Manassas I & II
Sirs:
Your military editor needs to polish up his Civil War history. In TIME (Feb. 17) occurs this statement: "Failure to do just that (keep his enemy rolling) is an occupational disease among generals, who often have a fatal weakness for consolidation after partial victory--e.g., Meade after Gettysburg, Lee after Manassas I and II." It so happens that Lee was not in command at the First Battle of Manassas. The Confederates were commanded by Beauregard, who was joined by Joseph E. Johnston and later in the afternoon by Kirby Smith. Stonewall Jackson, looking over the field after the battle, was reputed to have said: "Give me 10,000 fresh troops and I will be in Washington tonight." It is a safe bet that General Sir Archibald Wavell is thoroughly familiar with Jackson's valley campaign in which he kept three Federal armies rolling, defeating each in turn and escaping safely with his much smaller force. . . .
W. G. MARTIN
Dean
Schreiner Institute Kerrville, Tex.
> TIME was off base in putting Lee at Manassas I, apologizes to some 50 readers from both North and South who protested. Lee had chosen the place (Bull Run) and mapped the tactical approach to battle, including the junction of Beauregard and Johnston, but when it was fought he was chafing at a desk in Richmond, where he had been left by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Thomas Jonathan ("Stonewall") Jackson might have been the Wavell of Manassas I. He vainly tried to persuade Beauregard, Johnston and Davis, who were conducting a post-mortem on the battlefield, to push on after the retreating Federals.
Lee was in command at Manassas II the next year (1862), and he did fail to follow up after a crushing first onslaught, allowing Pope of the North to retreat across Bull Run with most of his army. Lee urged--when he might have compelled--Longstreet to attack a day earlier than he actually did. The day after Longstreet finally came through, rain, mud and hunger were working against successful pursuit.--ED.
Roosevelt Admirer
Sirs:
. . . President Roosevelt was elected by a clear majority of the voters of this country on a clear-cut foreign policy, concurred in by the opposing candidate. He knows that it is impossible "to keep this country out of war" if by so doing America must abandon her place as the leader in world ideals of liberty, as the guardian of the dignity of the individual and as the champion of the right of free peoples everywhere to remain free if they so desire.
No man in Congress has Mr. Roosevelt's vision, his political experience, his prestige, his patriotism and, may I add, his breeding.
NEIL MARTIN
Los Angeles, Calif.
Willkie Admirer
Sirs:
After reading your very worthy account of Mr. Wendell Willkie's report on his trip to the British capital, I must say that only a great man, and one with a great love for his country, could do the things that he has done. He is a true American, and at this time we need more like him.
JOHN CAFFREY
Aurora, Colo.
No Willkie Admirer
Sirs:
I have been a constant reader of TIME for several years. I therefore should like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize for the great injustice I have done my conscience.
I voted for Wendell L. Willkie.
Ever since Willkie has returned from abroad he has been acting "mighty lak a Rose(evelt)."
The Republicans don't give us much choice, do they? Last time we voted for Landon, this time we voted for London. . . .
FRANK WALSH Morro Bay, Calif.
Wonderfully Inspiring
Sirs:
It is very noticeable, and I think somewhat shameful, to see how many people fail to remain silent or stand at attention in theatres when God Save the King is played.
In my opinion, it should be deemed a patriotic duty ... to remain at attention during the playing of our wonderfully inspiring new national anthem. . . .
WALTER R. BOHN Cambridge, Mass.
>Maybe what sarcastic Reader Bohn heard was not God Save the King but America. The music is the same.--ED.
Bard Out-Barded
Sirs:
Your account of Wendell Willkie's experiences concerning the Lend-Lease Bill out-Shakespeared Shakespeare.
The whole business marched right into our living room along with TIME.
LOUISE R. CORDES Hamilton, Ohio
Jeff's Hardest Blow
Sirs:
Your Milestones column [did not] report the death of Mrs. Frieda Jeffries, wife of the former heavyweight boxing champion, James J. Jeffries. . . .
