Letters, May 9, 1938

• Share

'Don't Look Now"

Sirs:

'. . . the President stood bareheaded . . . to watch a parade of 12,000 persons, including a fleet of small tanks" [TIME, April 18].

Don't look now, but your participle is dangling. Or could it have been that the balance of the 12,000 persons were big tanks?

BERNARD DEEGAN Hopemont, W. Va.

Liberals

Sirs:

Witter Bynner says that a liberal is marked by

a graceful siding with the underdog,

Although he may not know which dog is under— but TIME seems about as confused as to what makes a liberal as liberals are about underdogs. A few months ago you had Walter Lippmann neatly defined as at once liberal and conservative, in March you said Paul Anderson could now write "liberal" articles, meaning pro-New Deal, and two weeks ago your Art critic did some fancy theological hairsplitting about Old Liberal Lippmann and New Liberal Lewis Mumford, the sense of which was that they had nothing in common. After that I expected the worst, which came last week: "The partners in a Yorkshire textile mill, Alfred Armistead, liberal Conservative, and Henry Hinchliffe, conservative Liberal. . . ."

Why the mystification? A liberal is a man who believes in the increasing freedom of the individual in relation to his government. Sample: Franklin Roosevelt. A conservative is a man who is opposed to change in existing institutions, harking back to some previous condition (Free Trade) for his standard in judging the present. Sample: Walter Lippmann. A reactionary contemplates some fundamental change in the status quo in order to recover the supposed advantages of institutions that have disappeared. Samples: French monarchists, Southerners who believe in slavery, Dorothy Thompson. . . . EDWARD MCARDLE Toronto, Ont.

Do TIME'S readers agree with Reader McArdle that Franklin Roosevelt is a good sample of a liberal?—ED.

Aiken's Marriages

Sirs:

In the issue of TIME, April 18, it was stated in the column Milestones: "Divorced. Conrad Potter Aiken, 48, famed poet ... by his second wife, Clarice Lorenz Aiken, 30; in Boston. . . ."

The 1938 volume of [the British] Who's Who states Conrad Potter Aiken married 1st, 1912, Jessie McDonald; divorced 1929; 2nd, 1930, Clarice Mary Lorenz; divorced 1937; 3rd, Mary Augusta Hoover.

Is this an error on the part of TIME or Who's Who?

MARY ELIZABETH BOWEN

Western College

Oxford, Ohio

Neither. Although on April 8 Clarice Aiken, Wife No. 2, obtained a divorce from Author Aiken in Boston, Mass., he had obtained a Mexican divorce from her last summer, forthwith married Mary Hoover, 30-year-old Boston artist and dancer.—ED.

Prima Donnas Praised

Sirs: