Letters, Feb. 26, 1940

  • Share
  • Read Later

(4 of 5)

The connotation of TIME'S report is even more alarming. TIME implies a criminal delay on the part of our Senate while the Baltic states are under invasion. TIME suggests that we could help stop the massacre.

How? By sending Finland a few millions of dollars ? The forces of the Soviet could hardly be checked by so insignificant a sum.

The answer is that TIME seems resigned to sending the United States to war.

From a professional standpoint TIME'S report of the Senate's stand is as narrow as any piece of reporting I've ever read in any issue of any publication. TIME has entirely too much influence to indiscriminately flay the Senate on so vital an issue—unless TIME wishes to support its capitalistic advertisers rather than its peace-loving readers.

WALDEMAR OSBORNE ERICKSON

P.S. I, who subscribe to TIME, do not entirely agree with my caustic roommate.

JOHN DUNN

Grand Forks, N. Dak.

Sirs:

With reference to your reporting of the weaseling of the President and the Senate in the matter of the loan to Finland, I believe this is the first time I have ever noted a touch of passion in your otherwise even reportorial style. You could not have picked a better occasion to make an exception to the rule. It makes one almost ashamed of his Government. My congratulations.

RICHARD HUHN Washington, D. C.

Bindle (Cont'd)

Sirs:

TIME is right as usual, and so is Mr. Webster, in defining "bindle" as bundle. Mr. Howard F. Clark is slightly in error when he insists that "bundle stiff" is the proper term. It is "bindle," not bundle.

"Bindle" is a Pennsylvania Dutch version of the German noun Bündel, in which the umlaut u is pronounced as in the French rue.

"Bindle stiff" is an American hobo term. The regular, full-blown, 100% hobo travels "as is," unhampered by any such sissifications as luggage, package or bundle.

The hobo who does carry a bundle, be it ever so little, is regarded as a stuck-up stiff or bindle stiff.

I know this is right. For I once was, and was called, a "bindle stiff."

ERNEST COLER Detroit, Mich.

Gracious Poetess

Sirs

: Your book review of Period Piece: Etta Wheeler Wilcox and Her Times, p. 64 of your Feb. sth issue, recalls a meeting with Mrs. Wilcox. . . . Another infantry officer and myself ... in early Aug. 1918, on a short leave in Paris, had become fed up with the overly anxious feminine French dinner companions at every restaurant we entered and tried the Hotel Petrograd dining room—G. H. Q. of the Y. W. C. A.-Americaine.

While eating our dinner we noticed a little old lady dressed in black, smiling and nodding to us from a distant table. We were about the only males present. "Lord," said Andrews, my comrade, "they keep flirting over here even when they are up in the eighties." Presently, we were surprised to find our lady crossing over and standing at our table.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5