Letters, Mar. 15, 1948

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¶ The damnyankee State Department was in Philadelphia at the time.—ED.

Church Builders

Sir:

RE YOUR ARTICLE ON YE YUN HO AND HIS NEED OF $1OO FOR COMPLETION OF HIS CHURCH [IN KOREA] PLEASE ADVISE HOW I MAY FORWARD THE MONEY TO HIM.

(MRS.) H. J. KELLY Northridge, Calif.

Sir:

. . . The enclosed check [$100] to Ye Yun Ho is in memory of my father, Dr. Ulswell Gifford McDowell, a Presbyterian clergyman. . . .

DOROTHY MARTIN New York City

¶ TIME has forwarded the money to Ye Yun Ho.—ED.

First Flight

Sir:

Had the Wright Brothers endeavored to take off in the manner you describe [TIME, Feb. 9], they would still be sitting on their skids at Kitty Hawk. ... It was quite impossible for a 12 h.p. motor to lift that plane off the ground. It was launched by a catapult, which consisted of a heavy weight hoisted to the top of a triangular tower and attached by ropes and pulleys to the front of a monorail car running on a wooden track. The plane was balanced on the car, and as the engine revved up, the weight was released. The car hurtled down its track and fell over as the plane became airborne. . . .

If it is any consolation to your graphically inaccurate biographer, all the other obituaries of Orville Wright made the same error.

ALDEN HATCH Cedarhurst, L.I.

¶ Reader Hatch (author of Glenn Curtiss; Pioneer oj Naval Aviation) has the right idea but the wrong place. On the Wrights' first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, their plane rested on a car which ran on a monorail. After a 35-to 40-ft. run, the plane lifted from the rail, and in Orville Wright's own account "climbed a few feet, stalled, then settled to the ground. My stopwatch showed that the machine had been in the air just 3½ seconds." It was not until nearly a year later, on a cow pasture near Dayton, Ohio, that the Wrights used the derrick (see cut) catapult method which Reader Hatch describes. — ED.

The B. Traven Mystery

Sir:

I was never "hired" by Mr. John Huston as he stated according to your review of Treasure of Sierra Madre [TIME, Feb. 2]. . . . When I was introduced to a certain gentleman — one of the very few genuine gentlemen in the caravan that the Warners shipped to Mexico for their boo-bah-booing there —he looked at me hard and sharp for two seconds and asked: "Suppose you had something to do with that picture in general, or, let's assume, with the music or sound effects, what would you suggest?" After I had talked about four minutes, he interrupted me short and said: "You're on."

Mr. John Huston will never be a great writer, because he is a bad observer. On locations I wore any odd or old clothing, as the going was mostly rough; but when I presented myself at the hotel I did not wear "faded khaki" as Mr. John Huston claims, but was dressed immaculately in a new and expensive tailored suit as would be proper if one is to meet somebody whom he believes important at so swanky a place as the Reforma Hotel.