Dr. Hutchins and the Germans

Sirs:

As TIME [May 21] said, University of Chicago's President Hutchins has sounded the first note of an argument about which we shall (unfortunately) hear more. . . . While the world is still reeling from the full story of the almost incomprehensible savageries perpetrated upon mankind by the German nation, he is the first to blossom out again with the once-fashionable foppery of coddling criminals. . . .

WILLIAM WYMAN MALLORY Bartlesville, Okla.

Sirs:

Hats off to Chicago University's President Hutchins. His logical, reasonable plea for mercy for the war criminals, a term now applied to all enemies, both civil and military, proves him to be not a responsibility-ducking "softie," but a farsighted, sagacious person.

We cannot possibly subjugate the people of any nation without instilling in it a resentful hatred and objection that would inevitably break its bounds and result in another, and perhaps more nearly catastrophic, world war.

Sure, we are all fighting mad because of the recently unveiled atrocities in Germany. That is to be expected. But in our temporary blind fit of anger let's not take any pseudo-chauvinistic action for which we will be sorry when we-calm down. After all, why make an entire people suffer because of the actions of only a few of its leaders? . .

Instead of treating our enemies too kindly or too harshly, let's hit a medium between these two extremes that is firm enough to let them know who is boss, but not so obdurate that they will eventually rise against their tormentors. Let's be men, but let's not try to be supermen.

(Pvt.) H. J. GALLOWAY Hines, Ill.

Sirs:

I am tired of reading and hearing Edmund Burke's famous sentence, "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people," used by German conciliators to justify a soft peace. Dr. Hutchins surely knows he is misinterpreting Burke's speech of March 22, 1775, "On Moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies," when he quotes this sentence from it.

Burke did not mean that a whole people cannot be morally guilty of crime. . . . What he was driving at was that an indictment can only be charged against a definite person or persons, and is a legal device operating under technical legal restrictions, while a people is ... composed of an unspecific number of indefinite persons, whom it is thus impossible legally to indict.

Let us have no more nonsense about this. If Dr. Hutchins wants to mull further over Burke's possible reaction to Germany, let him read his Reflections on the Revolution in France and quote from that.

DAVID A. RANDALL New York City

Get the Queen Bee

Sirs:

In your interesting article on the God-Emperor of Japan [TIME, May 21], you refer to Ambassador Grew's analogy of the Japanese society as a beehive with the Emperor as the queen bee. You say: "The implications of this analogy are clear. The Emperor institution . . . must be retained to save the Japanese nation from disintegration."

It seems to me that the opposite implication can be found in the analogy, namely, that the Emperor is to be destroyed if we want to destroy the present anachronistic Japanese society. The word "disintegration" a la beehive seems to scare Mr. Grew. Obviously all Japanese would not wither and die when the Emperor is disposed of, as the hive does when the queen dies. What would happen ?

History provides us with a ready-made answer. It is not the first time that a modern Christian society encounters a powerful enemy ruled by a son-of-heaven. . . . The Inca Empire's ten million people fell to Pizarro's 180 men not so much because of the Spaniards' firearms and horses, but because of Pizarro's capture of Atahualpa, the queen bee. . . .

ROBERT S. HARTMAN Lake Forest, Ill.

TIME & Communism

Sirs: . . . Outside of political pamphlets, I have never seen the political structure of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 either published or dis cussed at length in any American paper (and I'm sure I never will); nor have I seen general or detailed analyses of any kind of Soviet techniques of free suffrage, the make up of the Presidium, or of the manner in which executive branches of the Soviet state actually function.

I am not arguing for or against the Soviets and their creed of Communism. But I do demand that a magazine of TIME'S pretensions and professed journalistic ideals face up to the unparalleled political situation that exists today: in 28 years Soviet socialism, the prelude to Communism, has unfurled its flag from Vladivostok to Berlin, Vienna, Belgrade and Bucharest. France and Italy are going Communist, in spite of the feverish behind-the-scenes efforts of British and Americans to prevent this "catastrophe." Most of Europe is going the same way. In China millions have embraced this creed. In fact, the Communists have organized groups in every nation of the globe -- a worldwide movement. ... If a strong, free-enterprise America wishes to combat this worldwide movement and survive, if it wishes to compete economically with centrally directed economic planning on a colossal scale, which has hardly begun as yet to operate, then TIME magazine owes it to the America it believes in to present facts, studies, analyses, objective reporting, and soundly based mature conclusions rather than the stream of adolescent sneers and verbal spitballs in which TIME is now indulging and which does your competent journal no credit whatsoever. . . .

Adopt and pursue any policy you choose towards these matters. But for heaven's sake present that policy with some semblance of maturity based upon logic and businesslike presentations of fact.

