Brainy Cavalrymen

Sirs:

Exception is taken to the phrase "one cavalryman with brains" used in describing France's able General Weygand, in your issue of September 11.

Let TIME not forget Generals John J. Pershing, J. E. B. Stuart, and Philip Sheridan, as well as the heroic defender of Atlanta, General John Bell Hood.

LUND F. HOOD Litchfield, Calif.

P:Neither will TIME forget brainy Generals Nathan Bedford ("Git Thar Fust") Forrest, Daniel Morgan, Henry ("Light-Horse Harry") Lee, nor King Charles XII of Sweden, who rode two horses to death while reviewing a regiment.--ED.

Bright Light

Sirs:

History repeats itself--in reverse!

It is an intriguing commentary on the Life of the Lone Eagle that the "Keep America out of War" issue which spelled death for the political career of the elder Lindbergh, marks the birth of political life for the younger.

Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh's clear call to a path of Americanism in a world of hatred marks him as the brightest light on the American political horizon. . . .

I should like to be among the first to plug Lindbergh for President in 1940; perhaps on a no-party platform of pure Americanism through this period of international stress. CHARLES F. MCREYNOLDS

President

Licensed Airmen of America Los Angeles, Calif.

Head of Bone

Sirs:

Our flying colonel's hunch to keep away from political talks was surely a sound one. For to say that the war is no banding together against a Genghis Khan but a mere squabble between nations 15 to reveal, not merely the foot of clay, but far worse, the head of bone. . . .

If the allies lose--and the odds are against them--the whole of Europe, and China, will go to the Dictators, Canada will be under Hitler, and where will we be? For they will certainly want the vast and fertile lands of South America for "lebensraum."

To claim that to ... sell our merchandise to belligerents would be to risk making entangling alliances is to surrender our manhood to insensate panic, betray the cause of liberty and brand ourselves as a nation of cowards. DELACOURT KELL

Claremont, Calif.

Missing Bremen

Sirs:

I offer this information to you for what it is worth in your estimation, without commenting upon its authenticity.

This morning a member of our family was talking to one of his customers who arrived yesterday in Montreal from England on a Canadian liner. He was told that the gentleman had himself seen the missing German liner Bremen towed into a British port (either north of England or in Scotland, but the latter probably correct) over two weeks ago with the name plates and a few other identifying features already removed.

When seen the Bremen was in drydock and was hastily having its abovedeck superstructure dismantled for immediate conversion into an aircraft-carrier. As far as this gentleman could ascertain work was proceeding ahead on twenty-four-hour schedule. Local people did not know for sure what the identity of the drydocked vessel was, but it was understood among shipping people that it could only have been the Bremen.

My brother tells me that his informant was the type of person who does not, as a rule, make false statements or spread rumors. . . .

WARREN J. MACIVER

Toronto

Sirs:

REPORTS OF CAPTURE OF BREMEN QUITE PLAUSIBLE. THEREFORE FOLLOWING SUGGESTION is TIMELY: START SUBSCRIPTIONS TO

FUND TO REIMBURSE GERMANY FOR LOSS CAUSED BY UNNEUTRAL PRESIDENTIAL INTERFERENCE IN ORDER TO LET WORLD KNOW THIS NATION IS NEUTRAL IF THE PRESIDENT IS NOT. I'LL GIVE FIVE DOLLARS.

ARTHUR W. RIECHERS

ST. LOUIS, MO.

Fecund Fiji

Sirs:

TIME, Sept. 11, p. 27, col. i: "The Fiji Islands (pop. 29,000)."

Encyclopaedia Britannica book of the year 1939: "Fiji . . . population (Dec. 31, 1937), 205,397. . ."

How come?

LEWIS W. BEALER Berkeley, Cal.

--To Reader Bealer and 176,397 Fiji Islanders (82,826 Fijis, 89,333 Indians, 4,238 Europeans), apologies.--ED.

1914 Belgium

Sirs:

Will you please settle a bet for an old subscriber? What was the 1914 area of Belgium, and how much of that area was ever occupied by the Germans during World War 1?

CHARLES R. POSEY, JR. Baltimore, Md.

