Herewith are excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain either supplementary to or corrective of news previously published in TIME.
Praise
Sirs:
Congratulations for your splendid news magazine. You have revolutionized news-writing. Before TIME appeared, I had quit reading daily papers and news magazines, except at long intervals and then cursorily, because they were so voluminous and dull. I had to wade through many pages that did not interest me to glean some few items that did.
TIME has changed all that. Once a week it brings me the news boiled down and expressed in such a delightful and humorous style as to fee interesting, even fascinating. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay you is to state that in TIME I read news that did not interest me in the least in any other publication.
Now, one little protest: Why do all the American news-publications make such a fuss over the Prince of Wales? He gets almost as much handclapping in the U. S. as the President. What has he ever done to merit such applause?: True, he may be a very intelligent, magnetic and democratic young man, and a good sport. The same is true of thousands of young Americans and young men of all other civilized nations, but they have to accomplish something before they are lionized in the press and on the screen. What has the Prince done? Is it possible that we Americans are degenerating into royalty-loving snobs? Shades of Washington, Paine, Jefferson and Franklin, forgive us!!
M. B. BUTLER
Taft, Calif.
For an unfavorable estimate of Edward of Wales, Subscriber Butler is referred to a letter from Miss Mary Elizabeth Robinn of Boston, published in TIME, Nov. 16.—ED.
Mrs. Eddy Defended
Sirs:
Your magazine TIME has been very highly recommended to me by a friend; so recently while in San Francisco I purchased a copy with the idea of sending in my subscription.
After reading it very carefully, I came to the page on Religion and I would like to draw your attention to Rabbi Stephen Wise's comment on the "Erection of a Shrine to Buddha" in Central Park, New York City [Dec. 14 issue, p. 26]. It reads: "I wonder whether the proposal to erect a statue in Central Park to Buddha comes from Will Rogers. It is quite worthy of his fertile wit. Buddha! What's the matter with Mahomet ? What's the matter with Confucius, to say nothing of Bab? And there is a sect called the Mormons, and there was Mrs. Eddy. What's the matter with any or all of these? Let's have a nice quiet lane in Central Park, etc."
I, as an American citizen, believe in justice and I say with deepest sincerity that I consider it not only very unjust but inconceivable in this day and age of enlightenment to compare Mrs. Eddy, a true American, and her works, which stand for the very ideals upon which America was founded, with Buddha, Mahomet, Confucius or Bab.
MYRTLE L. NOBLE
Sacramento, Calif.
The attention of Mrs. Noble is called to the fact that it is Rabbi Wise, not TIME, who offended her. —ED.
Two Societies