CHARLES R. BARTON Sherman Oaks, Calif.

P:TIME will continue to report the news about Communism as well as it can--without seeing Red or viewing bogeymen with alarm. But TIME makes no bones about being biased in matters of faith and morals. TIME is proDemocracy, anti-Communism.--ED.

"Ole Winnie an' Joe'll Miss 'Im"

Sirs:

The attached copy of a letter just received from an old business associate and friend in England I believe to be very expressive of the Englishman's viewpoint:

"Here in London it is a warm spring day, and you know what spring in southern England means. I have been across to Henekey's Bar by the side of Elizabeth's Grays Inn, where a bit of medieval still stands. There among the barrels I have had my beer and sandwich, stunned as if I had lost a personal friend--for it was this morning that we learned you had lost your President.

"As I look out of my window I see the flag half-masted over the President, but the grief of the Londoners is much less articulate. When I arrived at the office I heard two charwomen discussing Roosevelt's passing--two women who have, like some of us, endured the blitz, the flying bombs, the rockets in London. 'Blimey!' says one, 'Ain't it a bleeding shime? I'll bet ole Winnie an' Joe'll miss 'im.' 'Do you remember those destroyers he gave us?' says the other. Two poor London charwomen remember.

"How proud would I be if I could know that two such people in, say, Ithaca or New Orleans, felt such an intimate and personal relationship with us. We mourn today as if we, all of us, had lost a personal friend. . . .

"If I may say so, you have become a nation to us, not merely charming and gifted individuals--a nation with a political and social conscience. It did not need a Roosevelt to teach this to me personally, but that is what he has done to the charwomen of London, the bistro proprietor in Provence, the factory hand in Kharkov.

"Now he has gone, but again, like Lincoln, at the best time, not the worst. There will be others to follow, but his memory will be, in the world security talks, a touchstone to sound principles by. I suspect he will be the most potent of influences, being dead. . . . I echo the closing words of Milton's Samson Agonistes:

His servants be with new acquist

Of true experience from this great event

With peace and consolation hath dismist

And calm of mind all passion spent."

H. R. RUSSELL

Rochester, N.Y.

Heart Repair

Sirs: TIME'S reporting [April 23, of Dr. Dwight E. Harken's impressive battlefront heart operation record] is in error. Not 328 heart cases, as you credit me. Figures should be 74 missiles removed from within or in relation to great vessels; 55 foreign bodies removed from within or in relation to the heart (13 in heart chambers). Total--129 patients. You were right about there being no deaths.

DWIGHT E. HARKEN Major, Medical Corps

% Postmaster New York City

P:TIME'S apologies to Major Harken for an embarrassing slip.--ED

The Worst Pest

Sirs:

I have read many an article about the abuses to returned soldiers, from doting parents to kindly old ladies. One person missed in all articles is the barroom drunk.

I enjoy having a glass or two of beer at night, but it is becoming an ordeal, for 90% of the time when I go in and quietly sit at the bar, the inevitable drunk shows up and, slobbering, offers to buy you a drink, insists on your listening to his tales of what he did in the last war or what his cousin is doing in this one. He hangs onto you for at least an hour. He is the worst pest of all. . . . [A RETURNED VET] Detroit

PWD

Sirs:

TIME May 21st International refers to PWD as "OWI's Psychological Warfare Division." Does TIME not yet know that PWD is a division of Supreme Headquarters just like G1, G2, etc; that it is answerable to General Eisenhower and not to OWI; that it is an Anglo-American organization like all other divisions and sections of Supreme Headquarters; . . . that it is a unique organization in this or any other war, being mixed "British-American, civilian-military, operating at all echelons, from the Chief of Staff's desk to the platoon commander's foxhole; that TIME'S reference is disturbing and offensive not only to the hundreds of non-OWI members of the organization but equally to those many OWI members who have worked long and hard to achieve effective integration of an Anglo-American civilian-military organization?

C. D. JACKSON

Psychological Warfare Division, SHAEF Paris, France

P:Red-faced TIME herewith returns PWD to its rightful boss, General Eisenhower--ED .

Churchill's Cigars

Sirs:

The pipe-smoking Earl of Halifax has overrated Cigar Consumer Winston Churchill [TIME, May 21]. Winnie may be the British Empire's No. 1 cigar smoker, but he cannot smoke 54 extra-large, especially made cigars in 18 hours out of every 24. It takes most cigar smokers approximately 30 minutes to smoke enjoyably a normal-sized, popular-brand cigar.

(CpL.) WILLIAM R. GIBBON Quantico, Va.

P:But not Winston Churchill, who chews as he smokes.--ED.

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