Letters, Nov. 18, 1946

Bloomp & Chemistry Sirs:

“… Tone which resounds through all of O’Neill’s work like the ringing of red iron on an anvil” [TIME, Oct. 21].

Beautiful words, but red iron is soft and goes “bloomp” instead of ringing.

H. E. GHOLSON Clarksville, Tenn.

¶ The Anvil Chorus was ringing in TIME’S ear.—ED.

Sirs:

“. . . For there is no chemistry to equal that which works in the marriage of catastrophe with a courageous heart.” That, for this writer’s money, is fine writing. Perhaps, if Mr. O’Neill took that sentence for the theme of a new drama based on the five “years of silence and suffering,” he would create the great play your critic estimates he has not created in The Iceman Cometh. FITZROY DAVIS Evanston, 111.

Planned Economy in Bavaria

Sirs:

Dr. Niebuhr [TIME, Oct. 21] states that Military Government vetoed a provision in the Bavarian constitution calling for a planning commission, “on the ground that it was incompatible with democracy.” The proposal was not for a planning commission but for a planned economy within Bavaria. The Germans were told by Military Government that the question of planned economy or free enterprise was for them to decide, but that Bavaria was too small to have a planned economy all by itself regardless of the other parts of Germany. Nothing was said about a planned economy being incompatible with democracy. Since I was a member of the Military Government committee on the review of state constitutions, I can vouch for the accuracy of the above account.

ROGER H. WELLS

Munich, Germany

¶ Dr. Wells (onetime Bryn Mawr professor of political economy) should know. Dr. Niebuhr, who says that he was aware of this official explanation, nevertheless demurs.—ED.

This Way to Venus

Sirs:

Professor Herrick’s proposed “Venus or bust” voyage certainly would be a “bust” if the interplanetary pilot used the map drawn by TIME Artist R. M. Chapin Jr. [TIME, Oct. 21]. . . .

GLENN W. DIETRICH Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Sirs:

. . . Unhappily, the diagram illustrates a space ship taking off in the same direction as the earth travels. . . .

MARSHALL E. DEUTSCH

New York City

¶ Let Readers Dietrich & Deutsch take a longer look at the diagram. The arrow shows the direction of the rocket’s flight to Venus, not the direction of the takeoff. Since the earth moves 18.5 m.p.s. and the rocket is fired in the opposite direction at 8 m.p.s., the net speed of the rocket is 10.5 m.p.s. in the direction of the earth’s motion.—ED.

Alias Artie & Freddie

Sirs:

In your issue of Oct. 21, you discuss the Hearst gossip columnists of Los Angeles and San Francisco. You name Jack Lait Jr. as “Artie Angeleno” but you fail to give us the name of “Freddie Francisco.”

Many of us feel that “Freddie Francisco,” despite the name, is one of the ablest writers in this vicinity. We would appreciate very much information as to his name.

CHESLEY BUSH, M.D.

Livermore, Calif.

¶ “Freddie Francisco” is Robert L. Patterson, ex-Hollywood scriptwriter and longtime newspaperman.—ED.

Some Fun

Sirs:

Would appreciate a definition of some. “Some wondered why Henry Wallace had chosen such a small sounding board (New Republic circulation: 40,594)” [TiME, Oct. 21].

What number in this particular context determines some? Three persons? Two? Your writer? Who can identify this some? Mr. Gallup? FORTUNE Poll? . . . Your writer’s intuition?

Would also like to know about others. “Others, who remembered Herbert Croly . . . who had given the magazine some of his own distinction and moral force, wondered why the New Republic wanted befuddled Mr Wallace to take his place.” Can I find these others hanging around those some, or ar they a different crowd altogether? . . .

KENNETH KNIGHT

Denver, Colo. ¶ No, three’s a crowd.—ED.

Yale’s Got It

Sirs:

… On page 30 of the Oct 28 issue of TIME, John Trumbull’s The Battle of Princeton is reproduced. . . . The painting has been the property of Yale University since 1831. . . .

Trumbull’s mortal remains lie only 30 feet from where I now sit. His ghost will haunt us both unless credit is given where it is due. Tell the world the visual record of The Battle of Princeton by General Washington’s aide-de-camp is at Yale.

