Lindenschmid
Sirs:
I went to a movie, last night, and cried and cried--with joy. A big red-haired man with such a fine voice came out and sang a song about "Lucky Lindy . . Plucky Lindy . . ." all about "Lucky" Lindbergh, of course. Well, my son used to be called "Lindy," too, at High School, and it all just brought tears of pride to my eyes. For my son has been "Lucky" and "Plucky," too, and now has a fine position. Please print this letter, because there must be many mothers among your thousands of readers whose husbands have such names that their sons have been called "Lindy." Every such mother, I am sure, will want to go and hear this song in her city and have a good happy cry, just as I did.
HILDEGARDE LINDENSCHMID (Mrs. Otto)
Cleveland, Ohio
Joseph, Coat
Sirs:
TIME prides itself on its accuracy. TIME therefore will, no doubt, be glad to refer back to p. 14, of TIME, May 9, where there was a paragraph called "Vanishing Coat" telling how David Lloyd George had had his coat stolen whilst dining at the Savoy.
Yes, David Lloyd George has dined many times at the Savoy but in the interests of accuracy--and the Savoy--it should be stated that on this unfortunate occasion he was dining, not at the Savoy but at the hotel next door, or so every London newspaper reported. This may seem a very trivial rebuke, and so it would be, had not your paragraph unwittingly slandered the one man in London who has looked after the hats and coats of more well-known people than anyone else in the world; and furthermore, in a period of 43 years has never had an accident happen to any of them, to say nothing of having them STOLEN!
This is "Joseph" ; urbane, silver-haired, well known to most U. S. visitors in London, whose photographic memory has puzzled many. He has not given a check for a hat or coat for the last 20 years, he never forgets a face; and the now famous coat which was so nearly stolen has been under his care on more than one occasion. (It was not, as it happens, a particularly new coat.) Hence his feelings at your paragraph. But Joseph is as shy as his memory is razor-keen, and on his behalf I venture, therefore, to exonerate him from an occurrence with which I am quite sure thousands of Americans reading TIME, and knowing Joseph, would have associated him.
ST. JOHN WRIGHT
Savoy Hotel, London, England
To Joseph and to the Savoy Hotel, an apology. The "hotel next door" is the Cecil. --ED.
"Bitter Taunt"
Sirs:
On the unlighted coals of the fireplace I found a magazine, evidently a foreign one, with a screeching red cover. It turns out, of course, to be American, with the characteristically 100% efficient title of TIME. I read it from cover to cover as directed and replaced it, drawing lighted safety match slowly along up-curled white page margins of famed onetime magazine.
Still I had read it, and if the truth must be told, with amusement, finding it typically American, quaintly ungrammatical and sophomoric. Further it did not seem to be well disposed or given to amiable qualities. The conspicuous examples of the latter are too long to rewrite. However a few apt specimens of false fine writing occur in "famed," "one," "onetime" and "able." There are others as atrociously bad. Its public must be one that admires redundant simplicity.
Thus finding myself in the full clutch of circumstance, though verified by all human experience, a bitter taunt comes to mind and seems justified. It frets my soul to think that the Yanks, a nation far removed and by no means of the first rank, who with invincible logic found themselves in 1914-1918 too proud to fight, should with homely eloquence in 1927 find themselves too proud to learn to read and write.
TIME is a crude affair. "While I was musing the fire burned."
CYRIL D. H. G. DILLINGTON-DOWSE*
Authors' Club,
2, Whitehall Court, S. W. 1,
London, England
Significant Statements
Sirs:
. . . I had presumed from the tone of TIME the editors were cynical and intended to be nasty.
Your letter of April 29 I have received today. I agree with an Italian to whom I read it who said: "That is very fair of them."
It may interest you to know our own great journalist S. S. McClure is in Italy for the purpose of making a thorough study of the present government. He said to me: "The civilization which is now being developed in Italy is the greatest ever conceived in the mind of man." He is personally going to investigate the "Italian Siberia." He will go to these penal islands. Mrs. Jackson Flemming, the popular current history lecturer, said in my drawing-room: "The government Mussolini is developing is so modern we Americans are not able to understand it; we are not educated up to it." Both these statements are significant.
