Letters, Sep. 7, 1936

Blanton’s Marks Sirs:

It has been rumored that Red-baiting Congressman Tom Blanton of Texas has a secretary whose name is Marx. Could this rumor be verified?

RICHARD M. SCAMMON

Minneapolis, Minn.

Texas’ Blanton has on his payroll one Ruby S. Whipke, who in private life is Mrs. George S. Marks, not Marx. Mrs.Marks will not be on the Blanton Congressional payroll after Jan. 3 because the Democratic Congressman was defeated for renomination last fortnight. — ED.

Finest for Andrews

Sirs:

YOUR CURRENT ISSUE [TIME, Aug. 24] CONTAINING STATEMENT THAT PENURIOUS YANKEES AND SHIFTLESS MALARIAL CRACKERS TO WHOM YOU ATTRIBUTE MY SUCCESSFUL NOMINATION TO U. S. SENATE IS STRIKINGLY UNFAIR TO ME AND AN INSULT TO NOT ONLY EVERY NATIVE OF FLORIDA BUT A HOST OF FLORIDA’S BEST CITIZENS FROM NORTHERN STATES WHO CHOSE TO MAKE THEIR HOME HERE. IT IS CONCEDED HERE THAT MY JUDICIAL LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE RECORD OF 25 YEARS AND MY CO-OPERATION WITH THE CITRUS INDUSTRY AND CONSISTENT ADHERENCE TO DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES PLUS A HISTORICAL PIONEER FAMILY RECORD EXTENDING OVER 100 YEARS IN FLORIDA MAINLY CAUSED MY ELECTION. FLORIDA HAS BEEN HONORED IN BEING SELECTED AS THE HOME OF MANY SPLENDID MEN AND WOMEN FROM NORTHERN STATES WHOM YOU DUB PENURIOUS YANKEES BUT WHOM WE KNOW TO BE AMONG THE FINEST AMERICAN CITIZENS.

C. O. Andrews

Orlando Fla.

Sirs: Your article (TIME, Aug. 24) on Florida’s Pension Senator struck me as an excellent analyzation of the situation here. Doubtlessly, Judge Andrews will dispute the implication that Townsend votes were responsible for his election.

If they were not, why did he endorse the Townsend plan? Surely a man of Judge Andrews’ intelligence and training could not sincerely believe in this farcical cureall.

MAX BUCK

Apopka, Fla.

Wahoo Wahoo’s Associate

Sirs:

Until recent publication of your fascinating “Dodo” articles I credited your magazine with average honest reporting. I now can pity the unfortunate individual who is not gifted with a sense of humor. I managed to get a good laugh, which might have been heartier if the situation were not so serious, in spite of the fact that there are not two accurate sentences in your entire first five paragraphs as published in TIME, Aug. 24, entitled “Dodo’s Price.”

I have only two direct comments to make. First, where do you get that drinking stuff? I drink no more than the average politician and a damn sight less than many newshawks, as you call them. You are at liberty to search my official Naval record, and perform such other spy work as the investigation will require in regard to this matter. There is nothing whatever in the record, on and off, to justify the politely sordid comments you make concerning liquor, and myself. For your information, I am suffering from acute neuritis in my legs which followed a severe case of double lobar pneumonia (unconscious five days and not expected to live), which in turn followed an attack of acute gastritis with hemorrhages (unconscious two or three days). Is it possible you confuse neuritis with alcoholic jitters? Perhaps the latter condition is more easily understood by the writer of such a glittering article.

My second “squawk” concerns “Dodo” itself. Here certainly is an elegant name. Twenty-five years ago at the Naval Academy I was the member of a menagerie which an upperclassman collected from among the lowly plebes for the purpose of mild hazing. My place of honor was, as the “Dodo” bird, no uncertain one. I recall that I condescended to associate, at intervals, with the “Wahoo Wahoo” bird and several other fowl of lesser degree. This lasted about one month — since that time I have not been honored with this title except by one classmate — now dead — and yourself. In fact I have no nickname, possibly “Cy” or Johnny or Jack. You have my permission to discontinue the use of Dodo—it’s really like shooting from behind to call me that and puncture my wounded vanity.

Furthermore I expect to be deserted by all my wives, sweethearts and beautiful female operatives as soon as they are unfortunate enough to peruse a copy of TIME. Such a calamity would react upon your paper in that “news” might become scarce over night. On the other hand, picture the handicaps I might be forced to labor under, in any plans to destroy Wall Street: to lower the value of Florida real estate by a bombing raid and alas, worst blow of all, to deprive the Hearst publications and the fair State of California of the chance to shout “We told you so!” Fair play, mates!…

JOHN FARNSWORTH

District Jail Washington, D. C.

Not yet convinced is TIME that its story of “Cy” Farnsworth’s arrest for selling Naval secrets to the Japanese Embassy is inaccurate in any detail. — ED.

Copley Meeting

Sirs:

In TIME of Aug. 17 in commenting on the probable meeting of President Roosevelt and Candidate Landon in Kansas soon, you state in substance that oldsters had to go back to 1896 for a parallel historical precedent — the accidental meeting of McKinley and Bryan in a small Nebraska town.

