TIMEStyle Jabbering?

Sirs:

For your article about Turkey (TIME, Aug. 14), you have chosen a title composed of two words: harum-scarum. I was trying to make a sens out of these two words for last couple days, and I speak Turkish fluently because it is my mother tongue, but I had no results. Could it be a TIMEstyle jabbering? They sound Turkish alright, but I wonder if they have a real significance ?

A. PAKSOY

Ventura, Calif.

P: Harum-scarum's sound is deceptive.

All it means is .--ED.

State Department v. Argentina

Sirs:

Thanks to TIME (Aug. 14) for the first honest appraisal of the State Department's misguided Argentine policy that I have yet seen in any North American news publication. The idea that Argentina is a menace to us is as absurd as Hitler's fear of the threat of Poland in 1939. The very fact that we chose Argentina as an adversary instead of Peru or Brazil, with whose extremely totalitarian Governments we continue to maintain most cordial relations, belies our intentions.

I believe that if we really desired friendship among the democratic countries of Latin America we should take steps to bring about the re-establishment of the Spanish Republic. The very fact that we continue to condone the Nazi-Fascist-installed Franco raises many doubts in the minds of democratically inclined Hispanic peoples. Your article has restored my faith in your ability to print the news objectively and with a minimum of eyewash. . . .

[SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD] Camp Shelby, Miss.

Soldier on Bonuses

Sirs:

The following paragraphs from a letter from my husband stationed in England express one soldier's opinion of the soldier bonus bill--a soldier who is now starting his fourth year of service.

"Our soldiers have done a marvelous job.

But that is no sign that one must become sentimental and say, 'O.K. boys, here's $4,000 for your effort!' The cost of keeping the dependents of the men who have died and been crippled, maimed, etc. will be a tremendous load on the Government. So why should we who have had the good fortune to live through all of this expect the Government to give us something extra. It is a waste of money and we will pay for it ourselves anyway in taxes.

"A man who has pulled himself out of bankruptcy does not plunge into bankruptcy again. In a sense we are pulling our country out of something worse than bankruptcy. Therefore, if we find the country bankrupt, we have fought for nothing."

MRS. RAYMOND B. GREENE Buffalo

East Is West?

Sirs:

Your review of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (TIME, July 24) has so upset me that I am sitting up far into the hot night under a mosquito net, while the planes drone overhead, to tell you about it. I cannot think of any book that would give a more incorrect impression of India and the Indians, unless it were Mother India.

The motif of this book is that "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," and that is a lot of hooey. Dr. Aziz is a neurotic personality, about as much of an oddity in India as he would be in the U.S. The English people in this book are caricatures of an extreme and now definitely outmoded group.

I know a good Muslim businessman. He has a lot of fat, juicy war contracts, boasts about being a self-made man, is president of the local Chamber of Commerce, shows everyone the newspaper clippings of his trip to the States, and for recreation likes wine, women, and song. He is just like the butter-and-egg men I used to know in New York.

I know a young accountant. He is a high-caste Brahmin. He invited us to his house for a real Indian dinner. His wife, who is a big, placid-looking woman, did not eat with us and never goes out on the streets unless accompanied by a man. After observing her, I said to him, "Your wife doesn't seem to be afraid of you." "Oh no," he replied, "I'm afraid of her." In a flick of an eye, I was back, 16,000 miles to the U.S.

I know a food contractor who tried to cheat us every day by skimping on the weight and quality of his supplies. I know another with whom we had the most satisfactory relations. . . . One Hindu woman confided to us that she loved beef (she spent the first 16 years of her life in England). In one restaurant, she always had a hamburger plate.

There are many currents and undercurrents both economic and political in India. . . . The Indians who are concerned with these problems are not hysterical, childish adults like Dr. Aziz, nor are the English stupid isolationists like those Forster describes or sentimentalists like Mrs. Moore. They are businessmen, intelligentsia, government officials, politicians--like the people we know at home.

V. A. BABCOCK c/o American Red Cross India

Gods' Mills

Sirs:

In a subcaption on Page 38 of TIME

(Aug. 21), appears "The mills of the gods. . ."

It's not a pleasant surprise to find your staff making such a commonplace blunder --of course it is "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." As I recall it, it's from a translation by Longfellow from the German poem "Retribution."

