Uproarious Davises

Sirs: The adjective which you used (TIME, Jan.

1) to describe our mother, Hilda Davis, wife

of the noted bandleader, our father, Meyer

Davis, has thrown our household into an

uproar.

Couldn't you have said "blondish," "slimmish," or even "youngish"; but "fluttery,"

never!

Because she believes everything she reads in TIME, she has been fluttering ever since. GARRY DAVIS EMERY DAVIS MEYER DAVIS, JR. MARJORIE DAVIS

Philadelphia, Pa.

-- Let blondish, slimmish, youngish Hilda Davis flutter no more.--ED.

Admiral's Stars

Sirs:

In your obit of able Admiral Nicholson, under Milestones (TIME, Jan. 1) you say that he "was one of the two naval men in history to rise from the ranks to wear an admiral's four stars. (The other: John Paul Jones.)"

Whether or not JPJ was ever a four-star admiral in the American Navy, I don't know, but I am certain he was never an enlisted man, nor did he ever serve "before the mast" in the merchant service, whence, by the way, came most of our naval commanders in the Revolution.

In 1759, John Paul, aged twelve, having been bound over to one James Younger, a shipowner, sailed from Whitehaven, in England, in the brig Friendship, as a master's apprentice; he was thus in very much the same status as a midshipman, or more nearly a merchant marine cadet of today. Engaging in the West Indies and American colony trade, he served until 1764, when he became a second officer, the next year first officer of one of the Younger ships. Released from his indenture in 1766, he became, at slightly under 21 years of age, captain of the John. He retired from this command and came ashore in Virginia, where he caught up with the name of Jones, and remained until the American Revolution called him to become one of the founders of the American Navy. . . .

CAMPBELL H. BROWN

Major, Marine Corps, retired Nashville, Tenn.

Sirs:

John Paul Jones was never an admiral in the United States Navy nor did he rise from the ranks.

At the outbreak of the American Revolution he was a planter in Virginia and in December, 1775, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the newly-organized naval service. The highest rank he ever obtained in the U. S. Navy was that of captain.

However, he was made a rear admiral in the Russian Navy by Catherine the Great, a rank which he held from 1788 to 1791.

ALAN L. INGLING, U.S.N.A. '34 Washington, D. C.

>Thanks to Readers Brown and Ingling for setting straight the naval record of John Paul Jones. But the Dictionary of American Biography says: "The outbreak of the Revolution found Jones unemployed, living partly on the generosity of strangers."--ED.

Sirs: ... Of Rear Admiral Nicholson you state, "he was one of two naval men in history to rise from the ranks to wear an admiral's four stars." Rear Admiral Nehemiah Mayo Dyer--Captain of the Baltimore during the Spanish-American War, also rose from the ranks to that of rear admiral.

He was promoted to that rank for spectacular service at the battle of Manila Bay.

Won't you give him his due along with Admiral Nicholson & John Paul Jones? . . .

MARGARITA F. LAVENDAR Melrose, Mass.

Sirs:

Since a rear admiral rates only two stars, and a vice admiral only three, what . . . was Rear Admiral Nicholson doing with four ? Two on each shoulder?

G. GERHARD

New York City

-- Unfortunately for the editor who counted Rear-Admiral Nicholson's stars, there were two on each shoulder.--ED.

"Old Unhappy Bull" Sirs: Congratulations on your excellent picture of the fighting in Finland in your issue of Jan. 8. But I cannot read of this war in the wilderness, of battles fought by spectral shapes in a winter of perpetual night, without thinking that in our own day a new, haunted, legend-breeding region is being created--something that for our own time is the Dreadful Forest, as the Black Forest was a region of terror in the middle ages, or as the Swamp of the Great Dismal was in the days of the runaway slaves. This war of people freezing as they fall, of petrified corpses, of armies falling into lakes, of feeble sunlight touching the warriors for a few moments a day, is something for which neither the historians nor the poets have prepared us. The only poem that I can think of that bears some relation to the Russian invasion is Ralph Hodgson's

The Bull:

See an old unhappy bull, Sick in soul and body both, Slouching in the undergrowth Of the forest beautiful. . . .

