Interventionist
Sirs:
Should not Americans begin to ask themselves these questions: Whether England wins or not, will it have been enough for the future peace of our consciences that we only formed a safely protected cheering section? And one not quite loud enough to drown out the boos of our Communazis. Will it have been enough that we supplied England with war materials--at a nice profit and at no risk? Will it have been enough that we armed ourselves to the teeth but would not join our fighting might to the mighty fighters of Britain?
For me the answer is: No, it will not have been enough. If England goes down, there will, of course, be nothing but British graves to reproach me. But if she doesn't go down and rises, staggered and decimated, from out her bomb-craters and bloodbath, then there will be English men and women and children to face me. Shall I be able to face them? Again the answer is: No.
Even our isolationists beat their breasts when asserting that Hitlerism is their abomination, their mortal enemy too.
If you have a mortal enemy you declare war upon him, nothing more, nothing less. And then you wage it.
HUMPHREY COBB
Pasadena, Calif.
>Interventionist Cobb, unlike many U. S. interventionists, knows at first hand what war is. Born in Italy of Boston parents, he enlisted with the Canadians in World War I, was twice gassed. He is the author of Paths of Glory (TIME, June 3, 1935), a superb war novel, in which three brave French soldiers were executed for "mutiny" after a sadistic general had ordered a hopeless attack.--ED.
Pacifist
Sirs:
. . . I feel that I must voice my protest on the subject of "peace organizations." . . .
According to these societies, the prerequisites necessary to be a pacifist are "intrepidity, contempt for comfort, surrender of private interest, obedience to command." War can be stopped if enough people are determined to pay the cost.
Three thousand years of history will substantiate the claim that no war ever accomplished what it was intended to. The victors are the losers; they have to compromise. No system that compromises can be called a success. The last war and the one before that and the ones before that accomplished nothing.
At this moment the peace societies are working on the cause of war; economic inequilibrium. The guts of America stink with the putrefaction of the slums and the sharecroppers and the unemployed. President Roosevelt smelled it, felt himself powerless in the face of passive reactionary opposition, and interested the nation in foreign affairs. The effect was good. Americans forgot their own disordered houses in their scurry to see the other fellow's mess. Mussolini and Hitler resorted to the same stunt when they felt themselves powerless. A militarist nation lasts for a few years and dies; the spirit of religion lives on.
I realize that one short letter cannot explain the pacifist position but, in the name of fair play give us a chance to state our case.
GEORGE FISK
New York State College of Agriculture
Cornell University
Ithaca, N. Y.
Crusader
Sirs:
I read the reviews of my novel, The Great Crusade, in your magazine [TIME, Sept. 30] . . . .
I never was and never will be what your reporter calls a salon Bolshevik. I was with the soldiers of the first World War, with the workers of Berlin, with the peasants of Bavaria, with the miners of the Saar, and had no time to join those circles of rich people who find themselves interesting by talking revolution in their parlors.
In 1936 when I went to Spain I was not "drawn like a fly by the smell of blood." I traveled from Paris to Madrid in a truck which was given by the International Writers League to the Republican Army, and contained a motion picture camera and a printing press for the front. The first blood I saw was that of the children of Getafe, terribly cut in pieces by Nazi bombs. Two weeks later I saw the pictures of those unhappy children published in the German anti-Semitic newspaper of Mr. Streicher, and I had to read the incredible, cynical text beyond the pictures: "Look how the Reds in Spain kill their own children !" It was this cynicism of the enemy (and not an insane passion of mine for the "smell of blood") which decided me to enter the brigades which your reporter honored by the true remark that they were determined to make a living barrier of their bodies to keep Franco's Moors out of Madrid.
I never intended to "glorify . . . diehards" of any political party. I fought and will ever fight against any deformation of democratic ideals and against intolerance from which side it ever comes.
Quoting Hemingway you cut in an unfortunate manner his phrase telling the American reader that it "might have been better" for me to be killed too as my general was. Hemingway continues--and only this makes sense: "because it would have spared him from many sufferings." I really don't mind about these sufferings, for, surviving this first battle of the second World War, I will perhaps live to read in 1942 in your estimable magazine the first reports from a liberated Madrid, Paris and Berlin. . . .