I suggest that we need not go back so far, as President William Howard Taft and Governor Woodrow Wilson met in the Copley Plaza hotel, Boston, less than two months before election day 1912. The President had come to speak at the banquet of the Congress of International Chambers of Commerce. Candidate Wilson was touring New England at the end of his campaign, and had ended his day at the same hotel. Along with other newspapermen I hoped for a meeting of the two candidates, and, those of us in the Wilson group, sought the Governor’s permission to bring about a meeting with visions of posed photographs and a worthwhile national story. Governor Wilson was timid about the proprieties of it, but allowed himself to be persuaded to accept an invitation from the President. If memory serves me correctly Billy Swan (yachting stories) then of the Associated Press made the contact with the President’s party. Result: A cordial invitation from the genial Taft to the man who within a month was to unseat him.

. . . We were later informed that the conversation consisted of amiable generalities and mutual hopes that campaign-rasped voices would survive the last gruelling weeks. JOHN F. O’CONNELL Andover, Mass.

TIME erred in reporting that Nominee Bryan met Nominee McKinley in 1896. Nominee McKinley stuck to his famed front porch at Canton, Ohio throughout the campaign.—ED.

Publicity Sufferers

Sirs:

Last week your radio program gave this section of the country some very unfavorable publicity on the forest fire situation. While there were a few fires in isolated areas, most of them under control, one would have gotten the impression that the whole northeastern Minnesota was in flames. We have received quite a number of letters from prospective visitors canceling their trips to this section of the State because of the sensational newspaper headlines and the radio programs exaggerating the fires in this part of the country. . . .

I do not know of any resorts in the entire northeastern Minnesota, that were harmed by the fires, but I believe all of them suffered through the untrue and exaggerated publicity that was given the fires.

We, here at Ely, did not have any fires within 50 miles of our resorts that gave us any concern whatever. The few small spot fires that burned probably an acre or two of land were put out by the Forest Service Rangers before we had heard or knew of them.

RAY HOEFLER

Secretary

Ely Commercial Club, Ely, Minn.

Ancient Sniffer

Sirs:

“Garlic breath” (TIME, Aug. 17) reminds me of an interesting bit in the saga of Saint Olaf. Just before the battle of Stiklestad the King advised a good woman who lived hard by to make her house ready to receive the wounded.

Among other details of how a field hospital was run in the year 1030, the saga tells that she cooked a pot of onion soup and made those patients that had body wounds swallow some of it, so that by sniffing at the orifice she could determine whether or not she had to deal with a “hollow” wound.

GEORGE D. CURTIS

Lakeside, Calif.

Honey

Sirs:

When bestowing kudos on your head writers don’t pass up the guy who produced “Baby Beeper” (TIME, Aug. 17).

It’s a honey.

LEN DUGGAN

West Springfield, Mass.

Fantastic

Sirs:

After reading the erroneous statements in the metropolitan sensational press about the behavior of people at the Rainey Bethea hanging, for his fiendish assault on and murder of one of Kentucky’s loveliest gentlewomen, I had looked forward to receiving TIME in the belief that at least one publication outside of the county in which the rapist-killer was executed, would tell the story accurately.

In your second paragraph [TIME, Aug. 24] you say Sheriff Florence Thompson was appointed by Governor Chandler, to succeed her husband after his death. In Kentucky, vacancies caused by the death, resignation or removal of county officials are filled by appointment by the county judge. Daviess County’s Judge James Wilson appointed Mrs. Thompson sheriff.

As to the merrymakers on the street, the crowd yipping for the Negro at 5 o’clock, the alleged scramble for the death hood, the people of Owensboro are asking why the cameras that were busy recording all activity about the scaffold and on it, can give the thrill-writers nothing with which to back up their fantastic yarns.

LAWRENCE W. HAGER Publisher

Messenger and Inquirer

Owensboro, Ky.

If the crowd at Rainey Bethea’s hanging in Owensboro failed to tear off the death hood, attending correspondents of the Associated Press, Universal Service, New York News were, among others, wrong. — ED.

Where & When

Sirs:

Many TIME readers must be asking for a word of enlightenment on Mr. Roosevelt’s eloquent words, quoted under The Presidency (Aug. 24): “I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen wounded . . . men coughing out gassed lungs . ., . dead in the mud . . . exhausted men come out of the line . . . etc. etc.”

Where and when did Mr. Roosevelt see such sights? ROSE WILDER LANE Columbia, Mo.

As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt made a short visit to the War zone in July 1918. —ED.

Midland Mention

Sirs:

WE REGRET VERY MUCH TO NOTE THAT IN THE STORY TIME, AUG. 31 CARRIED REGARDING THE RADIO PROGRAMS TO BE SPONSORED BY A GROUP OF BANKS NO MENTION WAS MADE OF THE PARTICIPATION OF MARINE MIDLAND GROUP. USING FIVE STATIONS MARINE MIDLAND GROUP WILL CARRY THESE PROGRAMS TO A LARGE PART OF NEW YORK STATE AND ACCORDINGLY ARE KEENLY INTERESTED IN THIS NEW PROTECT WHICH WILL BRING THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA AND PERTINENT INFORMATION REGARDING BANKING AND FINANCE TO A VERY LARGE AUDIENCE.

M. J. CAMPBELL

Marine Midland Group Buffalo, N.Y.