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Since a rear admiral rates only two stars, and a vice admiral only three, what . . . was Rear Admiral Nicholson doing with four ? Two on each shoulder?
G. GERHARD
New York City
— Unfortunately for the editor who counted Rear-Admiral Nicholson's stars, there were two on each shoulder.—ED.
"Old Unhappy Bull" Sirs: Congratulations on your excellent picture of the fighting in Finland in your issue of Jan. 8. But I cannot read of this war in the wilderness, of battles fought by spectral shapes in a winter of perpetual night, without thinking that in our own day a new, haunted, legend-breeding region is being created—something that for our own time is the Dreadful Forest, as the Black Forest was a region of terror in the middle ages, or as the Swamp of the Great Dismal was in the days of the runaway slaves. This war of people freezing as they fall, of petrified corpses, of armies falling into lakes, of feeble sunlight touching the warriors for a few moments a day, is something for which neither the historians nor the poets have prepared us. The only poem that I can think of that bears some relation to the Russian invasion is Ralph Hodgson's
The Bull:
See an old unhappy bull, Sick in soul and body both, Slouching in the undergrowth Of the forest beautiful. . . .
JACOB BARNES
Toledo, Ohio.
'30s
Sirs:
In your issue of Jan. 8, p. 13, "Washington correspondents . . . could not agree on a name for the '305." H. G. Wells in The Fate of Man speaks of the "Fatuous Twenties" and the "Frightened Thirties."
Has anyone found anything better?
BETSEY MITCHELL Southbury, Conn.
Sirs: If the Washington correspondents cannot coin a name for the '30s perhaps TIME readers can do so. As one, I submit Hangovera as a suitable title for that period following the Torrid Twenties Jamboree. Bitter tongues and family quarrels; sour medicines and the doctor's bill;—a morning after if there ever was one, complete with Pink Elephants and all.
GEORGE D. VAN SCIVER, 2ND
Bethlehem, Pa.
— Are there any other suggestions? —En.
Hull in Caboose
Sirs:
"In the 1860s, where the Wolf and the Obey Rivers run together to make the Cumberland, Billy Hull moved with his bride." (TIME, Jan. 8, p. 15.)
The Cumberland is formed by the junction of Poor Fork and Clover Fork of Cumberland at Baxter, in Harlan County, Kentucky, some 200 miles upstream from Celina where the Obey flows into the Cumberland.
Further along you say: "To the end of his life Billy Hull would go off to Florida in the winter . . . riding the caboose with the brakemen."
A caboose is attached only to freight trains. I assume Billy was a passenger but passengers are not hauled on freight trains, that is, paying passengers.
GEORGE T. TATE
Louisville, Ky.
> He did not pay.—ED.
Man of the Year
Sirs :
Why publicize as Man of the Year a human who has disclosed himself to be one of the most terrible of beasts? . . .