GUSTAV REGLER
Mexico City, D.F.
>There are all kinds of parlors and all shades of parlor Bolsheviks. But TIME pays its respects to crusading Gustav Regler, who has genuinely suffered for what he genuinely believes. --ED.
Cheers & Tears
Sirs:
We have read "Story of a Train" [Wendell Willkie's] in TIME'S Nov. 4 issue with cheers and tears.
Please commend the reporter responsible for the best writing of this Presidential year.
JANE S. CRAIG
Meadville, Pa.
Sweet Music
Sirs:
I regret calling TIME to task for misstatement in the issue of Oct. 28, wherein Hiram Johnson of California is quoted . . . as follows:
Cried he . . . "Some love it so much that power is never gladly or voluntarily surrendered. Such men, while they realize that some day their power must be laid down, can always find a reason why the fatal day mus be postponed. In their minds there is always a crisis in which their services are indispensable. Always some great work at hand which they, and they alone, can do. Outwardly, they pretend that they groan under the burden and would be glad to lay it down, but in their secret souls they cling to their places. . . . The friends and sycophants of the incumbent . . constantly assure their chief that the public good demands that he should not desert the ship. This . . . sweet music that is a curse of kings. . . ."
As a matter of fact, this quotation was actually made by the able John W. Davis prominent attorney and former Democratic candidate for the Presidency, before the Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Sept. 19.
TIME is forgiven. The statement is worth publishing even though Hiram Johnson never said it.
E. O'BRIEN
Forest Hills, N. Y.
>Fact is, Statesman Johnson did say it, almost word for word as Lawyer Davis said it four weeks before. But some of the phrases are Shakespeare's: the general idea is older far than the Bard. --ED.
Dollars & Pounds
Sirs:
I have two refugees staying with me for the duration of the war, Mrs. Geoffrey Ennor and her 2 1/2-year-old son Neil from Penzance, England. As you are no doubt aware, the maximum amount of money allowed any one person leaving that country is -L-10. At my suggestion, Mrs. Ennor converted only a small amount on the pier in New York, receiving $2.25 for each pound, which I considered outright robbery. The balance was brought to Chadron to be sent to New York for exchange through our local bank. I have just received the returns . . . and you can imagine my amazement and disgust to find that she had been allowed $2 for each pound sent. After a deduction of 25-c- collection charges by our local bank, Mrs. Ennor received a net of $15.75.
In checking the Wall Street Journal for the 19th I find that the rate of exchange quoted for that day was $4.02 1/2 and am wondering where the squeeze comes in. . . .
T.E. PHILLIPS
Chadron, Neb.
>The "squeeze" of which Reader Phillips complains is not due to greed or malignancy, but to the complexities of wartime finance. In the first year of the war Britain found that large amounts of British currency were leaking into the U. S. (some of it doubtless coming from German sources) and were being cashed there for dollars. To stop this the British last August issued a ruling that British currency abroad could not be shipped back into England for redemption. Thus orphaned, British pounds in the U. S. are worth only what foreign-exchange brokers will pay for them as a speculation (to be held in anticipation of British victory in the war), or for resale to British sailors and U. S. tourists who can spend them in Bermuda, Jamaica, etc. Broker's quotations in Manhattan now range from $1.70 to $2.25 per pound, the less convenient large notes bringing lower prices than small denominations. The British Government allows British citizens with permits to leave the country to convert their -L-10 allowance into U. S. currency before leaving, at the full exchange rate. Reader Phillips' luckless refugees would have been wiser if they had done that.--ED.
Rubber & Nazis
Re "Rubber Rebound" (TIME, Nov. 4): I don't know how you do it!
To one who has been in that region [Brazil] for close to half a century, off and on, your article reads as though written by someone who has done little else but rubber. . . .
Your sober, factual, concentrated articles offset easily the mouthings of three-day tourists and sudden, provincial, untraveled, would-be internationalist politicians.
More strength to you.
Incidentally, here is a sidelight on Nazi influence in Brazil. Every paper is absolutely pro-Nazi under Nazi influence. . . . When a Brazilian tried to report a most unpleasant incident to O Globo, they answered, "It is useless, we can't publish. We are not allowed to."
