Twerpish Sirs:
Your description of Yin Ju-keng (TIME, Dec. 30, p. 15) as "twerpish-looking" reminds me of Mark Twain's statement about the crocodile, which could not have another name because no other animal looks so much like a crocodile. . . .
What is the meaning of this appropriate descriptive term you apply to Yin Ju-keng? I am unable to find it in the dictionary.
WARREN C. PROPES
Berkeley, Calif.
A twerp, as Reader Propes should know without dictionary-thumbing, is a small, pretentious, ineffective and unpleasant person whose mode of self-expression falls between a twitter and a chirp.—ED.
Necessary New Faces
Sirs:
Your recent comment on the Anti-Saloon League Convention at St. Louis [TIME, Dec. 16] was curt, clear, but incomplete and incorrect.
Of course there are only two basic ideas about liquor, wet and dry. If anyone expected the Anti-Saloon League to change its fundamental idea" that intoxicating beverages are harmful, dangerous and habit-forming, and therefore the traffic therein should be suppressed, they were of course disappointed. As for new ideas about how to advocate the cause of sobriety TIME itself referred to the new songs introduced at St. Louis, and the press associations considered the plan of home talent dramas developed by the Anti-Saloon League sufficiently new to give the story nationwide circulation. Also there was the new idea of a $2,000,000 advertising campaign to counteract the high-pressure advertising and sales promotion activities of the liquor interests. Your implication that because former leaders in the anti-liquor fight like Cannon and McBride are still loyal to their convictions no new leaders are joining in the fight against intolerable conditions caused by alcohol is entirely incorrect. On our program this year we had noted men like Charles W. Bryan, Dr. John R. Sampey, Dr. P. M. Glasoe and numerous others who have not previously spoken at our national conventions. In a way TIME is right in suggesting that new ideas and new faces are necessary. The new ideas developed by the Anti-Saloon League and the new faces appearing in its councils, contrary to your curt report, will be effective in a new advance against alcohol. But, the greatest change will be brought about by the multitude of voters who will get new and correct ideas about the liquor traffic from personal observations with the result that new faces will appear in State and National Capitols.
O. G. CHRISTGAU
Convention Manager
The Anti-Saloon League of America
Austin, Minn.
Debatable Points
Sirs:
The playwright whose play is reviewed in TIME has an opportunity seldom afforded him elsewhere: he is able to come back fast and plenty if the review contains mistaken facts. In your review of Paradise Lost (TIME, Dec. 23) the following corrections are to be noted:
1) There is no blank verse in the play.
2) I have never attempted to bracket myself with Chekhov. He was mentioned only as historical background.
3) The furnace man in the play is not a Communist, unless John Brown, Garrison and a dozen other American rebels are so considered.