JACOB BARNES

Toledo, Ohio.

'30s

Sirs:

In your issue of Jan. 8, p. 13, "Washington correspondents . . . could not agree on a name for the '305." H. G. Wells in The Fate of Man speaks of the "Fatuous Twenties" and the "Frightened Thirties."

Has anyone found anything better?

BETSEY MITCHELL Southbury, Conn.

Sirs: If the Washington correspondents cannot coin a name for the '30s perhaps TIME readers can do so. As one, I submit Hangovera as a suitable title for that period following the Torrid Twenties Jamboree. Bitter tongues and family quarrels; sour medicines and the doctor's bill;--a morning after if there ever was one, complete with Pink Elephants and all.

GEORGE D. VAN SCIVER, 2ND

Bethlehem, Pa.

-- Are there any other suggestions? --En.

Hull in Caboose

Sirs:

"In the 1860s, where the Wolf and the Obey Rivers run together to make the Cumberland, Billy Hull moved with his bride." (TIME, Jan. 8, p. 15.)

The Cumberland is formed by the junction of Poor Fork and Clover Fork of Cumberland at Baxter, in Harlan County, Kentucky, some 200 miles upstream from Celina where the Obey flows into the Cumberland.

Further along you say: "To the end of his life Billy Hull would go off to Florida in the winter . . . riding the caboose with the brakemen."

A caboose is attached only to freight trains. I assume Billy was a passenger but passengers are not hauled on freight trains, that is, paying passengers.

GEORGE T. TATE

Louisville, Ky.

> He did not pay.--ED.

Man of the Year

Sirs :

Why publicize as Man of the Year a human who has disclosed himself to be one of the most terrible of beasts? . . .

We have been taught for generations that any descriptive term such as Man of the Year which you use, should imply an outstanding and noble character. Whatever you may say about Ivan the Terrible inside the covers does not alter the fact that many other humans who look up to Stalin will get great aid and comfort from your giving him the cover on millions of copies of TIME, displayed prominently all over our country and other countries. As "clear, curt, concise" and cold as TIME is in giving the news, which I have read for many years from cover to cover, I cannot help but feel that you should display some grain of sympathy for the thousands of humans whose deaths are the direct results of the man you term Man of the Year.

W. S. WHITTLESEY

New York City

Sirs:

Enclosed your picture of Man ?????? of the Year. The balance of this week's edition of TIME is in the furnace. . . . .

Joey may be the Man of the Year to you. To me he is not even human, to say nothing of being a man. Referring to my request of several weeks ago, which to date has not been granted, keep your STINKING PUBLICATION OUT OF MY HOME.

GOD SAVE THE CZAR and I don't mean maybe.

HAROLD E. COOPER

Burlington, Iowa.

Sirs:

Stalin is not the Man of the Year. Instead, TIME should have published the picture of a private Finnish soldier on snowshoes or skis, with a bayoneted rifle in his hand.

RICHARD F. BURGES El Paso, Texas

Sirs :

Here is at least one letter of approval for your choice of Man of the Year, and especially for the reasons supporting your choice of the only obvious possibility, much as we dislike him.

No doubt a flood of letters protesting your selection will come to you, sent by D.A.R.'s, fearful divines, sabled, twittering, triple-chinned dowagers, the ostrich-minded city council of Cambridge, Mass., and similar groups of in-the-closet-and-under-the-bed-peepers who believe that enforced ignorance and a moratorium on thinking is "Americanism."

Congratulations too for doing what seems to be an unbiased job of reporting, whether it is distasteful to us or not.