After all, it is more than 30 years now since Jack Johnson pounded Jim Jeffries to his knees under a scorching Reno sun, and thereby marred the greatest record in the history of the heavyweight game. . . . Jeff had beaten the titans of his era--men who would have ranked as titans in any era--fighters like Gentleman Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey. And beaten them each, not once, but twice, before retiring as undefeated champion--only to be lured back into the ring again after six years by public clamor for a "White Hope." But that needless humiliation and punishment did more than just mar Jeff's record--it broke his wife's heart. I've never known a woman as devoted to her husband as was Frieda Jeffries. The next day as the train pulled out of Reno she sat holding a little satchel with $177,000 in it--tears streaming down her face! "Mrs. Jeff's" devotion didn't disappear with her husband's money or fame. For 37 years she never wavered once in her loyalty and love. Only a year ago Jim Jeffries remarked, "If I even turn over in bed at night, she wakes up and asks, 'What's the matter, Papa?' I don't know what I'd do if something happened to her." Well, on Feb. 4, 1941, the "something" happened. Frieda Jeffries was killed by a car as she stepped from the curb in front of their Burbank home. Jeff collapsed, and had to be taken to a hospital. As one newspaper wrote, "It was the hardest blow of his life of hard blows."
MAURICE ZIMM
Los Angeles, Calif.
Embarrassing Messrs. Davis
Sirs:
In your Radio section, TIME, Feb. 17, article entitled "Misinformation, Please," we see that the most embarrassing question in the new radio program No Politics was the congressmen's inability to identify James K. Polk, John W. Davis and Joseph Varnum as onetime Speakers of the U. S. House of Representatives. Then at the top of this article you have a picture of John W. Davis captioned "Embarrassing Mr. Davis." Your photograph is a photograph of John William Davis, 1924 Democratic Presidential candidate. John Wesley Davis was Speaker of the House during the "29th Congress (1845-47). --HENRY STONER
Wilmington, Del.
>TIME, embarrassed, was hoodwinked like the Congressmen by the bare middle initial in the original question.
Lawyer John William never was Speaker of the House.--ED.
Air Crashes
Sirs:
I quote from your Feb. 24 issue: "The 1940-41 flying season is one that airline pilots and operators will long remember. In June Franklin Roosevelt scrambled up two of the most successful Government supervisory agencies airmen had ever seen. By executive order he made the independent Civil Aeronautics Authority an appendage of the Department of Commerce, abolished the equally independent Air Safety Board. Airline men had found that the supervision of CAA and the 'crash board' was hard-boiled but good; the lines had set an unprecedented record of 15 months' operation without an accident. Since the change there have been four fatal airline accidents, a fifth in which an airliner was destroyed."
Is this to be a repetition of the "to the death" Air Mail Purge? . . .
HARRY P. TAYLOR Winston-Salem, N. C.
>Reader Taylor's letter was written a few days before the sixth crash befell an Eastern Airliner carrying the line's own President Eddie Rickenbacker (TIME, March 10).--ED.
Non-Horrid Geography
Sirs:
I think it's time someone said a word of praise for R. M. Chapin Jr. His TIME maps are superb. If I had only had those to study in school, geography might not have always been such a horror to me.
MOLLY SHEAFE JEWETT Lyme, Conn.
Mrs. McAdoo Protests Sirs:
I cannot allow your comments upon the death of Senator McAdoo in your Feb. 10 issue to pass without a protest. I don't, as a rule, pay any attention to unfairness such as this, since a publication capable of such things usually sees fit to ignore any protests, but when a man who served his country and his State with outstanding ability, integrity and dignity is spoken of so cheaply ... no one who loved and admired him should pass it by in silence. . . .
I am sure that all of Mr. McAdoo's admirers, of whom there are many, will agree with me that you do yourselves, as well as this country, great harm when you fail to pay suitable tribute to a great man. . . .
