Letters, May 13, 1935

Helpful Hanna

Sirs:

TIME, April 29 (National Affairs, “Death of De Boe”) unfairly calls Mr. Phil Hanna “a professional executioner . . . from Illinois,” unkindly cuts his visage three-quarters away in the accompanying picture of ”Robber—not a Rapist” De Boe. No professional, no executioner, Mr. Hanna is a gentleman farmer who lives on land that has been in the family since 1808. . . . He has assisted at some 65 hangings (he does not recall the exact number), has never sprung a trap. Years ago, the revolting sight of a public strangulation as a result of an incorrectly tied noose led Mr. Hanna on a later occasion to offer his knowledge of rope-tying to the White County sheriff. He has since performed the same service elsewhere in Illinois, in Kentucky and, I believe, in other States, has never accepted payment, not even expense money. He asks for and usually receives the weapon with which the crime (when murder) was committed. The arsenal in his home is imposing. His most publicized and helpful service: tying the noose on Charlie Birger, Southern Illinois gangster, murderer, executed at Benton, Ill. in the spring of 1928.* . . . A very charming gentleman, Mr. Hanna receives hospitably callers who come morbidly curious, go away disappointed, delighted, mystified.

AUBREY STARKE Centralia, Ill.

Kosher Cola

Sirs:

In connection with your interesting article on the celebration of Passover (TIME, April 29), you may be interested to know that, for the first time. Atlanta orthodox Jews were allowed to drink Coca Cola during this solemn season. With the approval of Atlanta rabbis, special Coca Cola bottle caps were stamped with the Kosher symbol and signs denoting the same were displayed in soda fountains. The drink was not altered in any way.

SAMUEL GLICK Atlanta, Ga.

Puzzled Club Woman

Sirs:

After reading Wilamina Morrow’s letter in TIME, April 22, p. 9, I am at a loss to understand the reference to Miss Perkins, as a devoted wife and a successful mother. Will you please explain such a reference.

I am also anxious to know where I can get a copy of Mrs. Roosevelt’s statement: ”Every Mother Should Teach Her Daughter How to Hold a Cocktail.” I can’t quite see just what she means by ”hold a cocktail.” Is it a test for nervousness to hold a cocktail without shaking? Will you please tell me where I can find the article saying “How to run a home on 15 minutes a day.” Surely this must be an error, for I spend about three hours, while I’m home, caring for my home, and hers is much larger.

I don’t understand the reference to the women in the “lower brackets.” I must belong to that class, but I’ve been trying to get out of that class. Does it mean that I can get help from the PWA so that I can have several women to help me? If I had that much help, I could take care of my home better and go to “higher brackets.”

I’m puzzled; so I wish that I could understand how to get on better. I can’t stay home any more, for I must go to my clubs.

MRS. BRUCE BIRCH Springfield, Ohio

Madam Secretary Perkins is Mrs. Paul Wilson. She has a daughter. Susanna.

Newspaper files of Dec. 10, 1933 have the text of Mrs. Roosevelt’s radio speech in which she said: “The average girl of today faces the problem of learning very young how much she can drink of such things as whiskey and gin and sticking to the proper quantity. . . . . Unless the parents have been wise and trained her young to judge for herself and decide between right and wrong, she is apt to have some bitter experiences.”

On March 15 last, Mrs. Roosevelt told how she devoted 15 minutes a day to housekeeping with the assistance of a housekeeper, social secretary, personal secretary maid.—ED.

Göring’s Decision Sirs:

Your article “Riot of Romance” under Germany in the April 22 issue does not confirm or deny that Emmy Sonnemann Göring is a Jewess. Is she?

HERMAN M. MESSING Lafayette, Ind.

By decision of Prussian Premier Hermann Wilhelm Göring, who decides in the Prussian State Theatre whether an individual player is Jewish or not, State Actress Emmy Sonnemann is no Jewess.—ED.