HERBERT CRAWFORD

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Pressagent's Pressagent

Sirs:

Re: "Portrait of a Press Agent" (TIME Jan. 8): "He [Maney] ushered without pay in a Seattle theatre." Well, Dick Maney may have ushered without pay for some short period in the Moore Theater in Seattle, but my definite recollections--as an usher without pay--was that Dick was a very hard-boiled head usher who unmercifully ordered us school boys up into the balcony if we arrived too late to don one of the purple faced tuxedos and starched dickies required for first floor ushering. And his was a pay job--part salary and a portion of the take in the check room. . . .

One of Maney's principal problems was to collect enough ushers for ordinary road shows, while he was overrun with ushering talent during the weeks when we would have The Chocolate Soldier, Merry Widow and like extravaganzas of the day. Marie Dressier and even highbrows like Geraldine Farrar packed 'em in, including dozens of unneeded ushers. . . .

Your story about Maney was good but what he really needs is a good press agent.

ALFRED R. ROCHESTER Seattle, Wash.

Sheean & Hart

Sirs: In your issue of Jan. 1, a letter was published from Vincent Sheean attacking Congressman Martin Dies for speaking at the recent mass meeting at Madison Square Garden at which I presided. He wonders where Mr. Dies's loyalties lie. Mr. Dies's patriotism needs no defense. His works speak louder than any words his friends could utter.

Mr. Sheean further says that recently I "wrote scornfully . . . that the Spanish Republican parties 'had been hypnotized by the ideas of the French and American revolutions.' " He asks, "Since when have the principles of the American Revolution become un-American?" As is common with many writers (indeed, perhaps brevity compels it), Mr. Sheean lifts a mere phrase out of its context. The phrase occurs as part of a chapter, one of whose purposes was to show that, however wise and sound the principles of a republic art in the United States, it has been pretty well proved that Spain was not ready for them.

In my book, America Looks at Spain, I said a Spanish scholar told me in September, 1938, that Napoleon's invasion of Spain introduced the ideas of the French Revolution.

"Spain has not been the same since," he said.

"For more than a century, various efforts have been made to impose a 'democratic' form of government on the Spanish people.

It hasn't worked. Most of us are convinced it never will work--not for a long time to come. It has brought bloodshed and sorrow.

Now we are going to lay our plans along different lines." Lest even Mr. Sheean believes that anything I have ever said has been derogatory to the American system, let me remind him that throughout the book from which he quotes I made perfectly clear that whatever forms of government other countries have, I want no propaganda from any foreign country to mar the heritage received from our forefathers. . . .

MERWIN K. HART President

New York State Economic Council, Inc. New York City

Sirs:

Vincent Sheean attacks the Americanism of Martin Dies because the latter appeared under the auspices of M. K. Hart whom Sheean called "a conspicuous exponent of such foreign points of view as that of General Franco's Fascism."

Is that the same Vincent Sheean who signed that letter to the Nation which appeared in its issue of Aug. 26? This letter said that it was a "fantastic falsehood that the U.S.S.R. and the totalitarian states are basically alike." It also said: "The Soviet Union continues as always to be a bulwark against war and aggression, and works unceasingly for a peaceful international order." And this: "Soviet aims and achievements make it clear that there exists a sound and permanent basis in mutual ideals for cooperation between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. in behalf of world peace and the security and freedom of all nations."

Is the Vincent Sheean, who expressed such ideas on Aug. 26, preaching on Americanism on Jan. 1?

STANLEY ARNDT San Marino, Calif.

-- Yes.--ED.

Garner & Eagle

Sirs:

I have just read in the Letters of TIME, Jan. 1, a touching eulogy of Mr. Vice President Garner, based on penetration of his physiognomy, by one Dudley Nichols.

Mr. Nichols is entitled to read thereupon a "general nobility of character and god-like quality"; it is within his province to declare that Mr. Garner's face 'symbolizes all the nobility of the American eagle.' But when he adds, 'that gentle unpredatory bird,' Mr. Dudley Nichols is nuts. The American eagle is no such thing. I don't know about Mr. Garner.

DONALD HOUGH

Hollywood, Calif.

