Housewife's Attitude
Sirs:
Your Background for Peace [TIME, March 22] has been in the background of my head ever since I read it. It has made me want to say something, though I have never spoken out before because somehow a person who always has to style herself "housewife" in a questionnaire does seem so insignificant. And yet there are so many of us housewives that what we want and, in the privacy of our homes, urge our men to strive for, is surely going to affect the peace. . . .
Lately we have had to give up many things we thought we couldn't "live" without. Most of us have found, to our delighted surprise, that we're not only living without these services, devices and super-abundances, but liking it and being twice as alive as before. Can we get that across, first to our own men, and then out into the places where policies are made, so that our leaders will know that we care more for a sound peace than for the restoration of the exact degree of material comfort we had before?
Here is something that should scare us a bit. We are being asked to sacrifice now, but we are being told at the same time that after the war there will be more nice, convenient and delightful things than we ever had before. Perhaps, but let's forget it, let's shun the thought of it, lest we remain a collective Little Woman who, by her impatience to have again what she once had, can build up a pressure from her small but increasing complaints, hints and suggestions, which in time will form blocs of selfishness in the nation. . . .
I get lost easily in politics and economics. . . . But I believe absolutely that the wishes of some 60 or 70 million women will be felt at the peace table. If those wishes are selfish, there will be no real peace. But if we can persuade our men by our daily attitude, from this day forward, that we would rather have to scrimp the rest of our lives than leave any other people in need and despair anywhere on this earth, then the end result will be that those who will have the power to form the peace will go about their task free to avail themselves of that tremendous force which is rising all over the world even now, the longing for and the insistence on a world of peace and brotherhood.
ELISABETH H. GARCEAU
South Hanover, Mass.
Bilious Blast
Sirs:
. . . There is about as much chance of the Solid South going Republican in 1944 as of Colonel McCormick's Chicago Tribune turning New Dealer. I hereby proffer and promise to swim from Key West to Cuba, and tow a loaded barge in the bargain, if so many as three states of the South go Republican next year.
We don't like the efforts of certain nebulous-minded New Dealers to force racial equality upon us in the South, but at least they are using only propaganda and not pistols. . . .
Nobody needs to get alarmed about the bilious blasts of those gyrating Governors who sounded off at Tallahassee (TIME, April 5). The two who were most vociferous and vehement about breaking the Solid South were elected Governors of their respective states largely because the good people of Georgia and Louisiana were disgusted with two intolerable buffoons, in the guise of Governor, who were ruining the good names of these great states.
The idea that these two political popinjays, who rode into office on a wave of revulsion against their comic opera predecessors, can compel the people of Georgia and Louisiana (or, as one of these strident "statesmen" suggested, deliver its vote to the highest and best bidder) is as fatuously fantastic and utterly absurd as the long-discredited myth that the Republican Party produced prosperity.
In recent years, the plain people have insisted on doing their own political thinking and casting their own votes, uncoerced and unintimidated by Governors and other political magnificoes. And they will continue to do it in 1944. . . .
FULLER WARREN
Jacksonville, Fla.
Hong Kong Internment Camp
Sirs:
Among the few treasured possessions I still had left when I reached New York last August on the Gripsholm were two tiny rolls of film that had been exposed with a Bantam Special in the Civilian Internment Camp at Stanley, Hong Kong. . . . The exposures were necessarily made very cautiously. I could not safely take . . . close-ups of the hungry, ragged-looking queues waiting with their tin cans and cups for their rice and stew. . . .
Picture No. 1 shows about one-third of the former British Government buildings, now occupied by the 2,500 British civilians still there. The block of three buildings in the upper left, up to June 29, 1942, was occupied by approximately 300 Americans who returned on the Gripsholm. Picture No. 2 shows the Hong Kong prison to the right, and on the little playing field in the foreground there are about 200 hungry American and British children, assembled on Easter morning to share in the special treat of one doughnut each! . . .
_________*
Rochester, N.Y.
The Case of Captain Gough
Sirs:
In your issue of July 13, 1942, you published . . . some news about myself and others which has done us a grave injustice ... as subsequent events have proved. . . . All of us who were arrested here and taken to an internment at Kingston, Jamaica, B.W.I., were released unconditionally on the 10th of February without any charge being filed against us. I have also been informed officially by the U.S. Consul here that I have been removed from the "black list" and am now free to do business. I am indeed surprised that a magazine like TIME, with a heretofore good reputation for veracity, should have published such calumnies against me before investigating the facts. In justice to myself and others whose characters have been so unjustifiably soiled, I request that you retract all you said. . . .
CAPTAIN GEORGE GOUGH
Belize, B. H.
> TIME reported that the Army's Caribbean Defense Command had arrested 19 Panama Canal Zone employes, along with Captain Gough, as part of a spy ring tipping off United Nations ship movements and helping refuel German submarines. This report was based on a statement read to Canal Zone correspondents. U.S. and British officialdom are now resolutely silent on the subject. In the interests of fairness, TIME is glad to report that Captain Gough has been released and his name deleted from the U.S. "black list."--ED.
Rations, Here & There
Sirs:
A few days ago, I received a letter from my brother [pilot of a Liberator] in the Air Corps in North Africa. I thought that part of it would be of interest to you, since it touches on a subject which is being discussed ... by a great many people in the U.S. . . .
"I haven't had any butter since I left the States (July 1942)--I have fresh meat once a week, one cup of coffee a day--no milk other than the canned stuff--powdered eggs --no bacon (only Spam)--one canteen of water per day for drinking and washing.
"If they think they are overworked, you might mention that we are on duty 24 hours a day.
"I am forced to close here--my candle ration is running low." . . .
MARION HICKEY Berkeley, Calif.
Slant of the Heart
Sirs:
The photograph captioned "There Are Good Japs" (TIME, March 29) together with a short article, I read with disgust. These so-called "Japs" are not Japs at all, but actually Americans, or what would be the reason for enlisting them into the U.S. Army? Surely one doesn't judge an American by the color of his skin or the slant of his eyes--it's the slant of the heart that counts. . . .
The fact of the matter is since Dec. 7, 1941 all people of Japanese descent, regardless of whether or not he was an American citizen, have been referred to as enemy aliens. The press and radio have particularly been guilty of this. It is high time we differentiated between American citizens, Japs, enemy aliens, etc. . . .
TOM YAMASHITA Lincoln, Neb.
> Reader Yamashita's slant is right, if not realistic, TIME hopes to see the day when it is both.--ED.
*Name withheld by request.
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