Firecrackers & Mammy Songs

Sirs:

Please advise class if recent senatorial munitions investigation (TIME, Sept. 24 et seq.) by Senator Nye revealed, as is now generally rumored, that: The Revolutionary War of 1776 was instigated by Chinese firecracker tycoons under the direction of George Washington and Patrick Henry, chief stockholders, for the purpose of promoting the sale of Independence Day celebrating material.

Also whether or not Abraham Lincoln’s sole interest in the Slavery question was not in reality to plug “Mammy” songs and also to boycott the South’s cotton underwear in favor of Japanese silk, on which he held options. . . .

PAUL E. FENLON Sioux City, Iowa

Typhus in Ireland

Sirs:

In the Feb. 11 issue of your widely read journal there appeared in the section devoted to Medicine, under the title “Plague No. 1,” a statement to the effect that typhus is today definitely endemic in [amongst other countries] Ireland.

As this statement did not seem to me to be as accurate as statementsin TIME generally are, I determined to have the matter investigated.

For your information on the subject, I enclose herewith extract from a letter dealing with the point, from the Department of Local Government and Public Health of the Irish Free State.

DANIEL J. MCGRATH Consul

Irish Free State Chicago, Ill.

TIME’S authority on typhus was so eminent an epidemiologist as Dr. Hans Zinsser (Rats, Lice and History). According to Consul McGrath’s information from his Government, there have been in recent years in Ireland only small outbreaks of a mild type of typhus, in remote rural districts. Seventeen cases reported last year were all confined to four families.—ED.

Georgia Giant

Sirs:

Under “Peace Day” in your issue of April 22, you refer to the head of the University of North Carolina as “lively little President Frank Porter Graham,” while on the preceding page, in another connection, you rightly classify the head of the University of Chicago as “able young President Robert Maynard Hutchins.”

While not intimating that you purposely suggested a comparison between these two nationally recognized giants in the fields of U.S. education and thought which might be construed as invidious to President Graham, your columnist might have referred much more accurately to the Tar Heel Educator as “the great greying President.”. . .

ROLAND B. PARKER Dean of Men

Darlington School Rome, Ga.

Straightened Record

Sirs:

. . . In TIME of April 8, under Medicine and with the heading “Relief & Babies,” you say that Father Ignatius W. Cox, S. J., “had the National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service speed reporters to Federal Emergency Relief Administration headquarters in Washington” concerning a news story about babies born on relief rolls.

This was just in the mind of your reporter— while it speeded up his story, it was not the fact. As a routine matter, upon the appearance of a news story with figures on ”relief babies,” the N. C. W. C. News Service had a reporter ask the FERA for these figures. The FERA denied it had gathered any. This News Service sent out the denial, in the course of regular reporting and without urging from any quarter. The FERA denial Father Cox used in his statement was the one previously obtained and sent out by this Service. . . .

FRANK A. HALL Director

N. C. W. C. News Service Washington, D. C.

To N. C. W. C. News Service, all credit for proper newshawking.—ED.

Ode to Annie

Sirs:

The enclosed ode was written by two members of our staff, perhaps urged on by the need of relaxation from the technical design of the machine. . . .

C. D. FAWCETT Professor of Electrical Engineering University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pa.

Engineer Irven Travis, assisted by Knox McIlwain, designed the prodigious differential analyzer (“three-ton brain”) described in TIME, March 18. They also produced the following:

ODE TO A DIFFERENTIAL ANALYZER

Calculatin’ Annie just sits on her fanny, (She weighs three tons!) It’s really quite uncanny what Calculatin’ Annie Knows about guns. She knows about trajectories, Decorum in refectories.Just what they do in rectories, Why motors run in factories, And she don’t like puns.

Oh, you can’t get the nanny of Calculatin’ Annie, (Her nerves are steel)No loving swains has Annie, No Eddie, Moe, or Danny,(No sex appeal.) Tho’ she has more curves than Mabel And a lovely output table, I confess myself unable To accept this modern fableAnd believe she’s real.—ED.

Air Power

Sirs:

Referring to Lord Castlerosse on aerial hysteria (TIME, April 22) . . . I was a captain in the medical corps of the 32nd (All American) Division. As a medical officer, I was theoretically a noncombatant, but, like the noble lord, I was “bombed and bombed and bombed.” If we can in any way judge the next war by the last, I should say that the terrible destructiveness of air bombs is greatly exaggerated.