This incident occurred on one of the big busses. Two women tried to stop one of them and the driver did not stop quite in time, hence they had to run a few steps to take it. Whereupon one said to the other in German: "These niggers will behave differently soon, when our Fuehrer gets here." A Brazilian in the bus got up and said: "Are you prepared to repeat this in Portuguese?" They pretended not being able to speak the language well, so he repeated it and said, "If you were men, I would know what to do with you." So he just pulled their hats over their faces and left them. . . .
What gives a better idea than anything else of Nazi influence is the fact that the sale of the book What Hitler Said by Rauschning is forbidden! . . .
It is current vox populi that with 15,000 men they can overrun this "nigger country" at a given moment. . . .*
Kings & Queans
Sirs:
. . . In TIME, Nov. 4, discussing King George II of Greece, you say: "Once he had the distinction of being the first king known to have been solicited by a prostitute." Now after all, dear sirs, are not you being a wee bit quibbling, a wee bit naive? I know you are quite an authority on history, but are you not being somewhat egotistical and somewhat irreverent toward other great and probing historians when you make such an assertion?
HENRY STONER
Wilmington, Del.
>Considering the murky didos of many monarchs since history's dawn, perhaps TIME'S statement was rather too sweeping. But London's experts on royalty insist that among living kings and ex-kings, George II is entitled to a first.--ED.
Ranee & Children
Sirs:
It has just been brought to my notice by letters from daughters in England that you published in TIME, Oct. 7 an article wherein you stated that in Montreal I had referred to the child refugees from England as "riffraff." You also made some sarcastic remarks about my giving some of my so-called "blue blood" to the British Red Cross, but that latter statement is unimportant and you have every right to sneer at me if you so wish to do for giving what was so very much demanded in New York through the radio. But I must ask you to . . . retract the statement that I said or even went anywhere near saying that the English little refugees were "riffraff." . . . I have devoted my entire life to children, and I have taken an active part in the evacuation of our kids, and everyone who knows me realizes that this is a cruel and unjust misstatement. . . .
H. H. RANEE OF SARAWAK
Hollywood, Calif.
>Wife of Sir Charles Vyner Brooke. "White Raja" of Sarawak, Her Highness the Ranee last July criticized British handling of refugee children, praised U.S. and Canadian generosity. TIME's reference was based on remarks widely but evidently mistakenly attributed to her by the Canadian press. To the humanitarian Rance TIME's apologies for the mistake. --ED.
The Draft
Sirs:
In your Oct. 28 number of TIME . . . you state that General Hugh S. Johnson "managed the last U. S. draft in World War I." The statement is not true and should be corrected. . . .
DAVID A. LOCKMILLER
University of North Carolina
Raleigh, N.C.
Sirs:
It had always been a subject for wonderment to me how your writers found the historical facts used in your articles in the short time between issues available for research. At last I have found the answer--they just get them out of their heads! In TIME, Oct. 21, you state "Military men also understood that a civilian director was in keeping with U. S. tradition and with a basic conscription principle. . . ."
Who the hell told you that? . . .
ALEXANDER DELUCA
Ardsley, Glenside, Pa.
>Not General Johnson but Major General Enoch H. Crowder was director of the draft in World War I. But civilians handled registration, ruled on craft matters. Today even the director is a civilian, and, as TIME said, the Army keeps "as far as possible from civilian draftees until they are actually inducted into service." --ED.
Parade of Managers
Sirs:
It's too bad to have to spoil a good story with an ugly fact, but Pepper Martin couldn't have had his argument with Manager Frank Frisch at the Cardinal training camp in 1931 [TIME, Nov. 4] since the manager of the Cardinals for that year was Gabby Street.
. . . I don't blame you for getting mixed up on the Cardinal managers, though. . . . The Cardinals have fired more good managers in the past ten years than there are now in the National League.
CHARLES B. BLACKMAR
Princeton, N.J.
>Cardinal managers since 1925 not all fired, however; Rogers Hornsby, 1925-26; Bob O'Farrell 1927; Bill McKenchnie, 1928-29; Bill Southworth, part of 1929; Gabby Street, 1930-33; Frankie Frisch, 1933-38; Ray Blades, 1939-40; Billy Southworth, 1940 -- ED.
*Signature deleted by request is that of a U.S. Businessman who trades in South America.
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