Believe or Not
Sirs:
Believe it or not, Robert L. Ripley, creator of the "Believe It or Not'' Series has just reached Sydney on the luxury liner Mariposa.
Ripley was delighted with Sydney Harbour. He was amazed to know that the Sydney Harbour Bridge is one of the biggest of its kind in the World. He was astonished when he saw the Laughing Jackass and found not a beast, but a bird that laughed at its own jokes.
He talked with Ornithologist A. H. Chisholm who told him about the Bower Bird, the bird which paints the inside of its nest. He was delighted with a luncheon which I hurriedly arranged, where he met Ministers of the State—men who were former speakers in the State House Assembly and the Federal Senate.
It took some persuasion to make him believe that some of the sheep out here wear shoes to protect their feet from the burrs.
All these things interested Ripley, but the thing that grasped his interest and made his eyes sparkle, believe it or not, were two copies of TIME that I gave him—the first he had seen in Sydney.
GEORGE FITZPATRICK
Superintendent
New South Wales Community Hospital Sydney, Australia
"Ditched, Dammed & Drained"
Sirs:
I read newspapers and periodicals every day of my life and I must say that I get information out of TIME which I find in no other publication. For instance the causes which led to Governor Roosevelt's being a cripple (TIME, Feb. 1).
I read in TIME where you said that Governor Murray of Oklahoma in a speech at Charlotte made use of an expression wherein Hoover was a great engineer for he had ditched, dammed and drained the whole country in the short time he has been president (TIME, Feb. 29).
The point is that Governor Murray used the expression as being original with him when it was to the contrary—and his audience didn't know any better. Since I read what Governor Murray had to say about Hoover. I have heard many prominent Democrats in political speeches pay their respects to the President in exactly the same words which Governor Murray used in his Charlotte speech. I don't know that the speakers tried to convey the impression that they were the authors of this bit of sarcasm thrown at Mr. Hoover, but I can say that every time the expression was used it brought down the house.
On more than one occasion, TIME has furnished me with information which I was unable to procure from any other source and so I am asking you to print the name of the author of this most excellent piece of Democratic thunder and the occasion on which it was used.
W. G. Cox
Burlington, N. C.
Up rose in the Senate on Dec. 10, 1930 Mississippi's Democratic Pat Harrison, arch-baiter of the G. 0. P., to remark: ''For the last 18 months Herbert Hoover has shown that he has not only ditched the United States but he has drained the whole world." The alliteration was later expanded but Senator Harrison is credited with giving the phrase its first political currency. He took it from a constituent's letter. The letter has been lost; the constituent remains nameless.—ED.
Shanghai
Sirs: