Mr. Hawley & Mr. Smoot
Sirs:
Now we have the answer. TIME sticks to the facts. It was all caused by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in June 1930. What happened before that just didn't matter. "The depression . . . deepened. England went off gold. In the U.S. men sold apples on the street corners" [TIME, Aug. 4]. . .
Let's be fair with the dead. Mr. Smoot didn't cause "World War II," nor did the passage of the tariff bill. . . .
STEWART P. MCCONNEL
Beaver, Pa.
Sirs:
You should have underlined the following statement: "Economic nationalism, forced into full flower by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, became the physical basis for the ideology of Fascism."
This tariff is one of the best examples of the idiocy of isolationism with which our entire history is replete. Small groups of willful men--the Borahs and the Johnsons--have never failed to pop up at critical times to sabotage a logical foreign policy, but our history as a nation shows that the negative philosophy of isolation never has worked and never can or will be feasible. . . .
CHARLES M. KENNEY
Springfield, Ill.
Sirs:
In referring to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff . . . you charge to it all the country's ills the past eight years except the drought and the grasshoppers. . . . Evidence that the law is needed is found in fact that the Democrats, loudest campaign critics of the measure, have not repealed it although in complete Congressional power since 1933. The flank attacks on the tariff system by reciprocal trade treaties merely indicate recognition of system's value to America. Very unfortunate to start undermining protective tariff system now when the ending of the war with accompanying rush for markets will make America (which is the best market in the world) the dumping ground for all foreign countries unless we protect ourselves with a proper tariff. . . .
JEROME DAVIDSON
Minneapolis, Minn.
Sirs:
Often have I been prompted to praise or spank TIME, but only today has the urge bubbled over into action. Herewith, praise!
Page 16 of last issue . . . contains the curtest, clearest, most concise account I have ever read or heard of the fundamental cause of World War II. ...
Three long cheers and a medal for Cordell Hull.
T. G. HARVEY
Mars Hill, Me.
(As you note--from the high-tariffest, Republicanest, anti-New Dealingest corner of the U.S.A.)
Sirs:
. . . To make the article on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff interesting reading, you unblushingly showed that as a consequence of its passage, more than a dozen unrelated, world-shaking events resulted. Are we to believe that if the tariff act had not been passed, we would have no Hitler and World War II?
Louis L. GITIN
Williamsville, N.Y.
Sirs:
Your item "Death of a Woodcutter" should be emblazoned in letters ten feet high on our war memorial at the end of this war, lest we forget (and particularly lest we Republicans forget while we yell at the Democrats for dragging us into war) that it was our war, that we the people of the United States, in; order to perform a more perfect squeeze on all the poor devils who happened to inhabit less fortunate sections of the globe, contracted ten years in advance a debt we could pay only in blood.
OK. We have to take that way out now, if we preserve any of the liberties we've stood for (though thoughtlessly). BUT LET US NOT FORGET AGAIN that with liberty go responsibilities, POSITIVE responsibilities that we must shoulder this time if we don't want to KEEP paying with blood generation after generation till we've none left.
HELEN BUGBEE
Chicago, Ill.
Implications Unfair
SIRS:
YOUR ARTICLE AUG. 4 ENTITLED "SWEDEN-- PRICE OF NEUTRALITY" CONTAINS SEVERAL ERRORS OF FACTS PLUS UNFAIR IMPLICATIONS. ONLY ONE GERMAN DIVISION ALLOWED PASS THROUGH SWEDEN WITHOUT RETURN PERMIT. IMPLICATION "HUNDREDS OF TRAINS ROLLED FOR WEEKS" OF UNFAIR. TRANSPORTATION FOR ACCOMPLISHED QUICKLY WITHOUT INCIDENTS.
GERMAN COMMUNIST LEADER WOLLWEBER HELD IN SWEDEN SINCE JANUARY ON SWEDISH CRIMINAL CHARGES EXTRADITION TO GERMANY NOT GRANTED. ALL GERMAN AVIATORS GROUNDED SWEDISH SOIL INTERNED WITHOUT EXCEPTION. ONLY FOUR FLYERS WRECKED IN BALTIC SEA OUTSIDE SWEDISH TERRITORIAL LIMIT ARRIVED IN COLLAPSIBLE RUBBER BOATS UNARMED, THEREFORE REGARDED UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW AS SHIPWRECKED AND SENT HOME.
NO GESTAPO AGENT EVER ALLOWED IN SWEDEN. NOT ONE SOCIAL DEMOCRAT ARRESTED BY SWEDISH POLICE BUT SEVERAL COMMUNISTS' HEADQUARTERS RAIDED INTERMITTENTLY SINCE FINNISH WAR BEGAN IN 1939.