In Toul, in Nancy and around Pont ä-Mouson, we were bombed on every clear night and shelled occasionally to vary the monotony. Later, in the Meuse Argonne offensive, bombs were our nightly bedtime story rain or shine. I never heard of any of our immediate outfit suffering any bodily ills from a bomb and Nancy, in particular, was a well-curried town. Metz was only 20 miles away and Nancy caught it both coming and going, the bombers dropping a part of their loadon the way out and dumping the remainder on their way back. They did considerable property damage and killed a few civilians, but,aside from keeping the Frenchmen running from bed to dugout every time the siren sounded, their effects were negligible.

Bombs cannot be aimed with any accuracy and as likely as not, a bomb aimed at a railroad station or an ammunition dump will land on a church or a hospital. More likely still, it’ll hit plain dirt. The fact that the 307th Sanitary Train, consisting of four field hospitals and four ambulance companies, numbering all told about 800 men, never lost a single man from a bomb, their only casualties being the result of a misdirected 16-inch shell which landed in the kitchen of one of our field hospitals, goes to show that bombs aren’t so hot as death-dealing instruments. . . . When it comes to giving the undertaker work, the auto has them beat a mile. F. JULIAN CARROLL Summerville, S. C.

Scenes Behind Scenes

Sirs:

I saw your third edition of The March of Time last night. Undoubtedly it is the best yet. Keep on depicting the “scenes behind the scenes” with all the force used in the language of TIME itself. If you do there will be some hope lor this somewhat buffeted democracy of ours.

RAYMOND L. HAIGHT*Haight, Trippet & Syvertson Los Angeles, Calif.

Sirs:

The latest cinematic March of Time is an excellent sop to U. S. ignorance of Mexican affairs. Even U. S. Catholics, if they are candid, will admit that ecclesiastical control in Mexico has not been an unmixed blessing. The disestablishment of a church is a painful process in any country but is that any reason for presenting only the most lurid details, without any attempt at historical analysis? Give the Revolutionary Government of Mexico its due!

L. CLARK KEATING Assistant Professor of Spanish Macalester College St. Paul, Minn.

Sirs:

. . . I saw the latest March of Time last night and it is by far the best yet. However, don’t you think you are rather running the munitions makers into the ground when Senator Nye is already doing such a good job of it? I had not seen his face in action until this present March of Time and it explains a great deal, including his recent saying, “The munitions makers have at last talked Germany into scrapping the Treaty of Versailles so that they can sell their wares.” While munitions makers undoubtedly profit from war, as do many other persons, they are no more primarily responsible for wars than was Peter the Hermit, John Brown, or the Austrian Archduke who had himself assassinated to start the World War. You and Senator Nye might as properly blame the Hoover Company and Fuller Brush Company for the Kansas dust storms, although the latter of the two concerns is responsible for The Fuller Brush Man, who is about as all pervading as the dust itself.

H. W. GETZ Moline, Ill.

Let Reader Getz consider the undenied statement in FORTUNE, March 1934 (“Arms and The Men”), that France’s Schneider Creusot armaments firm secretly helped finance Adolf Hitler, then turned around and propagandized at home for defense against rearmed Germany.—ED.

Sirs:

I want to express to you, and to the others responsible, my great appreciation and enthusiasm for the last March of Time.

All the features were excellent, but I was particularly pleased by the handling of the munitions question, which was skillful and wise. It was a penetrating piece of work and a public service. My best congratulations, and I hope there will be many more Marches as successful as this one.

DOROTHY DETZER National Secretary Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom Washington, D. C.

* Illinois’ last execution by hanging, before the electric chair was adopted. On the gallows Mr. Hanna asked, received Murderer Birger’s forgiveness for what he was about to do. Birger gladly shook hands with Hanna but refused the proffered hand of the sheriff.—ED.

* Candidate-reject for Governor of California last autumn.—ED.