Letters: Only a Voice

Sirs:

In TIME, Feb. 23, you say: “Devout Catholics fell to their knees at the radioed sound of the Pontiff’s revered voice.” I beg leave to differ. In the first place, I have known all sorts of Catholics: good, bad, ardent, and indifferent; American Catholics and Catholics of varied nationalities. Naturally, they all respect the Pope, but there is not a one of them, even the most pious, that would even dream of falling on their knees at the sound of the Pontiff’s voice. I believe that this is true of the whole country. From what I have seen and heard and read, it seems to me that Protestants have some sort of vague notion that Catholics worship and revere and obey the Pope as peasants once did their lords. This notion is entirely false. The average Catholic has a healthy respect for the Pope, but little more. He would kneel in his presence but most certainly not at his voice. Is that not reasonable? For, after all, a voice is but a voice, whether it is that of an announcer or a Pope or a President.

H. J. CONNOR Buffalo. N. Y.

Hoover Halfway

CONGRATULATION’S TO DOUGLAS CHANDOR AND THANKS TO TIME FOR GIVING US PRESIDENT HOOVERS PORTRAIT.

RALPH F. KINDER Bristol, R. I.

Sirs:

I have just read your “respects” to the President, in the March 2 issue of your interesting publication.

No doubt you are able, and you may be far sighted.

But I will wager a toothpick against a tenpenny nail that Hoover will be renominated and re-elected in 1932.

EUGENE M. CROUCH New York City

I have just read: “Hoover Halfway” in TIME, March 2.

I will preserve the article as a good list and concrete example of the Hoover Hardships.

I say: “It is the nation that is failing, not President Hoover.”

The “people back home” would like to see a little more co-operation with the Administration down in Washington. The people’s verdict in the future will show where the principal weakness in Washington is today, not in the White House, but “Up on the Hill.”

JESSE C. SHULL Virginia, Ill.

Sirs:

I was very much surprised to see the portrait of President Hoover in your March 2 edition which you state was expressly painted by Chandor for TIME. Its hoary academicism is so completely out of keeping with the alert modernity which has always, at least to this reader, characterized TIME! I am always stimulated by what I see and read in your magazine but I was really shocked by this portrait. To look at it is a dull and musty experience. Why can’t TIME keep step with art as well as politics and science?

GRANT MANSON Rochester, Mich.

TIME’S function is to report things as they are, not “modernize” them as they might be.—ED.

Oklahoma Dog Shooer

Sirs:

A specialist in microscopic anatomy at the University of Oklahoma records an experiment which should be of considerable advantage to your correspondents who are worried over dogs charging and sniffing through their shrubbery. It is much more scientific and sure-fire than the ruse of the “fierce yellow tomcat” (TIME, Feb. 2). Since employing this means in one local grocery store, baskets of apples, potatoes, etc. have been displayed with complete immunity from attack.

First procure a strip of sheet iron and lay it down before the menaced object. Place a second sheet of iron upright as a shield. Attach an electric wire to the upright iron and turn on the current. Any dog that stands on one piece of iron and sniffs or otherwise annoys the charged piece of iron is quite likely to pass by on the other side of the street thereafter. This is a law of physics that is 100% sure fire.

ERNEST R. CHAMBERLAIN Oklahoma City, Okla.

Dog Poisoner’s Judge

Sirs:

Will TIME publish the name and record of the Judge who considers $5 a proper fine for the person who poisons twelve dogs? (TIME, Feb. 9.)

F. G. STRONG Wethersfield, Conn.

New York Magistrate Jean Hortense Noonan Norris, who has been under investigation (TIME, Feb. 23) —ED.

Hero Palrang

Sirs:

Some time ago, under the heading of “Nicaragua,” you printed a brief article relative to the massacre of members of the Marine Corps (TIME, Jan. 12).

Sergeant Arthur M. Palrang, who was in charge of a patrol of ten Marines on telephone repair work on that date, was a resident of this Station for a number of years . . . was well known and well liked by all in this vicinity.

I . . . feel that your article in this case did not include the essential facts, which I believe should be published. I am in possession of official records in this case, and would like to quote from the “Report of Death” furnished by the Navy Department in his case:

“Summary of facts relative to the death: While on a telephone repair patrol out of Ocotal, Nicaragua, was ambushed by an organized bandit group near Achuapa, Nicaragua. This man had both hands blown to pieces by a bomb which he had grasped to cast out of the midst of his comrades. He was killed with a gunshot wound in the head.”

Surely such heroism should not pass unnoticed.

R. C. COOK, M. D.

U. S. Veterans Hospital Fort Lyon, Colo.

Child Marriage

Sirs:

I recently read in the daily newspapers, a statement purported to have been made by a prominent English lady to the effect that the people of England smiled when they read of the child marriages in India and other points East when in America we have seven States permitting children of twelve years of age to marry and in one other State those of ten years.