-- The 1914 area of Belgium was 11,393 square miles, nearly all of which were occupied by Germany and held throughout the War. The Treaty of Versailles added the cantons of Eupen, Malmedy, the district of Moresnet (382 square miles) ceded by Germany.--ED.

Terauchi Sirs:

In the Sept. 18 issue of TIME you spelled the name of a Japanese envoy two different ways: Tarauchi and Terauchi. Which is right? This occurs on pages 30 & 31. I have read TIME for 5 years and this is the first time I have caught you up on any typographical error.

ED M. ANDREWS Hailey, Idaho

P:A rap on the knuckles of TIME'S proofreaders; an apology each to General Count Juichi Terauchi and sharp-eyed Reader Andrews.--ED.

Lincoln's Thursday

Sirs:

Turkey to F. D. R. and hash to the reporters. A. Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving to be the fourth Thursday in November, not the last.

Why the uproar?

J. R. WISWELL Ann Arbor, Mich.

P:Pope's nose to Reader Wiswell. A. Lincoln proclaimed: "... I do, therefor, invite my fellow citizens ... to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving. . . ."--ED.

Brauchitsch Cover

Sirs:

I greatly appreciate TIME, but I do not like to see the picture of Brauchitsch on the cover of the issue dated Sept. 25th. A small picture in a section of TIME on crime would be more appropriate, after what the Germans have been doing in Poland. Abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good.

LER.OY C. COOLEY Lake George, N. Y.

High-Sea Highjacking

Sirs:

During the late war as well as in the present one, it appears to be the privilege of the war craft of belligerent nations to stop and search (under threat of fire) the vessels of neutral countries. This privilege extends to the examination of the mails, the identity of crew and passengers as well as cargo. Such "highjacking" takes place upon the high seas and, I understand, even in neutral waters where possible.

Under what recognized or legal practice is this permitted and under what guise does it escape the constitution of an "unfriendly act"?

In the above connection, I am assuming the correctness of my understanding to the effect that one's presence upon any ship is tantamount to being upon the actual soil of the country which it represents. Consequently the gravity of the violation (if any).

I believe that your other readers would welcome clarification upon this subject, also.

HENRY E. BREDEMEIER Buffalo, N. Y.

P:During World War 1, U. S. Secretaries of State Bryan and Lansing constantly protested such searches as contrary to international law. In practice, neutrals have come to accept the hard-boiled point of view of Great Britain's Wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd George: that since the attitude of a belligerent is governed by "the exigencies of deadly strife, the country which is determined at all costs to remain neutral must be prepared to pocket its pride and put up with repeated irritations and infringements of its interests . . . and should the difficulties of neutrality prove too great, it is left with the choice of treating the violation . . . as a casus belli."--ED.

No Veteran, He

Sirs:

Your paragraph of September 18 page 27 reading "Count Antoine de Saint Exupcry, novelist (Night Flight, Wind, Sand and Stars), War I veteran and France's No. i airman; as a French Army pilot" is inaccurate.

Saint Exupery is 39, conscription class 21, was 13 years old in 1914 when war started, 17 when it ended, donned a uniform for the first time in 1921 when he served for two years in the French air force in Strasbourg. As you would say: "no war veteran, he."

I have known Saint Exupery at two schools, namely St. Jean, Fribourg, Switzerland and Bossuet, Paris, from 1915 to 1919, also knew him in Strasbourg when he was in the air force. He prepared at Bossuet School for the "Borda," French Annapolis, flunked, was too old to try again. Chose the air force when conscripted, took his pilot's license with a civilian firm; the French Government only training for pilots its enlisted men.

Saint Exupery beside being a first class writer plays the violin well, draws well, plays chess well, is very gifted. Incidentally, I never heard him use his title, probably "no Count, he." I do not think he would consider himself as France's No. i airman, holds no record that I know of, probably "no France's No. i airman, he." However, he is possibly the best known French pilot outside air circles and this due. to his writings, he also is a helluva nice fellow. . . .

MICHEL SEYMOUR Greenwich, Conn.

Hymn of Unity

Sirs:

... In your Sept. 11 issue, p. 68, . . . you speak of Germany's Deutschland Uber Alles as being one of its hymns of might. You're wrong. It is anything but that. It is a hymn of German unity, written by a liberal-minded German professor about 1841 and he promptly lost his academic position, travelled incognito from door to door begging his bread. The poem really sets limits to the geographical boundary of Germany.