ROSE M. PREVITALI
Via Orazio 30 Roma, Italy
Too Local
Sirs: TIME'S spicy, well written columns are marred by one thing. The magazine is too local. As a newsmagazine it should be more liberal, more cosmopolitan. Since when is Ontario an "American" State,-- or Windsor a suburb of Detroit ? Since when is the business of Ontario NATIONAL AFFAIRS of the United States ?
I notice also that, under the departments of ART, MUSIC, EDUCATION, RELIGION, SPORT, SCIENCE, most of the events chronicled have happened in the United States. Does nothing of importance in these spheres happen in Canada, in Europe, in any other parts of the world? Or do you consider your readers not intelligent enough or broad-minded enough to be interested in foreign affairs, in events outside the United States?
(Subscriber) E. KREUTZWEISER
Saskatoon, Sask.
At West Point
Sirs :
... It may interest you to know that I won second place in the New York Times Current Events Contest here at the Academy relying almost exclusively on TIME for facts.
H. W. SCHULL JR.
Cadet, U.S.M.A.
U. S. Military Academy,
West Point, N. Y.
Tony Pitslata
Sirs :
Will TIME please note the correct spelling (Tony Pitslata/-) of the name of the young man who was drowned in the Atchafalaya River, at Melville, La., as recorded in the May 30 issue of TIME? TIME is "unerring" but I would strongly advise the proof readers (and also the reporters) to be a little more careful. . . .
LEONARD A. PHILLIPS
Fairfield, Calif.
Sunday School
Sirs:
In TIME, May 2, you state that Clarence H. DeMar of Melrose, Mass., sets type six days and teaches Sunday School the seventh.
A slight error. Sunday School is taught on Sunday and Sunday is the first day of the week.
If I'm wrong, please be frank.
ERNEST S. BIGGS
Alcester, S. Dak.
P.S. Let me not forget to compliment you on your fearlessness.
So many papers shun the truth through fear.
"Friend"
Sirs:
You publish a photograph of Miss Bloom "and friend" [TIME, May 16]. Do you mean to say you do not know who "friend" is? It is no less a celebrity than David Belasco, America's leading theatrical producer. I am surprised a magazine like TIME should not know this at once. I used to have an office near Mr. Belasco's. I would know him anywhere.
JACOB LITZMAN
New York, N. Y.
Correct. "Friend" was indeed Producer David Belasco. But he had no connection with the story about Miss Bloom, whose photographs are rare. He was left unnamed to avoid confusion, left in the picture to increase the interest for readers of Reader Litzman's perspicacity.--ED.
More Humor
Sirs:
... I would suggest that you instill a little more humor into the magazine. Run a Poet's Crazy Corner, where parodies on popular songs and poems are to be printed. You could start a prize contest, giving a reward to the contestant who delivers the best original parody each month. These bits of wit could be written around the latest news of the day as chronicled in your excellent little paper. . . .
Couldn't we have a few pictures to liven up the news, instead of, just faces ?
I would be pleased to learn your ideas on these subjects, therefore I inclose a little red stamp. Just stick it on an envelope with your reply therein and your Uncle Sam will see that I get it.
A. B. MALOIRE
Chehalis, Wash.
Facts
Sirs: Give us facts--stated fairly and concisely.
MRS. L. M. SQUIRE
Corry, Pa.
Praise
Sirs:
I have received the three books which I ordered through you recently.
May I congratulate you on the service you rendered me ? If it had not been for your book department, I should not have got these books for several weeks, since we do not have a bookstore in this town, and I did not know the publishers of two of these books, so could not write to them. I would, therefore, have had to wait to get them until I went to a bigger city, which might not have been for some time.
As quickly as I receive your bill, I will mail you my check.
Again I want to thank you for your co-operation and help.
H. H. MILLER
Vinton, Iowa
If a subscriber sees mentioned in TIME a book he wants, let him write to TIME, inclose check. The book will be sent postpaid, posthaste.--ED.
Farmer
... So this will let you know that I do not want it any longer for it will suit those blue-bellied Yankees of the industrial East better than it does the Farmers of the West. . . .
W.M. GESSFORD
Atlanta, Mo.
*Not mentioned in British Who's Who or in Who's Who in Literature.--ED.
TIME never said that Ontario was.--ED.
/- TIME spelled it Tony Pitilalia. -- ED.