The U. S. and the War
Sirs:
. . . I hate war! And I cannot see sending the boys with whom I have grown up through a depression that in itself was one of the most defeating periods of history in which to reach maturity now giving anything they have managed to achieve to the hollow word, "Freedom." But more and more I am feeling like a lonely voice crying against something so big that the futility of struggle is totally accentuated by a maze of knitting needles for the British and pennies for the Greeks. . . .
MARY ROHRABAUGH
Youngstown, Ohio
Sirs:
. . . I have two sons. One is an ensign in the U. S. Naval Reserves, the other will be of draft age in June. Still I can't believe that our program should not be an all-out effort to crush the dictators, instead of trying to appease them.
CARL O. RIGGS SR.
Sixaola, Costa Rica
Sirs:
. . . Never have I seen a more biased and prejudiced magazine than TIME. It is magazines like it which are getting us into a foreign war by not giving us the facts. They should think more of telling the truth than of raising their circulation.
ELEANOR VESEY
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Sirs:
Your article on "practical pacifists" (TIME, Feb. 17) ought to be hailed by all of liberal ilk. I have not seen as fair and unbiased a presentation of the pacifist position anywhere in the secular press, and I'm a confirmed addict of the liberal periodicals! . . .
JEAN BEAVEN ABERNETHY
Cleveland, Ohio
Best Since Picasso
Sirs:
Your Jan. 27 and Feb. 17 sections on Art were the best I have read since your issue on Picasso.
As a layman I find TIME'S section on Art stimulating, enlightening, and educational. My scrapbook on Art contains many articles and pictures cut from TIME. . . .
JOHN G. LEGAKIS
Sacramento, Calif.
TIME in Timbuktu
Sirs:
Your account of Tuaregs joining Free French forces in their thrusts into southern Libya (TIME, Feb. 10) prompts me to send you the enclosed photograph. While doing anthropological research in Timbuktu, French West Africa, I snapped my native cook perusing TIME (see cut). Part of his ancestry, and the mat on which he sits, are Tuareg; the rest is Songhoi Negro. He awaited the arrival of two-month-old TIME with as much fervor as we and would insist on having all of the pictures explained. . . .
HORACE MINER
Department of Sociology
Wayne University
Detroit, Mich.
Donovan Praised
Sirs:
In your Feb. 17 issue, under the heading "Wild Bill's Troubles," you state that El Pampero charged that Colonel Donovan was drunk . . . in connection with his mission in Sofia.
There is one man in the United States who does not believe that charge.
During Prohibition I served on a commission with Colonel Donovan to adjust the water rights of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado on the Rio Grande River. I was rushing through the hotel lobby in Santa Fe one very cold night and met Colonel Donovan. He said: "Where are you going in such a hurry?" I said: "I am going up to Major Burges' room and get me the biggest drink of Bourbon whiskey that ever came out of El Paso--come on and go with me." He said: "No, however much I would like to, yet I carry a commission in the Department of Justice and I have never taken a drink in the United States since I carried that commission, and will not." He was then Assistant to the Attorney General. I said to him: "That's a terrible price to pay for a commission. Resign and come on and take a drink." He said: "No, I am sorry but I can't go." Somehow I do not recall any other man during those turbulent years who respected that statute as did Colonel Donovan.
Colonel Donovan is today one of the two outstanding private citizens in the world, and they are both Americans.
T. H. MCGREGOR
Austin, Tex.
> All thanks to Reader McGregor for a well-made point. TIME meant no reflection on Colonel Donovan who has done a first-rate job of unofficial observing for the U.S. Colonel Donovan's loss of his wallet was correctly reported in the Feb. 3 issue. In its Feb. 17 issue TIME merely tried to show how a rabid pro-Axis newspaper dishes out "news," neither intending nor believing that any TIME reader would give any credence whatever to blatantly Nazi El Pampero's tale.--ED.
Johnson's Pleasure
Sirs:
You will, no doubt, be interested in the paragraph quoted below from a letter which Ambassador Nelson T. Johnson wrote from Chungking, China to the staff of KGEI, our international short-wave radio station in San Francisco.
