Letters, Oct. 19, 1931

Loyal American

Sirs:

Certainly all of the gentlemen and patriots of your editorial staff were out of the office when the half tone of President Hoover sitting in front of the Holtz machine copied from the New York Daily News was admitted to your issue of Sept. 28.

How supposedly refined men catering to a refined public could so utterly have forgotten themselves as to do that low down thing I cannot see.

Such disrespect for the highest office of the land and for the gentleman who is so nobly filling it is a direct insult to the office, the man, and to each and every one of us who are your subscribers and readers.

No, I am not a rabid Republican partisan. On the contrary I am a Cleveland-Wilson Democrat, but better than that I am a loyal American! . . .

NEWELL C. KNIGHT

Chicago, Ill.

TIME reprinted the Daily News's composograph of Mahatma Hoover, not as news of the President of the U. S. but as a phenomenon of the U. S. Press.—ED.

Micks, Harps, Turkeys & Potatoes

Sirs:

Your uncouth crack about the little known origins of Irish hurly (TIME, Sept. 28) is most unTIMEworthy. It savors of the they-kept-the-pig-in-the-parlor ditties. It is no more probable that hurly started in a clubbed dispute over a potato than it is that tennis began in a courtier's attempt to ward off with a plate a hot dog bandied at him by an irate Louis the Whosis. Elsewhere you state that hurly is at least a thousand years old and the potato was not known in Europe until the 16th century. If you must link the potato with something you might tie it to the American game la crosse; 'twould be more accurate, less cheaply vaudevillian.

PATRICK O'BRIEN

Jacksonville, Ill.

Sirs:

I cull the following from your witty and disinterested account of the Irish game of hurling (TIME, Sept. 28).

"Perhaps it [hurling] began when two Irishmen fought with clubs for the possession of a potato and their neighbors took sides. There was hurling in Ireland a thousand years ago and it has been played ever since."

In its eagerness to up-to-datedly emulate mid-Victorian Punch's idea of being funny at Irishmen's expense TIME overlooks the fact that there were no potatoes in Ireland—or anywhere else in Europe—a thousand years ago. Will TIME forgive a slightly nauseated Irishman (Mick, Harp, Turkey, Flannel-mouth, if TIME prefers) if a mild passion for truth makes him a bit insensible to fun-loving TIME'S preference for what it deems to be humor?

JOHN M. FLYNN Chicago, Ill.

Farrar's Class

Sirs:

HEY YOU DONT PUT FARRAR [TIME, Oct. 5] IN ANY CLASS BUT NINETEEN EIGHTEEN GREATEST CLASS THAT EVER CAME TO YALE.

CHARLES P. TAFT II

Cincinnati, Ohio

To Yale's Greatest Class apology for misappropriating its Publisher John Farrar. But he took his degree with the Class of 1919 after a year away at war.—ED.

Monsters

Sirs:

For goodness sake don't go to aping Outlook in putting absurd and outlandish caricatures on your outside cover. The cover on your Oct. 5 issue is revolting.

F. GENTRY HARRIS

Spartanburg, S. C.

Sirs:

Was it for lack of space that TIME'S sport's writer omitted the name and poundage of this monster?