Eric:

I think we are really saying the same thing - just focusing on different
effects. If you pick up the tail of a long fuselage glider and rotate it
around it's wheel 360 degrees on the ground, it will take you longer than
when you do the same with a short fuselage glider - because the radius of
the circle you must walk is different (and you need more steps with the
long fuselage glider). Or, you could change the speed of your walk (which
is what changing the rudder size does). This is why the 1-34 seems slow in
rudder response. It is about the longest fuselage ever put on a 15m ship.
Now, there are many other reasons why a designer may want a long fuselage
(particularly stability) - but the reasons selected by the 1-34's designers
(I pass on whether they were the "best in the world") were not particularly
good ones, and once they abandoned the idea of the 17m wing they should
have shortened the fuselage (as they did with the later 1-35 and 1-36).