Sousa Swung

Sirs:

I have just read with complete disgust . . . that Captain Glenn Miller has begun to "swing" the age-old, magnificent marches of John Philip Sousa (TIME, Sept. 6). . . .

When Sousa wrote them he left no room for improvement.

--*

Portland, Me.

Sirs :

Captain Glenn Miller has the right idea swinging those Sousa marches. The tunes are marvelous but the way Army bands have played them in the past has made them sound like an old-fashioned victrola which needed to be wound up. . . .

LEE TYLER

Newton, Mass.

Sirs:

There is so much more I could and should have said against the "swinging" of legitimate and famous military marches. . . . No! Sousa marches do not need "streamlining"--but probably a few of the "bandmasters" who advocate the "swinging" of his music do.

Any good band under a capable bandmaster playing a Sousa march (as the composer wrote it) or any other standard march will thrill and inspire the marching soldiers. The sad thing is that most bands never rehearse marches at all or, if they do, not as they should. . . .

Personally, I feel that the question of swinging military marches is a question for commanding officers to settle. Do they want their armies to march with military bearing, to fine inspiring rhythm--or do they prefer them to "jitterbug" their way along? . . .

EDWIN FRANKO GOLDMAN

Mt. Tremper, N.Y.

Greek Words For It

Sirs:

I would like to protest against Mr. Winston Churchill's terrible term "triphibious," as applied to Lord Louis Mountbatten. . . . Amphibious, derived from the Greek words double and life, means adapted to both elements of life, i.e., land and water; hence the correct neologism would be (in the case of Lord Louis, able to fight on land, water and air) tribious. . . .

M. I. SALOMON, M.D.

New York City

-- Mr. Churchill will not be disturbed. He took careful exception to his own phrase: "[Mountbatten] is what, pedants notwithstanding, I will venture to call a complete triphibian. . . ."--ED.

Timely Eisenhower

Sirs:

My compliments to your great magazine on your "timely" cover of the great General Eisenhower.

On Sept. 9, Italy surrenders to this brilliant General; Sept. 10 TIME arrives with the General himself adorning the cover.

PHYLLIS L. SIDDERS

New York City

Tundra Troopers

Sirs:

. . . I am the wife of Captain Robert Thompson, who commands the [Alaska] Scouts (TIME, Aug. 9), and the picture, which you identify as him, is actually Sergeant Hiram Walker. This [mistake] has appeared in three magazines now. . . . Also, your picture of Larry ("Diamond Jim") Beloff, half-breed, is William ("Diamond Jim") Seaton. William Seaton is no more half-breed than you are and was sort of bothered about it.

The article itself was very good and accurate and I am very proud of it. . . .

I am enclosing a recent picture of my husband taken upon his return from a scouting trip.

MRS. R. H. THOMPSON

Anchorage, Alaska

--TIME'S apologies to wrongly identified Alaska Scouts Thompson and Seaton, a pencil and notebook to the misinforming photographer.--ED.

Moses in Portland

Sirs:

Recently one of your staff called me up to verify a report from Portland, Ore. that I had agreed to supervise a postwar public works report for various public agencies in that State. I gave your representative what I am quite sure was an accurate summary of the facts, including the statement that contracts were being made directly with engineers and attorneys designated by me.

In TIME, Sept. 6, appeared a story to the effect that I was getting a "fancy" fee of $100,000 for this work. This statement is false. No other publication made it. The fact is that my fee, if you choose to call it that, is a fraction of this amount, and it includes all expenses. It may be noted in passing that during the time I am away I draw no pay from the only paid public position which I hold, and that the amount I recommended for my own contract was so small that the others concerned insisted on raising it. The same thing happened in the case of a recent confidential Army & Navy survey where the total amount involved was $100,000, where most of this sum was in separate contracts with consultants, and where the amount I proposed to charge was so low that it was raised in Washington.

. . . I do not make a business of consulting work and rarely ever do it, except where there is some public purpose to be accomplished. . . . If I had wanted to make money I would not have gone into public service.

ROBERT MOSES

New York City

--TIME understood the facts, regrets that its condensed presentation of them was misunderstood by Commissioner Moses. The $100,000 (which still seems like a "fancy" figure for a city the size of Portland) will be divided as follows: Moses' engineers, $80,000; Moses' legal staff, $6,000; Moses and "immediate staff," $14,000. -- ED.

The Bernal Case

Sirs:

Congratulations on your fair and newsworthy treatment of the suit involving the civil rights of Mexican-Americans, i.e., Mr. Alex Bernal and his family in Fullerton, Calif. (TIME, Sept. 6).

