Hoodoo
Sirs:
Well, well! I see that the Brown Bomber, otherwise known as the Dark Destroyer (Joe Louis to you) did it at last. Did what? Broke that hoodoo. What hoodoo? Why, that hoodoo that seems to settle firmly on the shoulders (or withers, in case of a horse) of luminaries in the sports world who get their pictures on TIME'S front cover.
Remember? Just a minute while I look at my TIME files. In 1934, TIME-covered Colonel Edward Riley Bradley, winner of four Kentucky Derbies, lost the Derby that year and hasn't copped one since. Same year, TIME-covered Cavalcade hurt his foot and never won another race. In 1936, TIME-covered Joe Di Maggio messed up the ball game for the American League All-Stars and the Nationals won. Same year, TIME-covered Helen Hull Jacobs lost the tennis singles at Forest Hills. In 1937, TIME-Covered Pitcher Bobby Feller hurt his arm, and was mostly idle until July. Same year, TIME-covered Baron von Cramm lost to Donald Budge at Forest Hills. Same year, TIME-covered Wallace Wade's football team--Duke--lost the Southern championship to North Carolina. In 1938, TIME-covered Golfer Johnny Goodman, favorite to win the British Amateur, was put out in the early rounds, and booted both his Walker Cup matches--to boot. In 1939, TIME-covered Tom Harmon was stopped cold by Illinois.
Now you put Joe Louis on the cover before his fight with Nova. I heard someone talking on the radio, with tears in his voice, about the terrible hoodoo that had descended on this fine, clean fighter. And what happens ? As if nothing in the world was bothering him, Joe steps out and knocks Nova twitching.
I don't understand it. Maybe those smart managers of Joe's just didn't tell him about the cover. He isn't much of a hand for reading, especially such high-toned rags as yours. But he must have seen it on the newsstands. Anyway Cavalcade, being a horse, couldn't have paid much attention to his cover picture and he got hoodoo'd anyway. How do you explain it?
PIERSON C. BUSH Denver, Colo.
> TIME doesn't. -- ED.
Professor Hoover's Conversion
Sirs:
It was with the greatest enjoyment that I read, in TIME, Sept. 22, the letter on "Vicarious Victory" [suggesting by sardonic implication that the U.S. was not taking an active enough part in the war] from Glenn E. Hoover of Mills College. Ten years ago, when I was a student in Mr. Hoover's economics class, the professor was the most uncompromising of anti-militarists. The infallible formula for peace, according to him, was simply disarmament. It was the military establishments, he argued, who were primarily responsible for war and its attendant economic evils: the Army and Navy taught men to fight, with the natural result that they sought the opportunity to put their training into effect.
As the daughter of a naval officer, I was the especial object of Mr. Hoover's attention. Fixing me with an eye as compelling as the Ancient Mariner's, he would demand accusingly: "Do you realize that the cost of firing a gun just once would feed all the undernourished children in the United States for a whole year? . . .
Once I ventured meekly to suggest that the best way to prevent crime was not to abolish the police force but to maintain an adequate and well-trained one. Gazing at me pityingly, Mr. Hoover turned to the rest of the class and remarked with clinical detachment: "In Miss Willson, young women, you have a perfect example of economic predetermination."
Mr. Hitler gets little thanks these days. I, for one, send him mine for having forced a very determined old ostrich at last to withdraw his head from the sand.
EUNICE WILLSON RICE
Arlington, Va.
Strategy
Sirs:
I note that TIME under date of Sept. 29, caption "Strategy," states that Chicago Daily Newsman George Weller reported that Congo tribesmen had a suggestion on how to induce Adolf Hitler to surrender: "Offer him a bribe in the form of a valuable woman of the Allied tribe."
Maybe this is not such a bad idea. Why not offer "Wally" to Hitler? This might please many of the English and might also throw Hitler off his stride. Since this is a period of "all-out" war, the personal feelings of the Duke might have to be passed over.
W. Z. MILLER
Tulsa, Okla.
TIME to Addis Ababa
Sirs:
... I have just returned home from ten months in Africa serving as Liaison Officer of the British-American Ambulance Corps. Before I left I ordered a subscription of TIME magazine to be sent to me to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya Colony, in British East Africa. . . .
