Third-Term Insurance

Sirs:

Is it possible to insure with Lloyd's against the re-election of President Roosevelt for a third term? Or are stories of such insurance being available just propaganda?

If such insurance is being written, what is the rate percent?

FREDERICK MILLER Fort Worth, Tex.

>Lloyd's "are not quoting for this particular risk at the present time."--ED.

Ex-Presidents

Sirs:

Let us start a movement to lay the spectre of "third termites" and at the same time conserve our best brain power and secure for ourselves a foreign policy with continuity.

Here is how:

No President shall serve more than two terms. All living ex-Presidents and all Supreme Court Justices over 70 shall automatically become members of a foreign policy board, for life, to advise the incumbent President on and to help administer the foreign policy of the U. S. A., especially during campaign years and while administrations are changing.

These men would presumably be above "Politics." Mature men with mellowed wisdom who could guide the U. S. ably and firmly. At the present time the best abilities of these men are not devoted to the common good to the extent that they could be. Example: Our own good Herbert Hoover.

M. AXELROD Cleveland, Ohio

In Bogota

Sirs:

. . . Propaganda floods in to Bogota from Berlin daily in three languages . . . there is no mistaking that the German people are on the crest of the wave and full of themselves --they're exactly like a college with an unbeatable football team. . . .

From America's point of view we are insane to think that the time to oppose the Germans--if we ever are going to--is when they land armed forces in this hemisphere. If things go on as they have been for the last three years, the Germans will never have to land a man. Even Napoleon had to admit, in the end, that ideas are all-powerful, and the ideas of Nazidom are penetrating throughout South America. They have the prestige of success, and the democracies offer --well, what do they offer? . . .

Anyone who has ever studied biology must realize that peace is a purely human concept, and that nature is rather partial to the idea of struggle and competition, and that it is doubtful whether Congressman Ludlow can reverse this state of things by a Constitutional amendment, or that our college students help matters much by refusing to join the R.O.T.C. . . .

A position of leadership in the world in the past has always entailed the premature burial of numbers of the nation's young men, and nobody deplores this trend more strongly than I do. The only question is this: are there other things which are worse? I think there are. . . .

Most of the people of this hemisphere have lost their fear of us and would really like, I believe, to follow our lead--if we would assume the lead. The other night here in Bogota we saw the newsreels of the Squalus rescue. The audience was simply overcome with admiration . . . and clapped and stamped as the survivors were helped aboard the Falcon. Finally the man in back of me, a Colombian, poked me violently in the back and said fiercely: "There, you ugly German [anybody with blond hair in Bogota is a German], that's what we of the Americas can do."

JOSEPH H. SPEAR The Anglo American School Bogota, Colombia

Wisest Utterance

Sirs:

In TIME, July 3, you quote Biologist Edwin G. Conklin:

"The present world crisis is not due to bad heredity, nor to inexorable nature, nor to the Devil, but to bad education in cultivating habits of fear, intolerance and hate of alien individuals and races, of foreign religions, nations and ideologies. . . ."

This is in my opinion the wisest utterance on this subject which has ever been made. Although little realized, it is literally true. . . .

JEROME SCHEUER

Brookline, Mass.

Sirs:

I quote from your article on Professor Conklin: "On the radio he listens to practically nothing except Comedian Eddie Cantor."

Is this natural selection or a sad mutation?

WESLEY C. CARRIGER Thermal, Calif.

53 or 103

Sirs:

"A little worn at the edges," eh? It may interest TIME to know that in spite of supercilious critics there are thousands of music lovers and many big-league critics who rate Martinelli as the greatest of all tenors [TIME, July 3]. Caruso was never the "undisputed" supreme among the "chandelier-jigglers" either. Caruso's voice, though thrilling, certainly, was something like a trip hammer, and eventually busted his neck.

We will continue to enjoy Martinelli's golden flow of voice, whether he be 53 or 103.

JOHN W. CARSON

Fort Smith, Ark.