My gosh! I am Scotch, Irish and English and might want to live there sometime.

REV. E. SHURLEY JOHNSON

Detroit

Sirs:

Your article . . . reminded me of something Alex Bernal said when, as an eight-year-old neighbor, he helped pick the fruit in our yard. Forbidden to climb the trees, Alex had been struggling for hours with a long-handled rake .to get three persimmons hanging out of reach. Finally he said, "Mrs. Mackey, why couldn't you climb this tree?"

My mother objected that 60 years of life had unfitted her for scaling up trees. "But," persisted Alex, "where there's a will, you know, there's always a way."

. . . I hope that other upward reaching Mexican-Americans may feel a will and find a way to break through the undemocratic property restrictions which have long prevented them from buying comfortable homes on pleasant streets.

DRUZILLA R. MACKEY

Pueblo, Colo.

Sirs:

. . . I'd be proud to have the Mexican Bernals live next to me.

C. MASON WHITNEY

Berkeley, Calif.

Pin-Ups for Morale?

Sirs:

Reinhold Niebuhr, according to his statements (TIME, Sept. 6), seems a bit off-beamish. . . .

When a soldier gets through drilling . . . patching up the bad gear on a tank, sitting in a foxhole or the like, he's not going to cool off by reading a nice, comfy article on the "meaning of the war and the best means of using the fruits of victory creatively." . . .

Pin-up girls? Jokes? Cartoons? The boys like them. . . . They see seriousness all day long in a heavy way. Sometimes they don't get back from that bombing mission or the reconnaissance over Hill "X" to read. But if they do -- they know what they want. . . .

Relax, Mr. Niebuhr, relax -- that's what the boys do when they read Stars & Stripes. . . .

--*

Wright Field, Dayton

Sirs:

As a soldier who Army training, I wish to second the statement made by Mr. Reinhold Niebuhr. It was one of my saddest experiences during the "training cycle" that, besides four good films on "What We are Fighting For," the important subjects of causes, meaning and purpose of this war were not discussed at all.

(PVT.) OTTO S. YOUNG

Camp Robinson, Ark.

Sirs:

. . . A battlefield or training area is not the place for intellectual activity or education. AH that can come afterward, at government expense. The President has put forward free education to war veterans as one of his postwar aims.

We servicemen have left planning for the future world in what we trust are capable civilian hands, while we are away.

Meanwhile though, a soldier gets a bigger lift out of seeing a box score than he does [from] complicated and often ridiculous war aims. . . .

So give us what we care for now; if pinups help our morale more, give them to us. It will be our morale, and not Niebuhr's, that will be important when the final showdown comes.

(PVT.) JOSEPH GODMAN

Nashville

The Kelland Plan

Sirs:

Clarence Budington Kelland must have had a horrible nightmare when his subcortical hatched the monstrous scheme for the postwar world to which you devoted a page of your valuable space (TIME, Sept. 6). . . . One hardly knows whether to admire most its arrogantly pretentious nationalism, or its international hypocrisy, or its naive self, contradiction, or its brutal denial of the best American ideals.

Look at the picture: first, we establish a trusteeship for the entire world, with Britain, Russia and China as partners. Second, we form an offensive and defensive alliance with our partners. This with our tongue in our cheek for, third, we signify our suspicion of our other partners by an exclusive alliance with Britain. Fourth, we join all the Americas in a military and economic unity. Fifth, we proclaim our distrust of all other nations by creating a "five-ocean navy" and correspondingly invincible army and air force. . . . To cap the climax, we cling stubbornly to the irresponsible "sovereignty" which has been the curse of the world and the fruitful cause of international anarchy to this day. Apparently, we do not accept the possibility of any pacific organization of world affairs. The "parliament of man" is quite out of the picture.

Here is the perfect formula to ensure a permanent state of war among the nations.

JOHN S. NOLLEN

Grinnell, Iowa

Scooper's Swag

Sirs:

DID UNIPRESS SEND TRAIN WRECK SCOOPER RANDALL (TIME, SEPT. 13) USUAL TWO BUCKS FOR HIS GOOD WORK?

DEAN HAMMOND

Editor

Prospector

Del Norte, Colo.

--Cynical Editor Hammond maybe surprised to learn that for his good work 16-year-old Scooper Randall got: 1) from the United Press, $25); 2) from Radio Corp. of America, an expenses-paid invitation to go to Hollywood with his mother and appear on Don Ameche's What's New? program.--ED.

-Name withheld.

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