"Friday evening I listened with a great deal of pleasure to your summarization of the magazine TIME and I want you to know that it is a real contribution to the program that has been coming through from KGEI. I shall look forward with interest to this program during the coming days."
The program to which Ambassador Johnson refers is the weekly half-hour news summary "We Read TIME" on which you have been cooperating with us and which is broadcast on short wave every Friday morning at 4:30 from San Francisco to reach Asia, South Africa, and the Antipodes in the evening.
ROBERT L. GIBSON
General Electric Co.
Schenectady, N. Y.
Clear Mirror
Sirs:
Re: Elbert E. Ginn's letter from Stockton, Calif., in TIME, Feb. 17--what Jews are "inciting this country to war?" Does Bright Boy Ginn mean the same "Jews" who "incited" Germany to war against decency, honor and humanity, or the "Jews" who "incited" Italy to war against well-nigh impotent neighbors, or does he mean the "Jews" who "incited" Russia to war against Finland, or perhaps the "Jews" who drove Japan to war against China? Ginn probably reads too much Nazi propaganda. His letter mirrors only too clearly the . . . type of mind that slows up a country's progress. . . .
ETHEL ROTH
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Famous Day
Sirs:
Revere Copper and Brass Inc. is to be congratulated on its patriotism in sponsoring a $10,000 contest for ideas to speed defense production (advertisement in TIME, Feb. 17). But I was dismayed to note that the contest closes at midnight on April 30. What a lack of historical imagination ! ! Apparently, in the company fathered by Paul Revere, hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year: April 18, 1775.
PHILIP LORD NORDYKE
Port Chester, N. Y.
> April 18, 1775: Paul Revere's ride.--ED.
Rigid
Sirs:
A swell article on the Naval Reserve Aviation Base in issue of Feb. 17. In re the physical examination, "on which about 50% are turned down," 80% turned down would be a better figure. The examination given is [one of] the most rigid . . . given in any armed force anywhere in the world.
CHAS. W. LETCHER
Medical Officer
U. S. Naval Reserve Aviation Base
Philadelphia, Pa.
Davey for Dreiser
Sirs:
Many astute readers, including Pearl Buck, have expressed the opinion that Theodore Dreiser should have been awarded the Nobel Prize the year that she was so honored.
Therefore it is astonishing that a periodical so pretentious as TIME can retain on its staff a reviewer of such limited literary acumen as the one who has made recently such a vicious attack on the author of America Is Worth Saving [TIME, Feb. 3]. This book, of nearly 300 pages, slightingly referred to as a "tract" not once but three times in the criticism, may well prove to be in future years the most important work of Mr. Dreiser.
I do not know the man, have never seen him, nor heard him lecture. But I, for one, honor this "aging" man who has given his strength and his genius in an attempt to save America from the holocaust now engulfing the rest of the world.
ELIZABETH CLEASBY DAVEY
Pasadena, Calif.
> Theodore Dreiser is a great novelist, but he is a bad writer. America Is Worth Saving is nearly 300 pages long, but it is still a tract.--ED.
Menjou's Dither
Sirs:
Civilization totters perilously on the brink of destruction while men of valor and conscience are giving their "sweat, blood and tears" to sustain it!
Adolphe Menjou, basking in the radiant sunshine at Palm Springs, Calif., is in a dither [TIME, Feb. 17] ! Some gentleman dared to say plus fours were inelegant! Menjou has 15 suits! Therefore he takes not simple but "violent exception" to the statement!
Isn't his unhappy plight a shocking pity ? . . .
ELVIRA DUNN
Los Angeles, Calif.
> Everybody can't fight the war all the time.--ED.
Not So Fusty
Sirs:
. . . Circa 1929-31, or the day of Literary Digest influence, high-school teachers and reference librarians used to speak of TIME in the same tone as pornographic literature. TIME was too entertaining to have any educational value, reasoned these fusty Brahmins. What is the present status of TIME in the American school system and among the circulating and reference libraries?
