Edward & Emeralds
Sirs:
While I greatly enjoy reading your weekly pungent comments, I must be allowed to tell you that some of your conclusions are utterly and entirely wrong. ... At least 95% of the British Empire are utterly disgusted with Edward VIII. . . . He allowed himself to be shown tied to his mistress' apron strings in public and was absolutely at her feet, not only in his private life but was influenced by her in public affairs, especially foreign politics. His behaviour to his mother, Queen Mary, is notoriously bad and was instigated by Mrs. Simpson. His professions of great concern for the unemployed which were used by his clique of cronies, headed by Esmond Harmsworth, as the weapon to upset the Government were rather insincere when compared with the facts. He gave -L-10, ($50) on his Welsh visit, for the unemployed. On the other hand, he dismissed hundreds of employees at Balmoral & Sandringham, and sold off everything on these properties which was salable, and with the money thus saved and raised, he bought priceless emeralds for Mrs. Simpson. These emeralds were the property of Queen Alexandra who left them to Princess Victoria, who in turn sold them to Garrard's of Bond Street, where King Edward bought them. . . .
You must remember he cost the British nation a lot of money and they do not choose to see their money go into the pockets of Mrs. Simpson. Foreign newspaper correspondents, especially Americans, have the habit of mixing entirely too much with their own kind, and instead of getting the point of view of the man in the street, they absorb each other's impressions. Inevitably they tend to make a hero of the man or woman who gives them news and this is a great error. . . .
While I am an American citizen, I have many relations in England, and am in touch with British reactions very closely. My brother is a member of the Reform Club of London, where naturally he meets many of the most prominent British politicians. As to the emeralds, I should have added that Garrard's the jewelers who bought them from Princess Victoria, sent them to Cartier's in Paris, and it was actually Cartier's who made the sale, on behalf of Garrard's to King Edward. As I said before, these stones are very large and magnificent, but have many flaws. The lady who gave me this information, is a personal friend of Queen Mary and members of the Royal Family, but I cannot tell you her name.
May I suggest to you that the lady who will be very much in the eye of society, if not the public, will be the Hon. Mrs. Ronald Greville, a very rich lady, who has always been very much with the new King & Queen (indeed their honeymoon was spent at Polesden Lacey, her country house) and who is supposed to have named the Queen as her eventual heiress.
E. A. L. BENNETT Paris, France
Happy Arrangement
Sirs:
At long last we have achieved peace in our family on the day TIME arrives. Now my husband can read LIFE while I enjoy TIME, or vice versa. Please don't change this happy arrangement--or we will be quarreling for them again.
MARY E. PINCHES Storrs, Conn.
Sirs:
I infer Mr. Roland Moncure [TIME, Feb. 22] is a bachelor. With TIME and LIFE arriving the same day all is quiet on the domestic front. But if they arrived on different days consider the strife between man and wife which you would thus create. So please desist from your plans for a separate distribution date for the two magazines.
ROBERT D. VOLD
Cincinnati, Ohio
Sirs:
I was extremely interested in your article on Professor Gropius in TIME, Feb. 8. Having been associated with the Bauhaus from its earliest days until the death blow, I still take a lively interest in the doings of its former members. I hope you'll pardon me if this leads me to take the liberty of correcting a mistake in your article: The Baby Accident had no Communistic flavor whatever, and happened in Weimar in 1921, when the trend of the Bauhaus was definitely unpolitical; the parading of the town was done by a few students only, among whom was neither the baby nor its mother. Only a cradle destined for the baby's use was marched around; finally no attempt was made to expel the mother.
LUX FEININGER New York City
Appalling Bastards
Sirs:
If you cannot refrain from joining the crowd of eternal mudslingers at Germany, you should at least keep decent and take back your statement about the "appalling number of bastards" conceived in Hitler Camps (TIME, Feb. 8). Can you prove it? Then why the slander? If you had lived in Germany in the "Before-Hitler-Time," you would look at the Fuehrer's achievement with different eyes--but you seem to think that 66,000,000 Germans are just fools.
HANNA BAACK Sycamore, Ill.
TIME does not think that 66,000,000 Germans are fools. However, according to the Nation, recently the German Bureau of Vocational Guidance applied to the National Socialist People's Relief Administration to obtain support for more than 2,000 unmarried girls who had become pregnant on duty with the Landhilfe (farm labor brigades).--ED.
Pointless Sputtering
Sirs:
Belated are the heated protests of loyal Southerners anent the picturing of William Tecumseh ("War . . . is all Hell") Sherman on a U. S. postage stamp (TIME, Feb. 22), for no precedent is the Post Office Department setting.
As many a philatelist can (and probably will) inform you, the violet-brown likeness of the acrid old Unionist who marched through Georgia adorned the 8-c- stamp of the regular issue throughout the decade 1894--1904. That 40 years back Sherman was thus licked by innumerable Southerners (without poisonous effect) and that his likeness underwent besmirchment at the hands of many a Southern postmaster makes the present sputtering of legislative bodies in South Carolina and Georgia seem pointless indeed.
HOWARD O. SWEET Strong, Me.
Sherman at Mt. Hope
Sirs:
Re: the Sherman stamp (TIME, Feb. 22, p. 16), no South Carolinian wants to lick Sherman from the rear.
On this anniversary (Feb. 22) of Sherman's visit to my ancestral Mt. Hope here at Ridgeway my great aunts, aged 90 and 80 years, tell me of his soldiers' taking off all the silver that was not buried including a silver urn that had come to the family from General Francis Marion, "the Swamp Fox." This Yankee soldier beat the handsome silver vessel against an early blossoming plum tree until it was flat and would fit into his saddle bag.
The army went away in the family carriages piled high with hickory cured hams & bacon, black slave wenches seated high in the carriages wearing the family clothes that had been sacked. Incidentally, all but one of these slave girls returned and brought back the clothes in abject apology.
Barrels of sorghum molasses that the soldiers could not carry off were overturned in the basement and this syrup scraped from the brick floor was the family's only sweetening for some weeks thereafter.
At Mt. Hope was then only my great aunts, their mother and two brothers too young for military service, one brother was in the Confederate navy and four brothers in the army. Because of the presence of a Northern aunt and cousin then at Mt. Hope who held a pass from Lincoln the home was not burned.
However, we will use Sherman stamps and glory in the Lee-Jackson four-center.
CHARLES EDWARD THOMAS Ridgeway, S. C.
Cornerstone Copy
Sirs:
I take great pleasure in advising you that I placed a copy of the Feb. 15, 1937, issue of TIME in the cornerstone of the Administration Building of the Second United States Narcotic Hospital, which was laid Feb. 13, by Dr. Walter L. Treadway, Assistant Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, Washington, D. C.
JACK H. HOTT Manager Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Fort Worth, Tex.
TIME for Feb. 15 carried an account of the narcotic hospital's plans and purposes. --ED.
Moteur Canon
Sirs:
While deeply impressed by the renowned name of Hispano-Suiza, I take leave, nevertheless, to raise an eyebrow at TIME'S Jan. 11 resume of Spain's current dilemma. Granted tongue-in-cheek journalism applied to stories such as Mussolini's Jew-baiting in the same issue is more effective than open condemnation. However, applied in the wrong place, as TIME did very obviously in its yarn on the use of "moteur canon" (i.e., hollow propeller shafts hurling machine gun bullets or small calibre shells) in aerial warfare, it is little more than an exhibition of Munchausen or Fibber McGee extravaganza.
Shoot a bullet through a propeller shaft, all the way through the hooks and crooks of the crankshaft?
There may be something to Einstein's crooked light beams; but to shoot bullets around corners, through a barrel embedded in a propeller shaft revolving several thousand times per minute--Wow! Even if the barrel grooves would turn in the same direction as the propeller the velocity of the bullet would, in order to be effective, far exceed that of the propeller revolutions; so that, even if the bullet should manage to leave the propeller shaft, the accuracy of its aim would be as cockeyed as that of the New Year's soak trying to hit the keyhole. Machine guns synchronized to shoot through propeller blades--yes! "Moteur canon"--Well--!
But then, again, in view of Hispano-Suiza and the fashionable aviator who flies this, "the swankiest instrument of death"; not to mention the source of this amazing news-item--usually well-posted TIME, it seems almost a sacrilege to suggest that TIME had its leg pulled by an overenthusiastic newshawk, or fell victim to the ways of a wag.
PHILIP SCHRANKEL Sackets Harbor, N. Y.
Reader Schrankel, accustomed to the ordinary type of aircraft engine in which the propeller shaft is also the crankshaft, has not realized that in the Hispano-Suiza moteur canon the crankshaft drives through gears an entirely separate propeller shaft. This straight shaft is hollow. The superiority of the new moteur canon lies precisely in that it does not have to be "synchronized" to fire between the spinning propeller blades, as in the old-fashioned arrangement with which Reader Schrankel is familiar, but sends a stream of shells straight out through the hollow axis of the propeller.--ED.
