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My second "squawk" concerns "Dodo" itself. Here certainly is an elegant name. Twenty-five years ago at the Naval Academy I was the member of a menagerie which an upperclassman collected from among the lowly plebes for the purpose of mild hazing. My place of honor was, as the "Dodo" bird, no uncertain one. I recall that I condescended to associate, at intervals, with the "Wahoo Wahoo" bird and several other fowl of lesser degree. This lasted about one month — since that time I have not been honored with this title except by one classmate — now dead — and yourself. In fact I have no nickname, possibly "Cy" or Johnny or Jack. You have my permission to discontinue the use of Dodo—it's really like shooting from behind to call me that and puncture my wounded vanity.
Furthermore I expect to be deserted by all my wives, sweethearts and beautiful female operatives as soon as they are unfortunate enough to peruse a copy of TIME. Such a calamity would react upon your paper in that "news" might become scarce over night. On the other hand, picture the handicaps I might be forced to labor under, in any plans to destroy Wall Street: to lower the value of Florida real estate by a bombing raid and alas, worst blow of all, to deprive the Hearst publications and the fair State of California of the chance to shout "We told you so!" Fair play, mates!...
JOHN FARNSWORTH
District Jail Washington, D. C.
Not yet convinced is TIME that its story of "Cy" Farnsworth's arrest for selling Naval secrets to the Japanese Embassy is inaccurate in any detail. — ED.
Copley Meeting
Sirs:
In TIME of Aug. 17 in commenting on the probable meeting of President Roosevelt and Candidate Landon in Kansas soon, you state in substance that oldsters had to go back to 1896 for a parallel historical precedent — the accidental meeting of McKinley and Bryan in a small Nebraska town.
I suggest that we need not go back so far, as President William Howard Taft and Governor Woodrow Wilson met in the Copley Plaza hotel, Boston, less than two months before election day 1912. The President had come to speak at the banquet of the Congress of International Chambers of Commerce. Candidate Wilson was touring New England at the end of his campaign, and had ended his day at the same hotel. Along with other newspapermen I hoped for a meeting of the two candidates, and, those of us in the Wilson group, sought the Governor's permission to bring about a meeting with visions of posed photographs and a worthwhile national story. Governor Wilson was timid about the proprieties of it, but allowed himself to be persuaded to accept an invitation from the President. If memory serves me correctly Billy Swan (yachting stories) then of the Associated Press made the contact with the President's party. Result: A cordial invitation from the genial Taft to the man who within a month was to unseat him.
. . . We were later informed that the conversation consisted of amiable generalities and mutual hopes that campaign-rasped voices would survive the last gruelling weeks. JOHN F. O'CONNELL Andover, Mass.