Full-Blooded Americans (Cont'd)
Sirs:
Really cannot savvy how those three so-called Americans who gave lip service to their 100% credo, in TIME, June 13, can get so irrational, illogical and ill-at-ease about your publishing Earl Browder's picture on your front cover [TIME, May 30].
Maybe they never heard of "free press"-- maybe they think "suppress" is the American way. Will thank Hancock and Browder's ancestors for our Bill of Rights, say I. No I'm not a descendant of a coupla Mayflower Pilgrims but my people were waiting for 'em at Plymouth Rock, when they landed.
Yes I'm part Indian, and while I might not agree with Browder or what he has to say I'll fight for his right to say it. And furthermore if TIME decides its covers on sex appeal alone--I'd pick Browder over Onion-head Hoover or Fudge-face Landon.
Yours for a better America. MARTHA VAN TASSELL
New York City
Sirs :
Re letter in TIME, June 13, subject Browder, signed by one Burton H. Pugh; I respectfully suggest Mr. Pugh as candidate for nomination as warden of Jersey City concentration camp.
R. B. MAGEE
Elizabeth, N. J.
Sirs:
I am sorry I did not write sooner to thank you for your fine picture of Comrade Earl Browder on the cover of TIME, May 30.
Mr. Burton H. Pugh, Mr. G. W. Thain, Mr. J. Wm. Cummins seem to be having a fit of indigestion over the publication of the picture on the front cover. May I suggest a dose of Carter's Little Liver Pills? Aren't some of the things that Americans hold dear the rights of free speech, free press, and so on? ...
MAY WALDEN
Avon Park, Fla.
Sirs:
R. C. Barnett ("The value of a man's service to society is measured by the number of jobs he has provided for his fellow men") must have been thinking of Frank Hague. How we all have been maligning Jersey's "Public Benefactor No. 1!"
MARTIN CONRAD
Dover, N. J.
Sirs:
Congratulations to a magazine that has the courage to frontpage Earl Browder and by so doing may expect to receive the ridicule and abuse of such 100% (?) Americans as threw rotten eggs at an elected and honored U. S. Congressman.
I am of the third native-born generation of an old Scotch line, but after the Jersey City incident I am soft pedaling my Americanism. H. F. McGINLEY
Kingman, Ariz.
Busy Nasi
Sirs:
I am one of your subscriber. In your last volume is a article about Csechoslovakia what happen to be mine native country [TIME, June 6].
In the article you try to tell the world that the part of Csech coutry where the provoking nasi live belong to Germany. You better borogh an Encyclopedia or some book of History and study the truth before you print such nonsence stories. Or we will think you work for Nasi. Please remember this: that part of Csechoslovakia never belong to Germany althou they wish it is theirs for almost 1000 years. The sudetan German are not really German but bough Csechs made into German. And what a Germans. They make more trouble for Csech goverment than thouse shmutzig Teutons. Henlein their leader is half Csech himself and Csechoslov citisen. So Hitler's mother was Csech. Any other country would hang up Henlein long ago. ... If France, Russia and sly England will help Csechs it won't be because they like them, but because they know after they would get Csech German would turn on them. Hitler wants war and the sudeten half Czechs and half German is not the reason but it would be his alibi.
Germany has 40,000 person hired all year around to act as spies, provocaters and propagandist. If Hitler--Ala forbid--would pas away the world still don't need to get discoured because there is 45,000,000 Hitlers in Germany. Or in other words 45 million teuton who feel just like Hitler.
The Nasi are busy everywhere in South America. They distributed several hundreds of small radios and fixed them so that the inocent Spaniard can get nothing else, but what those cultured Germans tell them and you can bet your spit that it is true. They can do nothing else.
So please look in Encyclopedia next time for there is 40,000 teuton on job.
X. Y. Z.
Rock Island, Ill.
Saving Grace
Sirs:
In TIME, May 23, the alert Editor of Religion gave a report of the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond, Va. in which he represented with fairness the attitude of Southern Baptists toward the proposed World Council of Churches. In one clause of the opening sentence there is a serious lapsus pennae. Baptists never speak of "the saving grace of baptism." They do not believe that regeneration takes place in water baptism. Regeneration is a spiritual process and not sacramental. Salvation is by grace through faith.
Inasmuch as an infant cannot exercise personal faith, and the New Testament knows nothing of proxy religion, Baptists practice the baptism of believers only. Infants dying in infancy, whether baptized or unbaptized, will see the face of God, and be welcomed by the Saviour into the Father's house. JOHN R. SAMPEY President
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville, Ky.
Herpes Zoster
Sirs:
Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst complains that his malady of shingles has not a high-sounding name (TIME, May 30, p. 40). May I suggest "Herpes Zoster" ... as a synonym to spirit, if not to body.
RUGGLES GEORGE, M.B.
Toronto, Ont.
Eire
Sirs:
Why do you use Eire [TIME, Jan. 31 et seq.] instead of Ireland as the heading in the Foreign News Department? Or has the Emerald Isle been rechristened?
WALTER KORZOW
Newark, N. J.