As TIME has settled my doubts on many issues in its letter column in the past I will ask if you would kindly publish a list of the States permitting such conditions.

L. R. BLACK Altadena, Calif.

Ten states allow marriage of females at twelve, with parents’ consent: Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia. There is no state which allows either a male or female of ten to marry.—ED.

Witch-Burnings

Sirs:

In the issue of Feb. 23, p. 36, you refer to a forthcoming opera called Merry Mount. Mention is made of a witch-burning episode. The producers are able to make their characters do anything, I suppose, but, as far as I know, there have never been witch-burnings in this country. The idea of this form of execution probably received a great impetus from H. L. Mencken— he refers many times throughout his rather muscular prose to such affairs. As a matter of fact the form of execution was usually by hanging. If there is a case on record where a witch was actually executed by burning during the colonial period, I should like to learn about it.

JOHN A. SPEAR East Orange, N. J.

There is no record of colonial witch-burning in the U. S. Even in the Massachusetts witch hysteria of 1692, of the 19 put to death, 18 were hanged, one was pressed to death, none were burned—ED.

Sewanee Banshee

Sirs:

Your reference in TIME, Feb. 23, p. 22, of the fame of Groton School and its chapel which suffered depredations last spring reminds me of a tradition at my alma mater, the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., sometime known as ”the Oxford of America.”

Since Sewanee and Vanderbilt University, pioneers in Southern college sports, have played football it has been a tradition that each week preceding the Thanksgiving football game of the years that Sewanee defeats her old rival, a “baby” has been heard to cry somewhere on the campus each night exactly at midnight.

In the fall of 1924, while I was a sophomore at Sewanee the “baby” was heard to cry each midnight in the college chapel for seven nights preceding Sewanee’s 24-0 victory over Vanderbilt.

The chapel is a handsome Gothic cathedral, designed by the eminent ecclesiastical architects, Cram & Goodhue of Boston. After the “baby” had been heard at midnight of the Thursday preceding the game in 1924 each midnight found students, residents & faculty assembled in the unlighted chapel. Toward the latter part of the week the chapel was crowded, students were on the roof, in the choir stalls, stationed in every possible part of the chapel inside & outside. The location of the ”baby” was never ascertained. The “baby” has not cried since 1924 and Sewanee has not defeated Vanderbilt in football since that fall.

CHARLES EDWARD THOMAS Indianapolis. Ind.

Road-Builder Shackleford

Sirs:

At various times your pages have contained interesting little sketches of Senators and Congressmen and their records.

Last summer while in Jefferson City, Mo., I visited for a moment with ex-Congressman Dorsey W. Shackleford, whose secretary I was during his last few years in Washington. Quite innocently, I mentioned that I had driven about the country a good deal and how wonderful I considered the country’s highways.

At this point, the ex-Congressman, who is now an old man, suddenly came to life. ”You and I did that,” said he, “though few people may remember that now.”

Judge Shackleford was for many years chairman of the Committee on Roads in the House, and is the author of the Shackleford-Bankhead Road Law—the really first big movement in the direction of the wonderful highways the country enjoys today.

I believe a little mention given to Judge Shackleford and his fine record of public service would be entirely in order, and would prove interesting to not only his old friends and admirers, but to all your readers. Do you?

R. H. DIRCK Evanston, Ill.

The Bankhead-Shackleford bill (Federal Aid Road Act), basis for subsequent legislation of the kind, was approved July 11, 1916. It called for $75,000,000 in five annual installments, beginning with $5,000,000 for fiscal 1917 and increasing $5,000,000 each year, to be matched dollar-for-dollar by the States to build roads mutually agreed upon by the State highway departments and the Secretary of Agriculture. The total of Federal aid extended in fiscal 1917-30 inclusive: $915,000,000. Mileage designated: 193,652. Mileage completed: 88,945.3.—ED.

Non-Rotarian Eggs

Sirs:

To correct an error in TIME, Feb. 23, item “Eggs,” I am enclosing a copy of The Weekly Letters from the Secretariat of Rotary International, on the last page of which I have checked what I think you will find of interest.

L. S. EDMUNDS Royal Oak, Mich.

The item:

“A Special Message From President [Almon E.] Roth—Recently some of the newspapers of the United States carried the statement that certain California Rotary clubs, under the auspices of chambers of commerce, were going to stage an egg throwing battle in order to reduce the large egg surplus. Immediately a number of United States Rotary clubs very properly appealed to me to prevent such action.

“For the information of those interested, I wish to state that the names of the Rotary clubs were used without their permission and without the knowledge of the club officers. The clubs had taken no part in the suggested stunt which was given such wide publicity but on the contrary have been taking the initiative in seeing that surplus eggs are distributed to the needy.”—ED.