THEODORE SIZER Director

Yale University Art Gallery New Haven

Bugatti with a Purpose

Sirs:

… I am finally moved to write you in the case of your . . . excellent article on Eugene O’Neill [TIME, Oct. 21]. You say that neither he nor his wife has ever learned to drive a car.

In the summer of 1930 I visited O’Neill and his wife [at] a chateau outside Tours. He had a very beautiful Bugatti racing car which was kept in the peak of condition by a French mechanic. I was . . . pretty horrified by the fact that the car was lubricated with castor oil. O’Neill used to take the car put for a daily spin during which he drove it at very high speeds along the crown of the straight French roads. That was the Bugatti’s only purpose. There was another car for the purpose of transportation.

PAUL H. BONNER JR.

New York City ¶TIME was misinformed. However, since the strictly pour le sport Bugatti interlude, O’Neill has chosen to be chauffeur-driven.—EDJungle Pace

Sirs:

In your article “End of the Road” [TIME, Oct. 21] your reference to General Stilwell “setting the pace with a brisk 105 steps to the minute” seems quite strange to one subject to Army drill regulations. According to Field Manual 22-5 (Feb. 1946), quick time—the normal cadence of a group marching—is 120 steps per minute. This is surely not a brisk gait. Did TIME make a mistake as to “105 steps to the minute”?

PVT. D. E. KELCH

Fort Knox, Ky.

¶ On a winding, broken, steaming jungle trail, 105 steps to the minute seems pretty brisk to TIME.—ED.

Pilots’ Pay

Sirs:

Seems to me you have somewhat overstepped the bounds of journalistic facts and truth in coining your acidly brilliant phrase “the golden boys” to describe members of the Air Line Pilots’ Association [TIME, Oct. 28].

There is no “raise” involved in the current TWA controversy. It concerns only the establishment of a pay scale for Constellations and DC-45, which have been flown only recently commercially. The Connies gross 32 ½ more tons than the DC-35 and are 100 miles an hour faster. We are earning for TWA 8co% more than the pay load of the DC-35. We are asking less than 1% of that added revenue for flying this heavier, faster, more productive equipment. The salary should be commensurate to the job performed.

DC-3 pilots, who comprise 75% of TWA’s flight personnel, have had no raise since their pay schedule was established by law as a minimum in 1934, and they will not benefit at all by the current strike. Their salary averages $7,900, not $10,000. . . .

Now—remember our irregular meals, irregular hours and times of sleep, and constant climatic changes that at best are not conducive to good health. Remember that we take a rigid physical exam every six months and on the day we fail to pass, we’re thru. Remember that TWA has no pension plan whatever.

Not “golden,” TIME, just plated.

JOHN C. CARROLL TWA pilot Burbank, Calif.

No Freedom for Error

Sirs:

In TIME for Nov. 4 … I saw the disgraceful remarks of the Anglican Archbishop of York. Must Protestant sects make it so difficult for us Catholics to win them to the one true Church of Christ on earth? There can be no freedom for error, and we are right and they are wrong. Why must they expect that they have any right to religious freedom?

The answer to this problem of mixed marriages will come when we secure enough public control to make marriage by the Catholic Church the only one permitted by law. . . .

MICHAEL P. BREEN Reading, Pa.

Salt Pork, Southern Style

Sirs:

“. . . Fatback was scarce in the South . . .” [TIME, Oct. 21].

I have lived in the South all my life, and my family has owned & operated the same country store for 48 years . . . and this happens to be the first time in my life that I have ever heard of fatback. I have asked several people here and none have ever heard of it. …

In our store, in the days before the AAA messed the cotton business up with red tape, we sold “salt pork” under name of “bacon,” “side bacon,” and, to the vulgar, “sow belly.” That was the only meat we sold and, naturally, I assume that it is your fatback. . . .

FRANK BRYAN Groesbeck, Texas

¶ Correct. Fatback is a familiar term in most Southern States.—ED.

Half & Half

Sirs:

In “Koestler on Palestine” [TIME, Nov. 4], your reviewer stated that Joseph, the hero of Koestler’s book, Thieves in the Night, was “half-English, half-Jewish.”

I dissent. One cannot be half a religion and half a nationality. . . .

JANE CARP Philadelphia

¶ Webster: “Jew … any person of the Hebrew race or whose religion is Judaism.”—ED.