E. A. BERT Columbus, Ohio

P:Those limits: "From the Maas" (the Meuse, which flows through northern France, Belgium and The Netherlands) "to the Memel" (or Niemen, now part of the dividing line between German and Russian Poland).--ED.

Storms of Thought

Sirs:

There is a true parallel between the forces and the storms of Nature and the forces and storms in the minds of men. The beneficent forces in Nature that build rich soil along river banks through growth of trees and plants are opposed by the devastating floods that wash away the banks and inundate the cities because of storms over wide areas on the plains above.

In the thoughts of men there are the beneficent forces of kindness and regard for the rights of others that build up our ways of life along lines of personal freedom, with the right to a trial by jury when we are accused of crime, the right to print what we want to say in our papers and preach what we want to preach in our pulpits and over our radios, and to listen to the same and form our opinions. These forces of kindness and personal freedom are opposed by thoughts of power over individuals under such slogans as that the individual and all he has belongs to the state, and such half baked ideas that the survival of the fittest is a natural law that applies to men and nations. These ideas, falling on the minds of men over the wide areas of nations build up into a mighty flood that sweeps away the hard won freedoms.

In the affairs of men these storms of thought have been gathering for years. All the freedoms won through the generations since the Magna Charta of the year 1215, and the Bill of Rights (1689), and the Declaration of Independence (1776) are now being attacked by thoughts and ways that revert to the old fairy tales, when rulers could have a man's head chopped off at the whisper of treason to the state. . . .

Wilson was right. It was a war to make the world safe for democracy. But the war was never finished. It still has to be fought till one side or the other is licked. . . . There is no mercy in the philosophy of those who believe that the natural law that permits those animals to survive who are strongest in cunning and physical might also applies to the races and nations of men. Under such a slogan all destruction of cities and innocent non-combatants is justified, for each child is a potential enemy in their eyes.

Now that war has come and the issues are joined in battle between these two opposing qualities of thought, we who believe in our way of life and our hard won freedoms for the individual have no choice but to fight it out, in one way or another. ... If the actual battleground can be confined to the continent of Europe it will certainly be the part of wisdom for this country to do its part fully to see that this issue is settled as completely as possible in the place where war has been started. . . .

Let us as a nation throw our complete resources, unselfishly and without war profiteering, back of the nations that are physically fighting our battles on foreign fields in the hope that the evil things that menace us may never have to be met physically on our own shores. . . .

RALPH C. ERSKINE

Tryon, N. C.

Future Warriors

Sirs:

Now that wars and rumors of wars, and not soldiers' bonuses, are in the making, where oh where are the Veterans of Future Wars? Have they all joined the goldfish-swallowing brigade?

A. F. OVERMAN

Ashland, Ky.

-- Their joke over, the Veterans of Future Wars disbanded in June 1937 (see p. 46).--ED.

War & Wash

Sirs:

I note in your last week issue [Sept. 18] that Ambassador Page was so busy the first few days of World War I he was unable to take a bath for three days, and that some other aristocrat admitted he did not mind the people just so they did not approach him from down wind.

I was so busy about that time working in spruce camp I did not have an opportunity to take a bath for three months, and after the thing got going I was so busy in the front-line trenches with the Canadians that I was unable to take a bath for six weeks, and neither did I change my sox or underclothes, and for the same reason.

We seem to be a necessary evil, stench and all, at times.

JOE BUSH

Missoula, Mont.

Pseudomachy

Sirs:

The conduct of the European war to date by a succession of lies and broken promises suggests the need of a new English word to describe the process with brevity and aptness. Will you allow a professional Greek scholar to propose the word "pseudomachy" composed of the two Greek words pseudos, meaning "a lie" and mache, meaning "fighting?"

The analogy of "logomachy"--fighting with words--helps to make the new word sound natural.

WARREN E. BLAKE

Department of Greek

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich. .

Law Enforcement

Sirs:

The President's message on Neutrality evidenced a desire to return to International Law.

The interesting thing about International Law is that the only way to enforce it is by war.

JOHN J. CLARKE Beverly Hills, Calif.

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