FOOD SUPPLIES, STEEL, OTHER CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS CONSTANTLY SENT FINLAND FOR PURELY CIVILIAN USE AND RECONSTRUCTION PURPOSES, NOT FOR GERMAN EASTERN ARMIES. NO RECRUITING FOR NAZI PARTY HAS TAKEN PLACE SWEDEN. . . .
SVEN DAHLMAN
First Secretary Swedish Legation
Washington, D.C.
Sirs:
. . . It is true that Sweden has made concessions to Germany but I know that TIME would not deliberately make the situation worse than it is. Neutrality nowadays has many facets. Sweden's best ships, nearly one-half of her seagoing merchant marine, are in the British convoy service and without them the people of England would be much worse off than they are today. This is a service more vital to Great Britain than the passage of a single division from Norway to Finland is to Germany. The Swedish war losses now amount to 109 ships of 427,465 tons and 757 men. And in view of the rumored British landing in northern Norway, a German division less there might turn out to have been a blessing in disguise. . . .
As for TIME'S implication by quotation marks that more than a division was allowed to pass . . . the permission was granted on June 25. . . . We had a telegram that the transportation had been completed . . . on July 14, which would have left a margin of only a little over two weeks. We also had had word that each train would take two days to cross Sweden and on that schedule it would take more than two weeks to dispatch "hundreds" of trains on single track lines (Sweden has no doubles), allowing also for ordinary traffic. . . .
The Nazi Party in Sweden has never elected a single candidate to any office. In the last election it didn't think it worthwhile even to nominate candidates. My namesake, Sven Hedin, is not a new recruit. When I visited the French front in the last war as a correspondent of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, he was often a guest of the Kaiser. I had not then seen him and we are not related.
NABOTH HEDIN
New York City
> TIME'S account of conditions in Sweden was based on letters from intelligent and informed Swedes in Stockholm. Secretary Dahlman, with official sources of information, is doubtless substantially correct on all points. But with Sweden in a tough spot, completely encircled by the Axis, it may be necessary that some things read one way in the official lexicon and another way to people on the scene.--ED.
Senegambian Terminology
Sirs:
Here I am away out West, faithfully shelling out 15-c- each week to keep up with TIME while my regular subscription copies pile up in Kansas City. Yet, I do not ask TIME to change its address die. My purpose herein follows the same theme of my last two letters to you within 15 months. . . .
First it was your constant use of the abortive term Negress; your farfetched designation of pickaninnies in a Chicago department store. . . . Now it is your use of "darky-driven" trucks! (TIME, July 21, p. 33, col. 1.) Damn!! What is wrong with TIME's policy toward the American Negro in the last year and a half? It's getting so I can't read an article about the race without being insulted! . . .
GIRARD T. BRYANT
Railroad Porters and Waiters Club
Ogden, Utah.
P.S. Don't bother to change my subscription address. I shall be in Kansas City within a month, having taken a splendid vacation at the expense of Union Pacific.
Some terms (adjectives) that might be used in describing Negroes:
bronzed (conventional but well liked)
mighty black
jade black
blue black
coal black (trite)
smooth yellow (don't use "high yaller")
golden tinted
mellow (current '38-'40)
huskies
Zigaboo (coined by Negroes)
Senegambian
coffee-colored (used by TIME)
smooth (in place of "shiny")
golden brown
chocolate brown (trite)
(you add to the list)
(DON'TS)
Nigger
Negress
pickaninny
darky
octoroon
quadroon, etc.
> Let TIME writers take note of the liberal vocabulary offered by Subscriber Bryant.--ED.
Correction
Sirs:
In your Letters of this week, Billy Rose says, "I ACTUALLY STAND FIVE FEET FOUR INCHES IN SOCKS. . . ."
This is true, providing Billy Rose is one of those peculiar individuals who wears his socks over his shoes!
In the spirit of fun.
ARTHUR MURRAY
Arthur Murray Dance Studios
Beverly Hills, Calif.
Better Sleep
Sirs:
Last night we could not get any sleep at this leading Central American Hotel. Strange noises, vile language, fancy diving in the swimming pool. It was found later on, that it all came from a member of the staff of the American Legation here at Managua, a member of the staff of Pan American Airways (to whom we owe your splendid Air Express edition) and an English traveler. The night watchman was unable to make gentlemen out of the three of them, and they only quieted down when the percentage of alcohol in their system overpowered them.
May I say, after traveling for 15 years in these countries, that 90% of the North Americans here are very popular in Latin-American brothels, and enjoy a wonderful reputation among bootblacks and taxi drivers, but for the largest percentage of us Latin Americans --they certainly make very lousy neighbors. We could certainly sleep well without them.
RENE PICADO
Managua, Nicaragua
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