Presidential Prestige

Sirs:

Your statement: "Franklin Roosevelt had won nothing," in your discussion of the coal strike unsettlement [TIME, July 5] may be slightly in error.

"Congress, reassert[ing] ... its rights and powers as an equal member of the three great branches of the U.S. Government" by demonstrating its belated independent action in overriding, emasculating and nipping in the bud recent Executive efforts, is no ultimate loss to Presidential prestige. . . .

The ill effect of so-called Presidential indecision, regarding strikers and homefront, etc. will be forgotten by the time of the fourth-term decision. The real detriment to the future of the present Administration, a fear for the preservation of an independent legislative branch, has been discredited. . . . The people can again afford to indulge in their favorite personality--Franklin D. Roosevelt, without fear of losing their democratic process. . . .

The situation and developments resulted in a wonderful bit of applied mass psychology. It could not have been better planned. ROY F. CHALKER Yeoman 2nd Class, U.S.N.R. Macon, Ga.

Lesson from Attu

Sirs:

After reading TIME, June 28, "Burial in the Aleutians" by Robert Sherrod, I wish that every man & woman . . . could read these lines. . . . TIME'S reporters have brought the war on Attu so realistically to us that I know those who read about it will never kick about rationing points or gasoline, but will give up willingly former comforts and help materially and spiritually to end this war.

MRS. C. J. WADDELL Peoria

How Talk Began

Sirs:

Under Science you say, "Nobody knows how men began to talk" (TIME, July 12). I thought everyone knew it was by listening to women.

R. G. COLE Chicago

Original Quick Lunch

Sirs:

Being a pushover for anything out of the past because now my life is almost entirely past, and having had close-up experience with the birth and development of the quick-lunch movement in New York (as a customer) I am bound to offer a correction to one statement in your glance at the history of the Childs' restaurant chain: "When they went into business there was nothing between carrying your own lunch to work or eating at a leisurely expensive 'continental' restaurant." [TIME, June 28].

On the contrary, there was Dennetts. Dennetts originated the dairy lunch with the legend "Surpassing Coffe e" in white script on the windows, the marble-topped tables that could be swabbed off with a damp cloth, sweeping the crumbs into the customers' laps. Dennett also had his quirks and crotchets. He was excessively pious, hung framed Bible texts on the walls of his restaurants and required every employe to attend 15 minutes of morning prayers--on his time, not theirs. It was in Dennetts that those heavy coffee cakes known as "sinkers" were first served. The first of these rapid-transit chow palaces was in Park Row next to where the Park Row building now stands, but there was a more aristocratic one in Temple Court at the corner of Nassau and Beeckman streets, with broad-armed chairs instead of tables, where you helped yourself, and the cashier took your word for the amount of your bill. But when Dennett opened another self-serve unit nearer Wall Street, he installed a gate and checkers who punched a ticket for your trayful.

The Childs brothers were employes of Dennett . . . they learned all the tricks and started their own chain, minus the prayers and texts.

EARNEST ELMO CALKINS Lakeville, Conn.

To Author Calkins (They Broke the Prairie), TIME'S thanks for an interesting footnote.--ED.

McArthur's Talents

Sirs:

Permit me to express a few thoughts in reply to "Senator's Dream" (TIME, June 14), with reference to the taste, talent and qualifications of General Douglas MacArthur for the Presidency. . . .

I have known Douglas MacArthur since shortly after he graduated from West Point. Before that I knew his mother and father, and served under the latter in the Philippine Islands. . . . Douglas MacArthur has NOT devoted a lifetime to training for MILITARY leadership. His life has been devoted to training for LEADERSHIP in its widest definition. He has proved his capacity by demonstration, as a soldier, a civil administrator and an executive of civilian affairs.

During many years of close association with Douglas MacArthur, I have never heard him discuss politics or indicate any political ambition. I have not the slightest idea whether or not he has any taste for service to his country other than as a military commander. I do know that he is endowed with and practices the following:

1) he is fundamentally honest and absolutely fearless, both personally and officially.

2) He is brilliant in intellect and sound and reasonable in his judgments.

3) He possesses what is called "common sense" to an uncommon degree.

4) He inspires the greatest confidence and respect of all who know him and he has demonstrated that this confidence has never been misplaced.

I know of no greater talents required from any individual for any position.

FREDERICK W. COLEMAN

Major General, U.S.A. (Ret.) Washington

Prices and The Happy Farmer

Sirs:

I am just an unlettered housewife. But I can read the price tags. They're going up. ...

TIME, July 5, indicates that there is a trace of nobility 'about Congress' recent "revolt," including the thumbs-down on subsidies. Is this nobility untainted by an unwillingness to face the wrath of the Farm Bloc and certain others who fancy they will make a killing out of inflation?

It's time Congress was disillusioned about the farmer. In early youth I learned a piano piece called The Happy Farmer. Where the composer picked up such a weird inspiration, I can't imagine. The farmer is hardworking, honest, pays his debts. But he is a congenital pessimist, finds conditions always bad, and blames everything on the Government--including rainfall.

When inflation comes, hell gripe as loud as the rest of us. Then Congress will look to him in vain for a kindly word.

