Suez. It is well known that there are no bridges across the Canal.--ED.
Disgusted
TIME Chicago, Ill.
New York, N. Y. May 29, 1925.
Gentlemen:
While not myself a doctor, my uncle and my grandfather before him were members of the medical profession and I have always entertained the highest respect for that ennobled science. You may, perhaps, conjecture my feelings when, opening your issue of June 1 to its usually excellent medical page (which I am accustomed to peruse before anything else), I found that the longest article was one devoted to the report of a meeting of morticians in the offices of the Chicago Casket Co. It was not so much the details of this picnic that made my gorge rise. How they shook hands, sang songs, did setting-up exercises, I could read merely with sentiments of natural disgust that fellows of such a calling should be permitted to hold a public revel of this kind; and, if permited, that their antics should be recorded and broadcast in the press to be read --who knows? --by women and children. But the thing, Sirs, that I cannot stomach for an instant, is your nauseous assumption that the doings of funeral parlormen can be included under the heading MEDICINE. Permit me to tell you that it has always been my own belief, as it was my uncle's and my grandfather's, that a doctor's concern with the human body ceases when life is extinguished. To admit anything else is to admit that the practice of therapeutics is a mere curtain-raiser for the depraved ritual of the mortician; it is to assert that the science of surgery is no more than a conventional preliminary to the grisly fiddle-faddle of the undertaker. This age may subscribe to such a belief; you may subscribe to it, gentlemen; there may be those who find it dignus legate; but I, for one, do not subscribe to it, nor will I continue my subscription to any paper which countenances such scrofula. You may cancel it forthwith.
Jacob OGLETHORPE
Marines
TIME San Diego, Calif.
New York, N. Y. May 24, 1925
Gentlemen:
The following paragraph appears on the dramatic page of TIME, May 11, 1925: "What Price Glory?--The picture of two U. S. Marines at their trade--mud on the outside and alcohol within."
I am familiar enough with both the play What Price Glory? and with the U. S. Marines to know that the impression the play gives regarding Marines is not altogether a truthful one. It is undeniable, unfortunately, that the Marine characters in the play have their counterparts in the Marine Corps, but they are not typical of the Corps, nor are they in the majority.
I take particular exception to the phrase of your reviewer: "Marines at their trade." A Marine's duties, or "trade" as your critic calls them, do not consist of making guinea pigs or drunkards out of themselves. Their "trade" is the protection of American lives and property all over the world, and in this business they arc efficient and thorough. . . . A surprisingly high percentage of the Corps avail themselves of the educational facilities offered by correspondence to all Marines, free of cost; and men who are thus engaged in an effort to improve themselves intellectually are hardly the type of men that commit the outrages against decency pictured in the play What Price Glory? . . .
EDWIN H. ARMSTRONG.
TIME agrees with Mr. Armstrong that a characterization of the "trade" of the Marines as "mud and alcohol" is unfair. TIME'S dramatic critic, straining inadvisedly for epigram, became thoughtless, careless, callous. No offence was intended. But, since an offence was committed, an apology is herewith tendered to the U. S. M. C. -- ED.
Slogan
TIME Lansdowne, Pa.
New York, N. Y. May 25, 1925
Gentlemen:
As an "Old-TIMER," may I have your ear one moment to whisper a slogan which, to me at least, is appropriate for your excellent publication?
Here it is --"TIME will tell!"
How's that?
CYRIL G. FOX
Very good. --ED.