Let Reader Korzow pay attention. The Irish Free State was officially re-christened Eire last December. Northern Ireland and Eire make up Ireland. --ED. Fine Front
Sirs:
"... Revisiting my native land after an absence of 40 years," see Rome fiddle while Italy burns at both ends--in Africa and at home. A six-month drought compels the peasants to mow down their stunted winter wheat and feed to the starving livestock. The Battaglia del Grano, the Wheat Battle, of 1938 is lost. Three-fourths of Italy's bread requirements will have to be bought abroad with "old, the gold wrung from meagre exports and the tourist trade, the gold earmarked for coal, oil, steel, copper, nickel, tin --for a thousand commodities Italy lacks and must have to swagger and grab and fight like a great power.
The news from Africa is not tiptop. Ethiopian "bandits" go on "murdering" generals and bishops, The road-building fever has suddenly abated, throwing out of work 15,000 whites in a land of guerillas and flies, Africa will fix the white intruders and take care of her own in the long run. The cotton of Lake Tana has too short a fibre; the coffee of Harar costs more than Brazil; and it seems that King Tut and his gang sifted every grain of gold out of Ethiopia.
Yet the visitor sees a fine front. There is no open evidence of constraint, repression, or fear. Whatever it may be worth, money flows freely. The people are well dressed, well fed, fairly well housed. At parades, reviews, unveilings, cornerstone Mayings, a, busy, eager nation is always on its toes to cheer Mussolini, the King, and the flag, even though every mail box is sealed tight with steel baffles when the two heads of the Empire visit their loyal Milano. Bombs and infernal machines have exploded in these boxes. For ten days preceding Hitler's arrival no parcels will be delivered or handled in the cities he is to visit.
Florence, Rome and Naples are being turned inside out for the Fuehrer's cold eyes. Tons of sweet oil are poured on the creaking Rome-Berlin axis to keep it cool. But the alliance is unnatural. It is a faux menage after all. The two people will never pull together. The Teuton looks down on a canaille of unwashed peasants; the Italian recoils from the Nordic boor whose barbarous jargon hurts Dantesque eardrums. The two flags cannot wave together for long. Compared with the noble Roman fasces, Hitler's Aryan swastika is a scrawl from a child's copybook. . . .
G. B.
Florence, Italy
Corn Crib, Corn Field
Sirs:
. . . Please keep up your snappy style and don't cut down on the pepper, think you should print more boosts in your Letters column and less comment from subscribers who knew that John Doe was born on Thursday in a corn crib and not Wednesday in a corn field, those hecklers aren't funny anyhow.
Yours for more and better times to TIME.
W. M.
San Francisco. Calif.
Disca Data
Sirs:
Not three, but five rousing cheers to TIME. At last, one of the better weeklies devotes a page to the one thing that this country has long needed--first-rate "disca data" [TIME, June 6, p. 22].
Let's hope the excellent standard of the first week's reviews is kept up.
GEORGE S. SPELT
Jamaica, L. I.
TIME'S list of outstanding new records is published in its first issue of each month. For the next list, let Reader Spelt and other music lovers see TIME for July 4.--ED.
Liberals (Finis)
Sirs:
The word "liberal," discussed in TIME, June 6 and earlier Letters, whether or not it once had objective meaning, appears to be, in current use. devoid of description. Among my economics students, sampled over a period of years, "liberal" seems to be merely a word of approval, like "good" and "beauty." Its use shows the feeling of the user toward the person to whom it is applied. . . .
ELMER PENDELL
Uniontown, Pa.
Sirs:
. . . May I offer as a cumbersome contemporary definition of a liberal: One who attempts to keep his conscience aware of the necessity of continually examining the intricate operations of holding companies, interlocking directorates, arms embargoes, international loans, etc.. in the light of the three or four most necessary of the Ten Commandments.
GERALD RAFTERY
Elizabeth. N. J.
Sirs:
. . . Roosevelt I defeated the Republican Party--Roosevelt II will probably defeat the Democratic Party. . . . Roosevelts have a habit of laying their eggs in other birds' nests --they are cuckoo. . . .
FRED DEB. BOSTWICK
Petroleum Engineer Wichita, Kans.
Sirs:
. . . [Roosevelt] is the greatest bond salesman the world has ever known. A man born rich cannot be a liberal. A man who has never needed a dollar cannot understand what a liberal is. ...
J. D. UTLEY, M.D.
Utley's Hospital-Sanitarium
La Crescenta, Calif.
Sirs:
A liberal is one who is willing to debate whether the sum of two and two is three and one-half or four and a quarter.
E. C. WATSON
Attorney at Law St. Petersburg. Fla.
Sirs:
. . . Liberalism is the window dressing of smart conservatives, timid radicals, and befuddled individuals generally, straddling the breach between slightly left of centre (Franklin Roosevelt) and slightly right of centre (Walter Lippmann). . . .
No wonder a liberal is so hard to define! He is the color of a chameleon, makes a noise like a clam, smells like pure water, and feels like motionless air. . . .
ROLAND A. WHITE
Dubuque Leader
Dubuque, Iowa
After reading 180 letters on this subject (of which 48 agreed that President Roosevelt is a liberal, 82 denied it), TIME is forced to agree with Readers Pendell and White that the common definition of "liberal" is cloudy, confused.
Do TIME readers think they can more clearly define the New Deal?-- ED.
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