It might interest you to know that most of these TIME magazines came through to me safely in Nairobi. I must admit that I had to pick them up at four different places, namely general delivery of the main post office at Nairobi, several copies at the Army post office, several copies care of the U.S. Consul at Nairobi, and a number of copies came to me at the Stanley Hotel, but hardly a weekly issue was missing, which is a very fine tribute to British shipping and maintenance of postal services in these difficult times.
I took six of these copies of TIME into Addis Ababa with me. As you remember, I went in with other war correspondents and war photographers before the entry of the British troops. There I distributed them around to some of the American missionaries and other Americans still left in the city who leaped upon them like people dying of mental starvation and thirst.
TIME was the first new reading matter to go into Abyssinia, therefore, and into Addis Ababa, in many months. . . .
HIRAM BLAUVELT
Oradell, N.J.
The Only Place on Earth
Sirs:
If Kentucky ever takes New York all persons named Tim Sullivan will be hung.
Switzerland is the only country in Europe where you can see a poor plain citizen siting in his humble home oiling and cleaning his army rifle. The Swiss are the only people in Europe who have been free for more than 700 years, and the only ones who will stay free.
Kentucky is the only place on earth where you can see a whole fambly out under the grape arbor oiling up Whinchester rifles and curseing the fambly over on the next creek. Free fights and free profanity may be too much for weak Yankee stomachs. But in a land where famblies are large and funerals are cheap, a few green graves on a green bleugrass hillside is a small price to pay for a virilness that Yankees use to have but have not got now.
"For humanity's sake let Hitler have all he wants."
"For humanity's sake let the bank rober have all the money he wants."
"For humanity's sake do not buy a gun to protect your wife and daughter let the rapest take what he wants."
The anti-gun people are a sinistere and selfhish set. Well they know the history of Switzerland. Well they know that a disarmed people are like dehorned and immasculated cattle. There is no quicker or surer way to degrade free men than to disarm them.
JAMES F. ARKEW
Georgetown, Ky.
Nibbling Around the Edges
Sirs:
Somewhere I read: "Take off your hat to the past; take off your coat to the future." Well, there is no reason why we should take off our hat to the past achievements in the field of true understanding between the Americas and I fear that the Good-Willers will eventually force us to take off our coats, to fight them.
Four planes a week drop over the mountains to our town--of late, at least three of the four have been packed with intelligent and competent North American gentlemen--men of reputation and standing in their fields in the States. Each is whisked away to the best hotel in town; he changes his tie and is then ready to begin his mission, "Good Will." As he begins to nibble around the edges of this concept, he finds it one into which it is difficult to sink his teeth--it jumps back like a playful puppy every time he looks at it--as he slides back a bit in his leather chair in the lobby of the Bolivar and tries again. Four mornings later, over breakfast in bed, he says, in a loud voice: "Why am I here? Bullfights?--rather dull after the first time. Movies?--six months after New York. The races?--only on Sundays." Getting no answer because no polite person ever points out the obvious, he does one of two things depending on his intelligence: he crams his stuff in his bag and rushes for the next plane to Santiago and then B.A., Rio and wherenot, stopping only to send a few postcards; or he turns over and goes back to dreaming about what a fine time he is having good-willing himself through South America.
Every now and then one of us gets pneumonia or something and it looks as though a fast plane trip to New York for special treatment is advisable. So a friend, brother, or father, with his anxiety tempered by the hope that a New York specialist can help, runs to the plane office and is informed that all the seats are taken. Outside in the street he meets another rather dejected fellow who finds it necessary to be in New York within five days to close a business deal--no room for him either. Together they have a cup of coffee and discuss "Good Will" in general and how nice it is to have so many big-guns from the U.S. pouring through our city. Tell you what--let's have a compromise--give the big-gun Good-Willers two planes a week and let us have a fighting chance for the other two. . . .
Lima, Peru
Soft, Sleepy, etc.
Sirs:
Please! Don't ever refer again to Charles Boyer as balding or banjo-eyed! He wears a toupee--so what? And his eyes are definitely not banjo-eyes. They are, rather, soft, sleepy and caressing. And furthermore, who has a better right to have eyes soft and caressing than a Frenchman? . . .
CAROL KENNISON Westboro, Mass.
* Name withheld upon request.
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