Sirs:

In reference to Mr. Dudley Nichols' letter, I wonder if it could be pointed out to him that, in spite of his faith in the art of foretelling the success of a presidential candidate by his physiognomy (as he did Garner), the great American voting public rallying to the polls in 1932 and 1936 elected a face? We have had enough of faces! We want a president !

JAMES M. REYNOLDS Chicago, Ill.

Sirs:

Was Dudley Nichols writing in irony . . . ?

FRANK T. CARTWRIGHT Maplewood, N. J.

> Undoubtedly.--ED.

Sirs:

. . . [Garner] certainly has as much right to seek the Presidency of the United States as Dudley Nichols had to seek the Presidency of the Screen Writers' Guild; and if, as Dudley suggests, Garner is a bird of prey because he looks like an eagle, it might be well for Dudley to be told that a lot of people think he looks like a sparrow. . . .

TOM LENNON Los Angeles, Calif.

Cambronne

Sirs:

The other day, while reading Albert Jay Nock's Thoughts on Utopia, I came to the following paragraph:

"I handed the article back to my acquaintance and said nothing; there was really nothing to say. The best I could do was to recall the story of the unhappy Frenchman who had to listen to some such outpouring of peculiarly odious nonsense. He must say something; he must also be polite; he was in an impasse. 'Monsieur,' he said, austerely, 'Je me permets d'invoquer I'auguste ombre du general Cambronne.' "

To give this blasting judgment a wider application (to which I am sure Mr. Nock would agree), for "article" read "world of 1939," and for "my acquaintance," read "those who like it." In these days there must be many a silent, fervent

CALL FOR GENERAL CAMBRONNE

Shocked, appalled, and needing vent

For feelings long and hardly pent,

A friend we have, a fearless one:

Pierre-Jacques-Etienne Cambronne. . .

If saints are proxies, bearing sins,

Who save our souls if not our skins,

Then why is he not canonized?

The calendar should be revised.

To those who sanctity have won

Append the name, St. Pierre Cambronne.

Eloquent, outspoken Shade,

Viewing the world some men have made

And now perfect with all their art,

Nobly take the others' part.

Must they endure and still endure

In silence? General: Au secours!

All thoughtful men who see what the world of our time might so easily have been, granted international decency and good will, and seeing what it is, must call upon General Cambronne to express adequately for them their sense of profound disillusionment.

But we Americans have never been afraid of honest vulgarity when it best could serve the purpose. Then let us out with the good old Anglo-Saxon word, which is also one of four letters. . . .

JAMES NORMAN HALL Tahiti, French Oceania

>General Pierre-Jacques-Etienne Cambronne (1770-1842), when called upon to surrender by an English general in the Battle of Waterloo, is supposed to have used a five-letter word (four in English) euphemistically known as le mot de Cambronne.--ED.

Penultimate (cont'd)

Sirs:

It's high time that TIME and TIME-Reader Shishkin get time straight. Assuming that both refer to the Christian Era ("the penultimate year of the 20th Century's fourth decade," TIME, Jan. 1 and Jan. 15), I have spread my fingers and counted.

Beginning Jan. 1, 1 A.D. the 1st Century lasted through Dec. 31, 100 A.D. Analogically, the 20th Century began Jan. 1, 1901, its fourth decade Jan. 1, 1931.

As TIME first stated, 1939 was penultimate, 1940 ultimate.

JAMES W. PONTIUS Scotia, N. Y.

Sirs:

. . . The trouble is that using fingers and toes Reader Shishkin can't count far enough.

ELISABETH KLINGER

Washington, D. C.

Sirs:

. . . The editor to be "abashed" was the one who anti-penultimated.

JOHN B. NICHOLS Washinston, D. C.

Sirs:

". . .It was a historic midnight that marked the end, not of a year, but of a decade" (TIME, Jan. 8). What decade ended that night? Was not Dec. 31, 1939 the end of the ninth year of the 194th decade of the Christian Era? . . .

H. E. JAMISON Upper Darby, Pa.

> The Twentieth Century's fourth decade will end Dec. 31, 194O. The abashed editor is twice abashed. -- ED.

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