Monday Holidays

Sirs:

In re the suggestion for Monday holidays (signed Geare, TIME, June 26), why not ask the National Safety Congress to estimate the number of increased accidental fatalities due to the long weekends?

Or could we hope that greater familiarity with long weekends might get us over this habit of rushing into accidents every time we have extra leisure on our hands?

G. O. BENSON

Niagara Falls, N. Y.

More Game Fish

Sirs:

Martin R. Miller's letter (TIME, July 10) concerning the technique of trapping banana fish, reminds me of the fun I used to have as a child, going out with my Uncle Josh to catch whifflepoofs. This, too, requires a great deal of piscatory skill. . . .

We evolved a plan of attack which was moderately successful. We would row out into the ocean about 300 yards, then bore a hole six inches in diameter in the bottom of the boat, preferably near the bow. We would then rub around the edge of the hole a mixture of phosphorus and cheese (any sharp cheese would suffice). The light from the phosphorus and the tantalizing odor accompanying it would invariably attract any whifflepoofs lingering beneath us. We hovered over the hole, with rubber bands stretched out in our fingers. As soon as a whifflepoof would thrust his inquiring snout through the hole, we would quickly snare him with a rubber band, encircling his gills with it. He would soon choke, and we were then able to draw him up through the hole.

My uncle learned this trick from the Eskimos, who have long indulged in hole-boring tactics in fishing. They do it through ice. The way we did it, through our boat, made it much more of a sporting proposition. I heartily recommend whifflepoof fishing to Mr. Miller if he wants to test his skill sometime when banana fish are out of season.

MARION WEST

Philadelphia, Pa.

Quiet Birdmen

Sirs:

Sorry I cannot accept the bouquet tossed at me in TIME, July 10, under Transport, and for the record I am giving you below the information as to how the Quiet Birdmen received its name.

Following the closing of the American Flying Club, many ex-War pilots and a few pre-War fliers had no place to gather. A former editor of Aviation Magazine, Baron Ladislas d'Orcy (now deceased) . . . suggested that several of the fliers could meet once a week in an Italian restaurant called Marta's at No. 75 Washington Place.

Six men were regular attendants of the early meetings in the spring of 1921. They were Charles S. ("Casey") Jones, Richard ("Dick") Blythe, C. B. D. Collyer (deceased), Earl D. Osborn, Donald McIlheny (deceased) and myself.

One evening I brought to the dinner Harold Hersey* at that time editor of Ace-High Magazine. The evening was a very entertaining one and quite noisy. Mr. Hersey turned to "Casey" Jones and said, "Well, you fellows certainly are noisy when you get together but you are quiet when anyone asks you to talk about your flying exploits. Just a bunch of quiet birdmen."

The name stuck and today the organization is worldwide, and respected in every nation where men fly. . . .

HARRY A. BRUNO

New York City

Shame

Sirs:

Shame on TIME'S People editor for dishing up as news the time-worn G. B. Shaw crack about having his funeral procession followed by his uneaten animal friends [TIME, July 10].

At least your editor might have taken a tip from Alex Woollcott, who tells in While Rome Burns (1934) the amusing story that when G. K. Chesterton heard of Mr. Shaw's morbid pronouncement, he professed himself willing to substitute for one of the elephants.

F. CHANDLER HARRIS Los Angeles, Calif.

Perpetual Scapegoat

Sirs:

Thanks for an excellently written article on Moses and Monotheism (TIME, June 26). . . .

That hatred of Jews is fundamentally hatred of monotheism is not Dr. Freud's discovery, but hats off to him for calling a spade a spade. Blood, might, survival of the fittest constitute the diet of modern paganism. Pagans living on a monotheistic diet are subject to periodical violent vomiting.

We, disciples of Moses' monotheism, know history and are hardly surprised at the symptoms of present society. Nonsurprising, but tragical indeed, is the lot of a perpetual scapegoat.

NAHUM GRAY Worcester, Mass.

*Mr. Harold Hersey refers to this incident in his book Pulpwood Editor.--H. A. B.

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