Predatory Animal
Sirs:
Let me congratulate you on TIME'S handling of news every week, but especially on your article, "A Dictator's Hour." It is difficult to discuss Hitler in a calm voice, but your story is a big help to those that remember he is a human and that it took a world of human folly to make his present position possible. . . .
LEWIS W. MILLER
Dickinson, Tex.
Sirs:
Herewith phiz of the predatory animal (slightly doctored) shown on the Saturday Evening Post cover April 19, superimposed on shoulders of predatory animal shown on TIME cover April 14. . . .
EL. L. KAY Hamilton, Ohio
Sirs:
I'm in favor of returning Adolf Hitler to his proper handle, Adolf Schickelgruber. I think it would do a great deal, psychologically, to promote his bursting a blood vessel. Mr. Schickelgruber, reputedly a man whose inspirations are born of his emotions, might even be prodded to stick his neck out prematurely and thereby advance the conclusion of the current world inferno. "Heil Schickelgruber" certainly has a more deflating, if prolonged, sound than "Heil Hitler," and I venture it would mess up the little man's digestive processes no little. . . .
HARRY BUTTON
Los Angeles, Calif.
>Alois Schickelgruber, Adolf's father, changed his name to Hitler eleven years before Adolf was born.--ED.
Skipping Pulse
Sirs:
Congratulations on publishing Mr. Lippmann's and Mr. Kent's comments on our present need for leadership in TIME, April 28. By so doing TIME has again noticed a vital skip in the pulse of the general welfare of our nation.
In the opinion of this reader our President has proved his capacity in getting a job. If he now is only half so capable in doing the work he will be a truly remarkable President.
G. E. WILLIAMS JR.
New Orleans, La.
Sirs:
You ought to be ashamed of the article entitled "War and Peace" in TIME, April 28, belittling as it does the honest and growing conviction of the majority of the country that "Aid short of war" is becoming "War short of men" and will end up with "Men short of legs, arms, and lives" and the U.S. "short of Democracy." . . .
BRADLEY E. STAFFORD Springfield, Mass.
Sirs: . . . F.D.R. ran on a help-Britain, antiwar platform. Since the election he has pushed the help-Britain part of the program to the limit. One more step and we will tumble by sheer weight of gravity into the war. But if we don't take that step--convoying--the war is certain to be lost. . . .
DAN Ross
Clarksville, Tenn.
Sirs:
Here is a vote in approval of the foreign policy of President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull. . . .
VIRGINIA P. PEERY
Los Angeles, Calif.
Sirs:
I reckon I'm about as close to cracker-barrel talk as the next one. I run a service station on Los Angeles' industrial southeast side. Washington is about half right when they say the talk is all isolation, defeatism and apathy. It's mainly apathy to Washington's foreign policy. . . .
JOHN ANDERSON
Los Angeles, Calif.
Sirs:
Much of the issue of TIME for April 28 is devoted to questions of national morale. Is there any way to make our political leaders
(so far so deficient in the real qualities of leadership) realize that the morale of the people always has been and always will be a function of the morale of their leaders? . . .
The people of this country say this to the President, "Give us a logical, coherent, consistent and courageous course to follow--be it 'interventionist' or be it 'isolationist' and we'll follow you through hell and high water, but the present vacillating and unreasoning policies and practices engender in us nothing but the 'defeatist' and 'apathetic' attitudes which your followers in Washington publicly deplore. We'll follow--will you lead?" ROBERT LEIGHTON, M.D.
Evansville, Minn.
Sirs:
TIME, in the issue of April 28, says: "Last week St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington's famed insane asylum, was officially made a defense agency."
And why not? It is a fine idea if you will only use it.
I cannot think of any better place for the defense enthusiasts who are clamoring to defend everything and everybody in the wide, wide world, excepting the U.S.
GEORGE T. FRY New York City
Sirs:
An American entry now into the war against Germany would win the fight Britain is losing. Britain is fighting the Nazis for the freedom and dignity of man.
Under the democracy that a British and American victory would establish, individuals and States of individuals could strive of their own will toward the highest good, the betterment of mankind, the ideal of brotherly love which is democratic as much as Christian. . . .
MARY T. LITTLEJOHN Chapel Hill, N.C.
Sirs:
I am becoming increasingly vexed at some of the letters that you publish every week which refer to World War II and the United States' part in it. For they would imply that the United States, by stopping some of its worldwide commerce, protecting its own boundaries, and, becoming, in a word, isolationist, can preserve Democracy. Bunk! Who wants "preserved" Democracy? The United States cannot become a museum for Democracy!
JAMES O. LIDE Camden, Ark.
Diagnosis
Sirs:
The American people, according to Gallup, believe that the country should risk waging war but that it should not actually wage it.
We are not at war with Germany but Germany is our enemy.
We will use the Navy for "patrolling" but not for "convoying."
We whoop it up to the tune of 20 or 30 billions of dollars for the good-neighbor policy and hemisphere defense, but refuse to buy a little beef from the Argentine. . . .
There is terrible danger of the Germans winning but Lindbergh is a traitor for saying so.
The President murmurs, "Let's do it and say we didn't."
In other words, the country is again in the throes of that easily recognizable mass schizophrenia or infantilism or call it what psychosis you will, which always takes possession of us when we find ourselves all alone in the great big, terrifying, dangerous, adult world. Remember last time, when we passed the strictest prohibition laws we could think up, put poison in the liquor, and then drank ourselves blind for 14 years?
What this country needs is a good five-cent psychiatrist.
THOMAS H. JOYCE Los Angeles, Calif.
Both Sides
Sirs:
Even the reporting of my very favorite newspaper ... did not cover the labor situation as impartially as you have done. . Congratulations for being able to see both sides at the same time.
