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TIME'S great regret is that the performance of its sole function of universal reporter occasionally brings pain to a subscriber. The article, essence of which was reported, was for many reasons (its effrontery not least) news— ED.
Heroes
A misinterpretation of the subject of dueling in Germany has crept into your extract in TIME of May 10 ["Heroes Vexed," p. 13]. The scar-bedecked men travelers see in Germany are not of the army, but university students and graduates. These, as members of rival fraternities, challenge each other to duels just as here a football team of one university plays against another. It is a test of nerve. Skill is of course also essential; the unskillful carries his mark for life. But he is proud of having gone through the ordeal, and ordeal it is.
Bismarck, on being entertained by a reception committee of students, turned to one particularly badly scarred representative and asked whether he used his face for a guard instead of a sword.
Dueling in military circles, on the other hand, is a genuine duel, fought to redress an insult, with either sword, rapier or pistol. These naturally often end fatally. Times change and therefore such duels have been relegated to the past as mentioned in your article.
CHARLES F. BODECKER, D.D.S., F.A.C.D. Columbia University New York, N. Y.
The new restrictions apply particularly to military men. — ED.
Vented Spleen
Sirs:
Permit me to express to the Editorial Department my keen delight in every number of TIME, its admirable condensed style, pithy news and incisive comments, at times caustic but never ill-natured, and also my admiration for the patience and toleration it shows to the microcephalic morons who so frequently vent their spleen and exhibit their ignorance in the puerile letters of complaint or protest over negligible trifles, which TIME fearlessly prints from week to week. May your circulation ever increase.
FRANK V. WADDY Los Angeles, Calif.
Pro-Union, Cancels
Sirs:
Your answer to the query of F. O. Wyse in your LETTERS column of the May 24 issue of TIME states: "TIME happens to be printed by open shop labor."
Perhaps you cannot agree with my viewpoint, but I think those printers who are not members of the union are unfair to themselves in not taking advantage of the benefits, such as the old age pension and eligibility to enter the Printers Home, which that organization has to offer. It is certain that a member of the International Typographical Union will not have to go to a judge in a criminal court and ask to be confined in prison so he will have a place to eat and sleep, as one printer recently did in Brooklyn, N. Y.
It also seems to me that your non-union workers are not fair to the union, for I do not think it can be denied that the union is largely responsible for the living wage which printers are earning at the present time; yet the non-union men are enjoying the higher standard of living without contributing to the organization which has made it possible.
And as for publishers, I do not think they lose anything by employing all union labor. . .
It is likely that your open shop is responsible for a few of the typographical errors which appear in your publication, and I must say, for a high-class weekly, TIME has plenty of them.