Aglipay's Friends
Sirs:
In the issue of Feb. 15, in an article praising Cardinal Dougherty, and surely we all join in admiration of that distinguished, able and devoted prelate, you take occasion to speak with disparagement of Gregorio Aglipay, Archbishop of the independent Church of the Philippines, and I desire to lodge a friendly but emphatic protest.
I submit that in your attack upon the Archbishop you place Cardinal Dougherty in a false position. Surely our distinguished American prelate did not go to the Philippines to "beat down" as you say beneath Aglipay's picture, those who are not of the Catholic faith.
More important, who is Archbishop Aglipay? Born 76 years ago, educated in Catholic schools, elevated to the priesthood for pure motive, not as you say "because it seemed to offer material advancement," he was made superintendent of a district and performed many of the duties of a bishop. In those distant days no Filipino was made a Bishop. Together with other distinguished Filipinos, in 1905 he led many people into the Independent Church. You say that this church is credited today with 1,000,000 members. Witnesses credit it with 3,000,000 members.
True, Aglipay was in arms against the U. S. Government, but when he became convinced that the contest was hopeless he surrendered. Since his surrender he has loyally upheld the administration. After William Howard Taft retired from the Governorship, he accepted the position of honorary President of the Independent Church. All through his administration he was a friend of Archbishop Aglipay.
From its beginnings, the Unitarians all over the world have been interested in the Independent Church. . . . In 1931 Archbishop Aglipay, together with Bishop Isabelo de los Reyes, son of the distinguished publicist of Manila, came to this country as guests of the Unitarian churches of the U. S. and Canada. They were received most cordially by many churches, colleges and universities and by men in public positions. They were received by President Hoover. . . .
Three years ago Archbishop Aglipay and Bishop de los Reyes again visited the U. S. on their way to the International Congress of Religious Liberals held at Copenhagen. They were received as honored guests in America, England, Czechoslovakia, where they are in touch with the Czech National Church, and in other parts of the continent. In Denmark the Archbishop was personally welcomed by the King. This vigorous, indomitable, and patient servant of all good things in the Philippine Islands, and the beloved Archbishop of a large group of devoted people, surely is not only worthy of the affection in which he is widely held, but I submit that he is also worthy of respectful mention by the Editor of TIME. . . .
LOUIS C. CORNISH President American Unitarian Association Boston, Mass.
In reporting the conflict between Bishop Dougherty and Archbishop Aglipay, TIME had no intention of disparaging the latter able churchman or his friends. Welcoming Unitarian Cornish's extended mention of the Archbishop, TIME would hesitate, however, to call Aglipay's people "not of the Catholic faith." Bishop Dougherty considered them "lapsed Catholics," and in the case of the millions he brought back to the Church he would seem to have been right. Before Archbishop Aglipay became friends with Governor Taft, a Unitarian, he claimed that his Church was Catholic in everything save that it repudiated Rome, abandoned the confessional and permitted priests to marry.--ED.
At Scapa Flow
Sirs:
Your article on Ernest Clegg's painting of Jutland and the surrender at Scapa Flow demonstrates the fallibility of an old salt's memory.
I have gone along all these years believing that I saw from the forward fire control of the U.S.S. Florida the surrender of the German fleet off the Firth of Forth on Nov. 21, 1918. I had a distinct recollection of shivering at four o'clock of a November morning and trying to analyze an empty feeling in my stomach as I looked down on turrets swinging menacingly toward the swift grey streaks on the horizon that were the Hindenberg, the Seydlitz, the von der Tann, etc., of the Imperial German Navy.
But now TIME has set me right, and I am grateful. It all happened at Scapa Flow, under the lonely kirk spire at Kirkcaldy. By any chance, do you suppose, was it at Scapa Flow that the Germans scuttled their fleet after waiting under the guns of the Grand Fleet to find out what the Peace Conference would do?
LESTER ALLEN Jamaica Plain, Mass.
Sirs:
TIME, Feb. 8, p. 36, the German High Seas Fleet surrendered to the Grand Fleet, not at Scapa Flow, but in the Firth of Forth. I know, because I was there.
FRANKLIN KING Chestnut Hill, Mass.
TIME erred. Seven months after the surrender in Firth of Forth came the scuttling at Scapa Flow, where the High Seas Fleet was interned.--ED.
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