GAIL MUDGETT
Concord, Calif.
Still More Galling
Sirs:
"Proletarians, you have nothing to lose but your chains." This battle cry of Red leaders can now be amended, and made to conform with Soviet developments in the last 20 years, with the following supplement: "And nothing to gain but a still more galling chain."
OSCAR OSTLUND Clearfield, Pa.
Sirs:
I have watched with apprehension the rapidly developing movement in the nation, if not to destroy the Communist Party of America, then to open it for effective action by putting Mr. Earl Browder in durance vile. .
If the Communist Party is destroyed we thereby rid ourselves of the one real society in restraint of revolution just as surely as removing toxins from the body would wipe out antitoxins. I know of nothing that promotes a greater satisfaction with the U.S Constitution and its guarantees than listening to the long-range dialecticians of the Kremlin whose thinking is usually conditioned by the amount of static on their short-wave receiving sets. . . .
Louis WEITZENKORN
Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Smack, Pat
Sirs :
I think TIME is completely detestable because it is vulgar, prurient, provincial, snobbish, middleclass, self-righteous, dictatorial and phony. . . .
THOMAS JAMES MERTON St. Bonaventure, N.Y.
Sirs:
As a consistent reader of TIME who firmly believes and adheres to democratic principles, I wish to commend your magazine for its impartial point of view in discussing controversial issues involving social, political, and economic questions. . . .
WILLIAM McNuLTY Balboa, C.Z.
Hale Roosevelt
Sirs:
Regarding Captain James Roosevelt being called to active duty: My impression was that physical requirements were strict. Surely an officer with a peptic ulcer so severe it required surgery (gastroenterostomy, I believe) at Mayo's could not pass a physical?
Perhaps it is just sour grapes on my part, but I was rejected for active duty when my National Guard unit was inducted, because I had pleural effusion back in 1927.
I was just wondering why some people get all the breaks.
MAJOR C. A. PREUSS, M.C. Santa Barbara, Calif.
--> Captain Roosevelt's stomach ulcer operation was completely successful, and he is quite up to physical par for Navy duty. A Mayo physician who checked up in June 1939--nine months after the operation--found he had gained 12 1/2 lb., pronounced him in excellent health, said: "The results of the operation have exceeded our most optimistic expectations."--ED.
How to Do It
Sirs:
In your editorial comment concerning Count Luckner in TIME, April 28, you stated: "the Count likes to tell people he is 72, then show he is still in the prime by tearing telephone books in two." This is just another example of German boasting based upon bluff. Anyone can tear a telephone book in two if he knows the trick, which is as follows: Crease the book in the center with the thumbs until a triangle is formed. Then pull directly backward.
BERNARD N. E. COHN, M.D. Denver, Colo.
Fellows v. "Fellowes"
Sirs:
In TIME, April 28, you liken the appearance, sartorially speaking, of Admiral Sir Percy Noble to "a Lawrence Fellowes." . . .
If the "Lawrence Fellowes" should by chance be the' originator of the sartorially resplendent gentlemen frequently appearing in Esquire, you have mispelled the name. Our family eliminated the "e" long, long ago.
J. H. FELLOWS Washington, B.C.
-- Lawrence Fellows is indeed Esquire's creator of sartorially resplendent gentlemen. TIME put an "e" where none belonged, apologizes to all Fellowses--especially to Reader J. H., who has dropped an "s" from "mispelled."--ED.
"Etc."
Sirs : Your partial listing of national private-welfare groups (TIME, April 21) is not up to your usual concise and explicit reporting or up to your usual extreme fairness to all religious groups.
'"Etc." is not recognition to any group--and in this news item it covers the sixth and only one omitted which is the National Catholic Community Service. Having worked . . . locally (with two agencies listed) on this "streamlined U.S.O." I find the National Catholic Community Service leading several others in its interest. . . .
LOLA McCOLLOCH
St. Joseph, Mich.
Paradox
Sirs:
It is quite surprising to this reader that Germany has a contraceptive factory at all, let alone Fromm's big one mentioned under "Capitalism in Germany" (TIME, April 7).
Could you give me additional information about this paradox of a big contraceptive plant in a country whose leaders preach fertility? . . .
PRIVATE WILLIAM HEIMER Mitchel Field, Long Island, N.Y.
> Inquiry by TIME through a maze of German Government bureaus, divisions and departments has failed to disclose any Nazi decree against sale of contraceptives. However, contraceptive equipment used by women is not manufactured and has vanished from drugstores and doctors' cabinets. Fromm's product, a common article used by men, although doubtless much employed as a contraceptive, is considered primarily an antivenereal prophylactic, and so is heartily approved of by the health-conscious Nazis. This product is on sale in every drugstore, in many hotel washrooms and nightclubs. Great quantities have been shipped to France for occupation troops, among whom the demand is so heavy that French supplies have also been drawn on.
Though birth control for sound German women with sound German mates is strongly discouraged, the Reich approves of contraceptive measures for German soldiers mating with women of "inferior" (i.e., other) races.--ED.
Law in Italy
Sirs:
Reviewing some of last year's copies of TIME, I noted the following in the issue for Feb. 12, 1940: "But before he [Mussolini] embarked on all this, he gave an early morning order: the task of recodifying Italian law, which he began 17 years ago . . . must be completed without fail by the end of 1940."
I haven't seen anything about the completed recodification of Italian law either last year, or thus far this year and have just been wondering. . . .
WM. N. JOHNSON Detroit, Mich.
-- Some code books have been issued or rewritten, but the job of recodifying Italian law is still unfinished. Mussolini has lately had more pressing problems.--ED.
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