Letters, Feb. 29, 1932

Hawaii's Symphony

Sirs:

Surprised you may be to know that the Paradise of the Pacific, "restless purgatory of murder and race hatred" (TIME, Jan. 18), supports a symphony orchestra of 62 pieces directed by Australian Fritz Hart, F.R.C.M., and with a personnel made up of

7 Filipinos

2 Japanese

1 Hawaiian

2 Chinese

2 Portuguese

1 Purto Rican

2 Italians

45 Anglo Saxons

Today the first concert of the 1932 season was smoothly rendered, enthusiastically received in Honolulu's big Princess Theatre (capacity 1,554). Even more cosmopolitan than the personnel of the orchestra was the make-up of the audience. Prices for the concert ranged from $1 to $2.50, and every seat was occupied.

Mainlanders, saturated with grossly exaggerated press reports of racial animosity in Hawaii, will be surprised to learn that no racial riots were in evidence in the theatre during the rendering of the program! Nor was this due to the presence, as a violinist in the orchestra, of able Charles F. Weeber, newly appointed Chief of Police for Honolulu.

Enclosed please find concert program.

TED TRENT

Honolulu, Hawaii

Certainly no music on the Honolulu symphony's opening program would inspire riot. Mendelssohn's pleasant, pictorial Fingal's Cave began the concert, Beethoven's great Fifth gave it significance.—ED.

In Pineville

Sirs:

DEMAND FULL RETRACTION YOUR LIBELOUS STATEMENT FEBRUARY

TWENTY SECOND MY CONNECTION WALDO FRANK AFFAIR EVERY WORD CONTEMPTIBLE LIE PLEASE ADVISE.

HERNDON EVANS

Pineville, Ky.

So controversial have been reports from Pineville, where Writer Waldo Frank & party tried to distribute food to hungry striking miners, that the Associated Press, last week, answered complaints of bias on the part of its local representative thus: "Mr. Evans is ... not a staff correspondent of The Associated Press and The Associated Press is not responsible for his personal conduct." No contemptible liar, TIME erred in failing to distinguish between the group of assailants, including Herndon Evans, who rode Waldo Frank out of Kentucky and brutally attacked him and Lawyer Allen Taub, and those members of the group who actually did the manhandling. Allen Taub and another member of the writers' group have testified before a Senate committee that when the lights came on again after Lawyer Taub had been beaten in the dark, Herndon Evans, also editor of the weekly Pineville Sun and local Red Cross head, walked up to bloody-faced Allen Taub and said: "Well, Taub, give us a speech on the Constitution now."—ED.

Slayer Allen Acquitted

Sirs:

The killing of Francis Donaldson III by Edward Allen was considered newsworthy by TIME. Is not Allen's acquittal part of the contemporary scene or is the omission of it in the Feb. 15 issue an oversight?

R. N. VAN GILDER

New Haven, Conn.