T. H. GUFFEY Dixmont, Pa.

P: Let Reader Guffey go back to his readers. Many an author before Longfellow wrote of the grinding of celestial mills, including George Herbert in Jacula Prudentum (1640): "God's mill grinds slow, but sure." TIME'S quote is from a pantheistic Greek proverb which more recent authors have paraphrased in monotheistic form.--ED.

Fast TIME

Sirs:

At 8 o'clock Tuesday morning I turned on the radio and learned of the new Allied landings in France.

Mindful of your justified back-slapping over Dday, I thought, "Here's one that TIME misses this week."

Thirty hours later at 2 p.m. Wednesday the postman delivers TIME (Aug. 21) and there on Page 24 is news of the attack on southern France. I'm flabbergasted.

PHILIP H. STURGE

Waverly, N.Y.

Sherrod on Saipan

Sirs:

Robert Sherrod's interpretation of the last few days on Saipan (TIME, July 24) was really a masterpiece of factual reporting. Ever since reading his Tarawa, I've placed him on my list of musts as far as war correspondents' articles are concerned'.

So far, he's the only reporter who has been able to write and describe a battle from the point of view of the man who fights them. . . .

[SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD] c/o Postmaster San Francisco

G.l.'s v. Hollywood

Sirs:

Exploiting the present world tragedy, Hollywood has manufactured a series of war pictures that makes soldiers overseas practically retch, and causes even entertainment-hungry troops to file out of movies before a picture ends, expressing their disgust and scorn with jeers and boos and very much-to-the-point one-word descriptions. They have just "seen themselves" portrayed on the screen a la Hollywood's idiotic hoopla. Some marcelled hero with rouged lips and a do-or-die voice has just charged a Jap battalion with six grenades clenched between his Pep-sodent-perfect molars, a Tommy gun in each hand and enough knives and bayonets stuck in his belt to start a hardware store; he has not only wiped out the battalion singlehanded, and held the bridge that saved his division from annihilation, but he killed the last 180 Japanese with his well-manicured bare hands, and has stopped twice in battle to make a five-minute oration on the Four Freedoms to an invisible audience in the sky.

Two recent "war pictures" dealing with soldiers in training camps, at home and in U.S.O. clubs have portrayed the average American soldier in such a ridiculous manner as to arouse the derision of other Allied soldiers present and cause Americans acute embarrassment.

[SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD] c o Postmaster New York City

Dewey v. Hutchins Sirs: ... I was very much interested in "Dewey Stands Firm" (TIME, Aug. 21). And Dr.

Dewey should stand firm. He has made a tremendous contribution to education. . . .

ELLIS HUNTINGTON DANA Wellesley, Mass.

Sirs:

. . . What does Mr. Dewey consider the fruits of our too-well-remembered science, the blood-soaked fields of Europe? I think Thomas Aquinas can help us to emerge from our state of barbarism if Mr. Dewey & Co. will just give him a chance! Bravo Mr. Hutchins!

PEGGY GUMMERE

Trenton, NJ.

Sirs:

... I think there is no question that Dr. Dewey's name appears upon the letterheads of more organizations for the promotion of socialism than that of any other man in America. . . .

ROSCOE PEACOCK Naples, N.Y.

Sirs:

. . . The item about Argentina [an official call for eradication of the Dewey influence from Argentina's schools] was new to me. Under the circumstances there, I regard it as a compliment.

JOHN DEWEY

Chatham, Mass.

Nimitz Print

Sirs:

It will be news to other collectors of old prints that Admiral Nimitz has one, 1260 A.D. (Your illustration in TIME, Aug. 21.)

Cognoscenti, up to now, have thought the St. Christopher, dated 1423, among the earliest prints. Is your art editor on vacation?

DUNCAN BURNET University of Georgia Athens, Ga.

Sirs:

If "this ancient print, dated 1260 A.D." was engraved within 400 years of that date, I will cheerfully eat it. It looks as if TIME and the doughty admirals are more familiar with nautical than with personal armor. The print shows full suits of plate armor, unknown in England for more than 100 years after 1260, at least in the form shown. Besides which, the armor bears a distinct family resemblance to the type beloved of Victorian engravers, and seen nowhere on earth but in their limnings. Ten gets you a hundred that the print was engraved between 1800 and 1850. The type of the engraving's title also points to that period, to say nothing of the spelling!

GEO. F. DALE Baraboo, Wis.

P: Let Reader Dale not bare his teeth. If there is any print-eating to be done, TIME'S Army & Navy Editor will do it.--ED.

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