MANUEL RUDDY
Miami, Fla.
> According to latest available records, TIME ranks third among general periodicals in classroom circulation, after Reader's Digest and Popular Science. It also ranks third in school and public-library circulation, after the National Geographic and Reader's Digest.--ED.
"Drat People--"
Sirs:
Drat people who complain about your editorial policy. . . .
I realize, of course, that there are some who do not want to hear all the news, who do not want to read anything contradictory to their own beliefs; but I must denounce their attempt to have censored the only magazine that tries to present the truth even though it may be distasteful. . . .
A. HOWARD ERICKSON
Hollywood, Calif.
Cripple and Lunatic
Sirs:
You state as rumor . . . that a large number of cripples and lunatics are being slaughtered by the German State [TIME, Feb. 3]. Be it fact or fiction, here's hoping they don't overlook Goebbels and Hitler!
TOM HAMILTON
Altus, Okla.
Hitler's Hair
Sirs:
IS HITLER GOING PRINCETON? ANYWAY, HE IS DOING HIS HAIR DIFFERENT.
B. JONES
Kansas City, Mo.
> Hitler is more scrupulous nowadays about combing his dank forelock back off his forehead. Apparently it is part of a general sprucing up which has taken place since his first meetings with Mussolini, when the Fuehrer showed up in a dingy raincoat, looking rather like an unemployed architectural draftsman.--ED.
Anglopholies
Sirs:
You anglopholies really sometimes make me sick. You call Admiral Sir James F. ("Slim") Somerville executed attack on July 3 at Oran brilliant. If Joe Lewis had given you an awful beating and then tied your hands and I cam along and gave you a few wallops on the jaw and knocked you down a couple of times, would you call my attack brilliant? Excuse me, but the French ships were tied up at the dock, didn't even have steam up. Read British naval history, you will find that have often done that.
At Dakar, where the French were prepared, the British Navy and their stooge De Galle ran like cricket players after a few shots had been fired at them.
DONALD E. HARRIS
New York City
No Utopia
Sirs:
I am still howling with great glee at the letter . . . from Mildred Findley enclosing one from her brother . . . at Camp Joseph T. Robinson near Little Rock, Ark. [TIME, Feb. 10] . . . . I, too, have a brother who volunteered for one year of service in the Army. He is stationed at Fort Dix, N. J. and I am delighted to list below for anyone's edification life in the Army as I have gathered it from my visits there.
Since his arrival at Fort Dix he has spent all his time in so-called winterized tents, without "no-draft" ventilation. In the background, the unused barracks loom teasingly skyward.
Shortages of hard coal are wont to crop up now and then, therefore soft coal had to be utilized. The poor soldier boys are coughing their fool heads off and, since the hospital is crowded to the brink, one must have nothing less than a severe case of lobar pneumonia before one can be admitted.
Mess is precisely what the word implies, a mess. They wash their own mess kits in tubs of slightly medicated water which makes all food taste alike.
The boys get nicely settled in their tents, sans glass doors as well as the other conveniences in Little Rock, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, MOVE is the order. Mind you now, simply to the other side of the street, and rain or shine making no difference. The lads after a backbreaking day in the field have to gather all their equipment and trudge across the street.
Now we come to inspection. This dandy little item gets the young lads worked up to such a degree of suspense, they all but become neurotic wrecks. After settling everything in apple-pie order in a mad hurry, they wait for hours for the colonel to make his appearance and see if the buttons are polished.
Also just take yourself out to Fort Dix for a pleasant day's excursion and watch the workmen lazily going about their labors as though they were not at all interested in whether the plumbing ever got finished. And should you enjoy the sight of mud, travel no further. All the mud in the country is now concentrated at Fort Dix.
And the final indignity is being tutored in military affairs by "Thursday Night Soldiers" otherwise known as National Guardsmen. These little men stand around discussing among themselves how to train the draftees and never seem able to come to an agreement. . . .
LEAH HARKAVY
New York City
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