ELEANOR WILSON McADoo West Los Angeles, Calif.
-- TIME sympathizes with the feelings of the second Mrs. McAdoo (daughter of Woodrow Wilson), who divorced the Senator in 1934, but maintains that its story was neither flippant nor unfair.--ED.
Royal Bleeders
Sirs:
TIME, Feb. 24, slips when it says that the two daughters of Alfonso's Queen, Victoria Eugenia, "by the implacable laws of hemophilic heredity are carriers themselves." Actually, each of them has a 50-50 chance of being free of the taint. Victoria Eugenia is a carrier having one normal X chromosome and one X carrying the hemophilia gene. Each of her children, sons and daughters alike, received one of these chromosomes and for each of them it was a 50-50 chance which one they got. If they inherited her normal X chromosome they are as free from the hemophilic taint as if it had never existed in the family. If they inherited her X chromosome bearing the hemophilic gene . . . they are hemophilic males [or] carrier females. . . .
C. L. HUSKINS
Professor of Genetics McGill University Montreal, Que.
-- Thanks to Professor Huskins for an informative correction.--ED.
Smiles Amid Grimness
Sirs:
Lest Dentist Holroyd's letter printed in your Feb. 24 issue induce the leopard to change his spots, I hasten to express the reactions of a reader who does not see tooth to tooth with the D.D.S.
My little family revels in the "peculiar phrasing" used in TIME. The "random" words appearing under the photographs are good for many smiles amid what might be an overserious contemplation of today's grim events.
We find them meaningful in the extreme.
If TIME were to lose its excellent sense of values in picturing events, that would be bad, but if it lost its sense of humor, that would be fatal--at least to one family's subscription.
HAROLD L. GIBEAUT Gibeaut Insurance Agencies Mechanicsville, Iowa Sirs: . . . Personally, I think the sentences express just what is intended very well, and as for the cut lines on the photos, they do just what cut lines are intended to do--make you want to read the story. . . .
ALEX BENE JR.
Associate Editor The Sun-Advocate Price, Utah
Hearst the Plaintiff
Sirs:
I noted with keen interest your item in the Press section of the Feb. 17 issue--"Often sued for libel, Publisher William Randolph Hearst has never sued in return." Is there not an error here? In 1911 Hearst filed a $500,000 libel suit against Collier's. . . .
ROBERT CHATTON Manteca, Calif.
-- TIME erred. Publisher Hearst has avoided bringing suits for libel in recent years, but in his palmy days he sued often. His suit against Collier's in 1911 was provoked by a story in the magazine averring that favorable notices were for sale in Hearst's New York Journal under the names of Arthur Brisbane and Beatrice Fairfax.
When Hearst lawyers stalled on bringing the action to trial Cottier's huff-puffed: "We take our courage in both hands and say 'boo.' '' The suit was mysteriously dropped.--ED.
Kicks in the Head
Sirs:
Ordinarily I hate TIME . . . but I am compelled to write you and express my admiration for one thing you have done. There is some good guy connected with your organization who has been writing things about James Joyce, like the article in your Feb. 10 issue. In a world where Joyce had nothing but kicks in the head, I am glad that there is someone on TIME who has the sense and charity to recognize the best writer of the century and one of the unhappiest men. . . .
THOMAS JAMES MERTON St. Bonaventure, N. Y.
Political Clothes
Sirs:
I merely ask a question suggested by three facts recited under National Affairs in your Feb. 17 issue. How will we be able to restore prosperity when the President wears a hat for twelve years, Tommy "The Cork" an overcoat for nine years and our new Ambassador to Britain owns no good shirts?
WILFRED TUSKA San Francisco, Calif.
>Let Reader Tuska be reassured by fast turnover in the wardrobes of such effulgent dandies as Peter Arno, William Rhinelander Stewart, Paul V. McNutt, Lucius Beebe (TIME, Jan. 13 ) --Eo.
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