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POSTSCRIPTS
A SURE AND STEADFAST ANCHOR
The back cover of our April/May, 1979, issue featured a Mother’s Day card with an anchor as its motif, a characteristic we described as “inexplicable.” Now, the Reverend Charles A. Platt of Newton, New Jersey, and John Scheckter of Iowa City, Iowa, write to explain the inexplicable.
“The artist,” Reverend Platt tells us, “got his inspiration from the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews 6:19: ‘We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the Holy of Holies within the veil. ’ That text also inspired Edward Mote, a distinguished British divine, to write a hymn which was very popular in the early years of this century, ‘My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less.’ One stanza includes the following couplet:‘In every high and stormy gale,/ My anchor holds within the veil.’ ”
And Mr. Scheckter notes that “the anchor is a traditional symbol of hope, associated with safe harbors and refuge.’ Its association with Motherhood is certainly susceptible to Freudian interpretation. There is a superstition that a sailor wearing the sign of the anchor could not drown; this, as well as pride of occupation, would account for the popularity of anchors as tattoos and for their presence on officers’ buttons. Herman Melville uses this superstition in Moby Dick, though of course nothing could help the Pequod.” |
OF LOVE, GUILT, AND THE COMBUSTIBILITY OF LETTERS
James C. Logan of Montreal, Canada, writes to make a complaint and provide a footnote: “As a long-time Canadian admirer of President Woodrow Wilson, I was very interested in the article entitled ‘Love and Guilt: Woodrow Wilson and Mary Hulbert’ in your April/May, 1979, issue. I regret the insinuations about the relationship, for which there is no iota of proof. … Wilson’s letters, with their terms of endearment, might suggest something more than the platonic in the relationship, but proof? I have just received Volume 29 of Arthur Link’s Papers of Woodrow Wilson, and I have read through the previous 28 volumes, and I still have found no proof. … Even Theodore Roosevelt, to his eternal credit, refused to make use of anything scandalous in this connection: ‘You cannot make a Lothario,’ he said in the 1912 campaign, ‘out of a man who looks and acts like an apothecary’s clerk.’
“Where are Mary Hulbert Peck’s letters? Well, 250 of them perished in the fireplace of Bernard Baruch’s home, if my information is correct. A number of years ago, I started collecting original letters written by Woodrow Wilson through the American Library Service and now own 45 of them. I could have been the owner of 250 of Mrs. Peck’s letters, too. The American Library Service telephoned me one weekend more than fifteen years ago to offer me these letters at a price of $12,500. That weekend my wife and I decided not to answer the telephone, so I missed the call. The letters were sold by the A.L.S. to a private collector. When Bernard Baruch heard of the sale, he offered to buy them for $300,000, and did so. He wanted to destroy them just in case there was something incriminating in them. Whether there was any such evidence, of course, will never be known now.”
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THEY’RE IN THE ARMY NOW
For nearly sixty years, Mrs. Merle Anderson of Seattle, Washington, tried to convince the federal government that she did, too, serve a hitch with the United States Army during World War I. In the late spring of 1918, Mrs. Anderson, together with some three hundred other French-speaking American women, responded to General John J. Pershing’s call for more telephone operators to serve in France by enlisting in the Army’s Signal Corps. The “Hello Girls,” as they came to be nicknamed, proved themselves vital to Allied communications; Mrs. Anderson herself later became chief operator for the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. After that, she and the rest, with warm thanks, were discharged.
But not honorably and not officially, they learned, and not with the veteran’s benefits to which they believed their service entitled them. The Army, it seemed, decided to classify the Signal Corps women as citizen volunteers; as such, it declared, they were not eligible for honorable discharges, veteran’s benefits, or even the coveted Victory Medal that went to all male veterans of the war.
Over the next few decades Mrs. Anderson led the fight for recognition. If the women had not been genuine members of the Army, she wanted to know, then why was it that they were sworn in like all other enlistees, that official Army buttons were sewn on their uniforms, that they were required to wear the official Signal Corps emblem, and that they were subject at all times to the Army’s Code of Military Justice, no more free to “resign” and go home than any doughboy.
The government remained unembarrassed and unconvinced in the face of Mrs. Anderson’s letters, petitions, interviews, and articles—until November of 1977, when Congress finally passed legislation which required the Secretary of Defense to hold administrative hearings on the claims of the Signal Corps women and such other groups as the Women’s Army Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II. In November of 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill granting the women veteran’s status, and in May of 1979, the Veterans Administration set forth the benefits that will be available. They will not be an overwhelming burden on the taxpayers: at this writing there are only seventeen surviving “Hello Girls.” |
ANOTHER FORGOTTEN PRESIDENT?
In our June, 1977, issue, humorist Andrew Ward had some fun with a mythological President he called Roger Darcy Amboy, who, he fantasized, “appears to have held our nation’s highest office somewhere between Van Buren and Buchanan.” Remarkably enough, there was a real-life counterpart, of sorts, for Ward’s fabrication; his name was David Rice Atchison. James P. Johnson was kind enough to pass along the story: “As he neared his seventy-eighth birthday in 1885, David Rice Atchison could glory in a host of accomplishments. He had practiced law, served in the Missouri legislature, and become a major-general in the Missouri militia; he had been a judge of the circuit court, a United States senator, chairman of important committees, and even served as president pro tempore of the Senate on sixteen occasions. But in his entry for the Biographical Congressional Directory, he listed a final, unique honor: ‘President of the United States during Sunday March 4, 1849.’ ”
Atchison based this extraordinary claim on the fact that between 6:00 A.M., March 4—when President James K. Polk signed his last official papers and gave up the reins of government—and 12:00 noon, March 5—when President-elect Zachary Taylor took the oath of office—neither man was President, and that the Succession Act of 1792 therefore provided that the president pro tempore of the Senate fill the vacuum.
Faulty reasoning, Mr. Johnson points out, for if James K. Folk’s term had expired on March 4, so had Atchison’s term as president pro tempore of the Senate; and if Zachary Taylor did not become President until he took the oath of office on March 5, neither did Atchison once again become president pro tempore until he had taken his own oath on the same day.
That much said, it leaves us with one intriguing question: just who was President of the United States during those thirty hours of 1849—Roger Darcy Amboy?
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ILLUMINATED NEON
Jerome Horowitz of Bellmore, New York, takes issue with a caption: “Just completed the June/July, 1979, issue, and must write a note of correction. In the article ‘Neon’ by Rudi Stern, the design in the upper right-hand corner of page 103 is captioned as follows: ‘The fez lit up the window of a storefront house of worship. ’ Actually, the design involved is that of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, specifically that of Jerusalem Temple in New Orleans. I assume the confusion is caused by the fact that Shrine meeting places are denominated as ‘Temples,’ although they are definitely not houses of worship. Within these Temples are found the most wonderful Brotherhood and the most widespread Benevolence known, but no religious observances or services, as these are strictly forbidden by our constitutions. I must admit that the description of the design gave me a hearty chuckle. …
Thank goodness, for we must report that Mr. Horowitz is Immediate Past Potentate of the Mecca Temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. |
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