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What pleased me most, however, was TIME's refraining from spectacularizing and claiming thai the west coast had been obliterated of towns and that hundreds of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tampa folks had been washed into the Gulf, for such were the claims of our dear friends the newspapers (Northern) and absurdly imaginative radio announcers.
L. Q. STETSON
The Evening Independent St. Petersburg, Fla.
Death in Louisiana
Sirs:
I wonder whether it has occurred to anyone (the newspapers ignore it) that Dr. Weiss also was "murdered," by the paid "gorillas" of the Senator. . . .
PIERRE N. CHARBONNET, M. D.
Tulsa, Okla.
Sirs: From grateful Athenians, to the memory of Harmodius and Aristogeiton,* a statue. From thousands in the U. S. and Canada to Dr. Weiss's memory, all praise.
G. CAMERON
Victoria, B. C.
Sirs:
I made the first speech in the U. S. outside of Louisiana, challenging the policies of Senator Long (TIME, Sept. 28, 1931). Since then I have watched his daily public activities.
I regard his assassination as the greatest political tragedy which has happened in this country since the assassination of Governor-elect Goebel of Kentucky in the late 1890's. . . . Wholly differing from the policies of Senator Long yet I saw in him a national asset and deeply deplore his untimely death.
T. H. McGREGOR
Austin, Tex.
When the Southern States were wrangling over Huey Long's cotton reduction program in 1931, Representative McGregor in the Texas Legislature said of Louisiana's then Governor: He is "drunk with ignorance and power . . . arrogantly braying from Louisiana. . . . This is the first time in history that ignorance, impudence and insolence combined have crossed the State line and the people of Texas been insulted by political ambition and demagoguery."—ED.
Sirs:
... In this hour of death, the barbed tongue of TIME might well be silent. . . .
I myself am not of the Long following. I saw him ever as dangerous to the established order; but it may be that danger is the soul of progress. None can deny his brilliant intellect, stupendous energy, his disarming, childlike humor, his amazing, and sometimes terrifying sincerity, and his unmatched resourcefulness. He loved life and he loved people. ... He trampled all that hampered him, believing always that the clear end he had in view justified the means. Frequently wrong, he was often superbly right. . . .
It is my hope that TIME will make the amend honorable, will abandon for a moment its attitude of mockery, and stand with bowed head before the grave of the courageous man who said in his last hour, "Oh God, don't let me die; there's a few more things I've got to do."
M. B. ELLIS
Covington, La.
Dictator's Friends
Sirs:
On Monday night, Sept. 9, a few hours before the death of Senator Huey P. Long, the radio announcer for "The March of TIME" stated that the Senator, after being shot, fell into the arms of his henchman, James O'Connor Jr.