Letters

Upstairs Companion

Sirs:

The other day I flew up from Oakland to Seattle and TIME was my "upstairs" companion, and, as usual, I enjoyed it from "cover to cover." Out of 25 magazines I get, TIME is my favorite.

HAROLD CRARY

Boeing Airplane Co. Boeing Air Transport, Inc. Pacific Air Transport. Seattle, Wash.

Potent Boeing Air Transport last week celebrated its five-millionth mile of flying. Colonial Air Transport, Inc. has ordered two copies of TIME each week as standard equipment for its New York-Boston passenger planes.--ED.

Dr. Jones Praised Sirs:

It is deeply gratifying to read in your magazine so comprehensive and so appreciative an article on Dr. Jones and his remarkable book, The Christ of the Indian Road.

During the past year I have been in India investigating and writing for the Christian Science Monitor and other newspapers. And for the problems existing there through religious superstition, racial hostility and British commercial exploitation of the Indian peoples, the most promising solution is, it seems to me, the spreading influence of the sort of Christianity which is taught and lived by men like Dr. Jones, the Christianity not, let us say, of Fifth Avenue, but of Jesus Christ. Too much can never be said in praise of Dr. Jones and his work, and his book is one of the outstanding contributions of this age to letters and to constructive thought.

MARC T. GREENE Hagerstown, Md.

Zealous Masons

Sirs:

In Father Will Whalen's letter in TIME, April 8, he says: "A zealous Mason tried to capture him for the order."

To correct or criticize this statement I might inform that no zealous Mason would attempt to induce any man to join the order. It simply isn't done. Being one, I know whereof I speak, or write.

W. A. BARRON

Verona, N. J.

C. P.

Sirs:

In your April 15 issue you made the statement that the stock of the Canadian Pacific was known on the "big board" by the symbol C. D. On all the tickers I have ever seen (two in number) the symbol was C. P.

Hoping that you will rectify this absurd and ridiculous mistake, we remain

SAMUEL CABOT JR. R. A. MONTGOMERY

St. Mark's School, Southboro, Mass.

To Ticker-Watchers Cabot and Montgomery all thanks for detecting a typographical error--ED.

Pat Sirs: From one who is reluctant to write a "Dear Editor" letter, to those who constantly write them, this cartoon by Webster seemed pat! In case you have not seen it (though as it is copied* from the New York World the chances are you have)--it seemed to me to fit so many of the captious readers you apparently have (and are not alone in this). Do most people read for the pleasure of being critical and not for the absorbing interest of the knowledge gained? From one who admires the magazine's style and learns much. MADALEN DINGLEY LEETCH

(Mrs. Wm. Dougal) Norfolk, Va.

"Putting England Right"

Sirs: Re: "Putting England Right." Tell Mr. Sydney Walton to improve the English weather, thin out London traffic, make it easier to get on a good golf course, turn out some good-looking women in the shops, streets and society, install decimal currency, teach taxi-drivers to talk so I can understand them, have the newspapers print something about America-- especially business news--get some shows and nightclubs running that can compare with Broadway (and stop that annoying "club" system that makes it so hard to have a good time except in roughneck night places). When these things are attended to (!) I may go again. LESTER PENNIMAN

Newark, N. J.

Sirs:

I "don't visit England" because I haven't got the price. Just built a house with what I had and besides I'd rather see Hollywood before Buckingham Palace which you can't get in, I understand. If more Americans would stay home and spend their money with their fellow countrymen, we would not have income tax to worry about.

ARTHUR SICKELS

Jamaica, L. I.

Sirs: What I don't like about England, since Mr. Sydney Walton of London wants to know, is the way every Englishman gets around sooner or later to saying: "Now about these War debts. We're perfectly willing to cancel what the Italians and French owe us. Why don't you Americans join us in canceling War debts all round? Let's all forget the War!" I have told them over and over that since France and Italy owe them and they owe us, the only result of "canceling debts all round" would be to leave the United States standing the whole loss. They can never see it that way! Their Government and their Peer-subsidized press has got them as hypnotized on that point as a basketful of baby rabbits under the eye of an Indian snake charmer. Let them keep quiet and pay what they owe-- which is what they always pretend that they are doing. SITWELL R. PACKARD

Boston, Mass.

