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Taste of Beaver Sirs:
I object to your statement that "beavers . . . unlike Beavermen . . . taste like pork" (TIME, July 2). Incidentally your incessant repetition of "Beaverman" as a synonym for Herbert Hoover is a symptom of klangpsychosis.*
I have before me Junghuhn's authoritative Die Battalander auf Sumatra, wherein he explicitly states that the Sumatran cannibals consider human flesh "better than pork," and indeed refer to white men as "long pigs."
Thus the absurdity of your distinction between the taste of beavers and Beavermen is evident. If a beaver tastes like pork—and I will not accept your unsupported statement that such is the case—then your Beaverman would taste not "unlike" but like and "better than" a beaver.
Let TIME, the busy beaver among weeklies, take time to check its beaver facts.
OTTO SUBARSCH His, M. D. New York, N. Y.
In Case of Death
Sirs:
I sometime think "you know all, see all and do all," so I want to ask a question that you probably can answer through your columns. . . . Suppose Al Smith was to die before election. How would the vacancy on the ticket be filled? Would there be another Convention or would the Presidential Nominee be named by the National Democratic Executive Committee? Does the same ruling that exists, whatever it may be, apply to both the Democratic and Republican parties? . . .
A. MYER Houston, Texas
Following custom, both the Democratic and Republican parties this year adopted resolutions empowering their national committees to fill any vacancy on the national ticket which might occur before election. The Republican resolution specified that the committeemen should cast for their states or territories the number of votes that their states or territories had at the convention. In 1912, when the Republican nominees were President William Howard Taft and Vice President James S. Sherman, the latter died on Oct. 30. Quickly, the Republican National Committee nominated Nicholas Murray Butler.—ED.
"Idiotic Position"
Sirs:
After reading the item in TIME for July 2 in which I am quoted as saying that "I could make a better Vice President than Senator Curtis," I am taking the liberty of sending you a copy of the letter which I recently wrote to the United Press in regard to the story. I feel sure that you will wish to correct the statement.
EMILY NEWELL BLAIR Joplin, Mo.
Mrs. Blair's United Press letter said:
". . . The enclosed clipping puts me before the country in such an idiotic position that I must object to the wide publicity given to a statement which I could never possibly have made. ...