Would Congress instead consider being a St. George for the humble housewives? We have a sweet nature and remember our friends.

MRS. D. S. STRONG

Austin, Tex.

The Fate of the Lieutenant Colonel

Sirs:

I have just received a letter from my husband, Captain Henry Pollard, who is a dental officer with the ist Infantry Division in North Africa, enclosing a clipping from the May 10 issue of TIME. . . .

There is an interesting conclusion to the fate of the lieutenant colonel who, according to the writeup, was not heard from again after marching two platoons up the hill.

The letter says: "The lieutenant colonel of our battalion took the hill, but was captured with his men when ammunition ran out and he was cut off. He's a young officer, not over 28 years old, and in El Guettar I pulled out the root of his front tooth that had been hit by a shell fragment, as is reported in TIME. . . .

"It seems the Germans had tried to evacuate the prisoners by boat to Italy, but our planes--and there were hundreds of them over us at all times--bombed them no end till the vessels' seams split and the German crew surrendered to the prisoners. The lieutenant colonel had the crew beach the boat at Tunis and actually he was the first American to be in Tunis as he waited for the British to come in."

ANNABELLE SHUR POLLARD Portland, Me.

The "Enlightened" U.S.

Sirs:

Congratulations on p. 32, TIME, June 28, Your Algiers correspondent, Jack Belden . . has written . . . the most scathing condemnation of American complacency and universal ignorance of world affairs that has yet emerged from World War II.

The young Russian Brigadists, interned in a filthy war-prison camp in Delfa for four years, were better informed, better read in world affairs, than American soldiers who had had access to 10,000 newspapers--which they never read.

... I was heartily ashamed of my countrymen when I read Jack Belden's condemnation of our ignorance. . . .

BERT HUFFMAN Newton Station, B.C.

Sirs:

... It is with steadily increasing concern that I note the continuance of abysmal ignorance concerning "what the war is all about" among my fellow members of the Army. This lack of understanding may not hinder our winning of the war, but it will most certainly put the skids under our winning of the peace if we don't look out. If, as seems to be the case, 99% of our soldiers have nothing better in mind than to "get the hell home as fast as possible" after the war, and forget the rest of the world forever, we will have a recurrence of the very situation which led to this war. . . .

(CORP.) C. STANLEY OGILVY, U.S.A.A.F.

Yuma Army Air Field Yuma, Ariz.

Old Army Game

Sirs:

The following excerpt (from a letter written to my great uncle) may prove of interest as an "echo" from another war:

"Calle del Matamoras,

Toluca, Mexico May 20, 1848 "Dear Cousin,

... I should have written you before but that I have had so much writing to do since I joined the Army that I am almost ashamed to look upon pen and paper. ... I have long wondered how so many clerks could be employed in the different departments at Washington, but now the matter is explained --about one half of them are employed in forming troublesome reports to be rendered by the really working part, for we have to render accounts and duplicates of every man in the service in as many different forms as one can possibly imagine, [signed] Jos. Vogdes, Sergt. Major Voltigeurs, Mexico City"

AND THAT BEFORE THE DAY OF TYPEWRITERS AND CARBON PAPERS !

ELIZABETH MAY ROBERTS Glen Olden, Pa.

Shakespeare on Security

Sirs:

Regarding Prime Minister Churchill's warning to the Allied peoples (TIME, July 12), he might have quoted a fellow countryman as well as St. Paul. Remarked Boss Witch Hecate in Shakespeare's Macbeth:

And you all know security

Is mortals' chiefest enemy.

WALLACE E. DACE Bloomington, Ill.

Singing POWs

Sirs:

You mentioned (TIME, June 21) that the Germans sing a lot; marching to the soccer field, they thunder out Today we have Germany, tomorrow the world.

In World War I, 850 officer POWs in the American camp at Richelieu (France) did not sing once during a whole year. But when they marched to the station September 1919, to return to Germany, a minority started a favorite song "Siegreich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen" ("Victorious we will beat the French"). . . .

LEOPOLD R. HIRSCH New Orleans

Correspondent Informed

Sirs:

Just a note of appreciation for your very generous write-up about me in the May 31 issue. Naturally I was pleased. . . .

When we're at the front I suppose we know less of what's going on in the war world--even at points only a few miles away--than anyone else in the warring countries. Getting hold of TIME gives us an informed feeling. Since Tunisia, back at the rear, I manage to snag onto someone's airmail edition quite regularly. . . .

ERNIE PYLE c/o Postmaster New York City

Bedlam (?)

Sirs:

Bedlam? Yes, but from causes of an entirely different nature than your publication visualizes (TIME, June 28).

A noncooperative Congress, reeking with politics, comprised of a group of men who are fighting a harder war against a very probable fourth term than they are against the Axis aggressors; a noncooperative industry, labor abusers, who are more at fault for the present labor disorders than labor itself; and, lastly, a malicious press that has consciously falsified every main issue, foreign and domestic, in a personal grudge waged against Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. These are your causes for "bedlam."

Thank God for Franklin Roosevelt, and here's one vote for a fourth term of "bedlam" (?)

(SGT.) EDWIN KAPLAN, U.S.M.C.

Camp Elliott

San Diego

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