Sirs:

Tradition. That is my first reason for going as I do when I can to our mother country. It is inspiring to see the roots from which our own great culture has sprung and ennobles our idea of what we should be. If I could change England at all I should pray that she recognize a little more the really splendid cultivation of Americans and not be, as Englishmen are inclined to, so patronizing towards "barbarous" Americans. Your question ought really to be turned around. Why don't Englishmen visit America? Enough of us go abroad as it is. If the English would come here instead of going year after year to Scotland, or the seashore, or France for their vacations, they would learn to admire us as we admire them. I have had the pleasure of entertaining several friends from "over there" and they were unanimous in saying they "could not believe their eyes," and absolutely surprised by what we are like at home.

(MRS.) CLARA S. FITCH New York City.

Sirs: I can tell the Johnny Bulls one thing to "fix up"--the officers on their ships! I always travel on the French or Italian lines now, even when I'm on my way to England. I suppose there is no class of men with so much concentrated snobbishness, lordy-dordy and hoity-toity as the officers on British liners. When it comes to deck games they are the poorest sports I know--and brag the loudest about their sportsmanship. MATHEW GEORGIN

New York City.

Explanation

Sirs:

I know these Englishmen. You have clean missed the point in footnoting Codger P.-Jones' mild complaint (TIME, April 15). There is, in your publication, a certain TIMEly aptness of phrase peculiarly satisfying to American sensibilities. But to an Englishman, and God forbid that he should feel otherwise, these "flippancies" are all very well when referring to a mere Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister. But in reference to Royalty, Never!

In my opinion Mr. Palmer-Jones' trouble is that he has become used to your style except where it touches the Windsor family.

PERCY S. CLEMENT

Adrian, Mich.

Time-Thinking

Sirs: Apropos the British diplomatist's remark that "since the good God made us so that we all cannot get through the same door at once, there must be precedence," we have in our Washington contretemps what L. P. Jacks in Constructive Citizenship designates as among the deepest characteristics of the modern mind,--i. e. "an overdeveloped faculty for thinking in space, and an underdeveloped or perhaps decayed faculty for thinking in time. With space-thinking alone to guide us we are apt to think our work done when we have devised a social scheme, system, or envisaged-diagram in which men and forces are placed (note the term) in right relationships to one another. Time-thinking immediately asks--how long will these men and forces stay where you have placed them, how long will the relationship last? For while everybody exists in space, nobody lives in space." To our TIME-thinking magazine--a long life and a merry one. LESTER LEAKE RILEY Douglaston, L. I.

Philadelphia's Shame

Sirs: I want to correct what seemed to me the wrong impression conveyed by your footnote on Senator Smoot, p. 12 (TIME, April 8). As a student of government, I have no special bias in favor of any party, nor am I any particular defender of Senator Smoot. I was, however, present at this meeting during the mayoralty campaign of 1927, at what was then the Metropolitan Opera House. This Republican mass meeting occurred near the close of a campaign notable chiefly for its utter lack of observance of the ordinary decencies of a campaign. Candidates were referred to as four-flushers, blatherskites, big-nothings, stuffed shirts, jelly-fishes, etc. A committee of supporters of him to whom you very appropriately refer as "Senator-suspect" from Pennsylvania called the meeting, advertised as a mass meeting. It was attended largely by a motley crowd from some of the worst sections of the city. They came for a good show of cheap demagogic fireworks, and for the most part, they were not disappointed. For some unknown reason, the committee invited Senator Smoot to address this meeting, informing him that he was to speak to a meeting of Philadelphia businessmen. He came with a masterly presentation of facts concerning the taxation and finance of the national government --to use, through no fault of his, in a rough and tumble mass meeting in a local campaign. The crowd grew restive, stamped, clapped, applauded at the wrong times, and conducted itself generally in a manner highly discourteous and disrespectful to the speaker. Finally he stopped and pleaded with the audience, which then permitted him to finish his speech--which he did hastily. Like many another resident of this city, I came away from the meeting with a deep sense of shame that an honest and sincere public official could not give to a Philadelphia audience a straight forward account of certain phases of the public business--even if it was not thrillingly interesting--without being subjected to such indignities. W. BROOKE GRAVES

Department of Political Science Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.

TIME'S footnote said: "A 'facts and figures' campaign speech in Philadelphia caused a good Republican audience, provoked by his schoolmarm manner, to boo Senator Smoot."--ED

* In the Norfolk, Va., Ledger-Dispatch.