Conquerors

Sirs:

Why is it that in your Sept. 17 issue of TIME you seem to refer to the publications by Domei in regard to the rapes, robberies, and assaults committed here by Americans, as mere statements without logic? Believe me, they are true, for I am in a position to know.

The soldiers, sailors and marines appear to have no regard for these people whatsoever. They still hold the attitude that we've come as conquerors and what is ours is ours. The outcome of this occupation really rests on their shoulders but few of them realize it. These people are forming their opinion of America and its Americans through the occupation forces. Our manner of behavior, thoughts and feelings have much to do with this.

There seems to be quite a bit of talk in the States regarding MacArthur's need of only 200,000 men as occupation troops. We need no more than that. These people do not bear as much watching as do the servicemen here.

(SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD) c/o Postmaster San Francisco

Sirs:

Well, things have certainly picked up for us old beat-up, guinea happy, flip chasin', atabrine eatin', female hungry, geisha huntin' G.I.s. I'm writing this by the light of a 200-watt reading lamp, on an oaken writing desk, surrounded by large double windows (with glass in them) and sliding doors. This morning I awoke to find an olive-skinned, black-haired, shy young vision of Oriental loveliness, with broom in hand, busily engaged in giving my room, which I share with only two other liberators, a working over. When she became aware of my jaundiced scrutiny there ensued a series of gymnastics similar to that practiced by Stateside home guards during morning calajumpics, which is known in local circles as the very best in Far East etiquette.

You realize, of course, that having our quarters cleaned daily is only one of the many advantages of being a member of this great "liberation" team. The laundry, latrine digging, area policing, etc. etc. problem is also out of our hands, not to mention that little matter of KP.

This is a 2nd lieutenant's paradise. The E.M.s get more highballs in an hour than an O.C.S. graduate in Miami gets in a week! . . .

(SGT.) LOWELL D. BLANTON

c/o Postmaster San Francisco

Sirs:

Since American morality seems to be ebbing fast, the story of the paratroopers who held up a German cafe [TIME, Sept. 24] may be regarded by many as a boyish prank. Let them note that this is but one of countless incidents (the majority unpublicized), perpetrated by G.I.s and U.S. officers, that have reduced U.S. prestige in Europe. . . . For a good 45% of the uniformed men over here seem to believe in their own generation that they belong to the master race and some of them conduct themselves like amateur SS troops.

No moralist I, but I shiver at the apparent absence of basic human decency displayed by so many G.I.s. Many a sane American family would recoil in horror if they knew how "Our Boys" conduct themselves, with such complete callousness in human relationships, over here. The few of us who try to behave like normal human beings to friend and ex-foe alike are told time & again, "But you can't be an American--they treat us as if we were dogs or slaves!"

We were hailed as liberators who were bringing with us the blessings of democracy. On the whole we are now taken to be moral slobs, mental deficients, and fools; and if Europeans now seek to milk us, we have only "Our Boys" to blame. It will take years to repair the widespread distrust of the U.S. produced, not by bombs or diplomatic deals, but by our half-educated, doltish youth.

My advice to civilians: the hard back of your fist to any returning G.I. or officer who attempts wiping his feet on you as he has been accustomed to wipe his feet on Europeans (all of them) whom he considers "inferior."

(SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD) c/o Postmaster New York City

Sirs:

In the Oct. 8 issue of TIME a statement was made that "Americans in Germany, as a group and as the representatives of a great power, were serving neither themselves nor America well." You people at home are the last ones that should talk about how we act. We came over here with good faith in you, the American people, and now instead of standing behind us you take a few moments off from your money-grabbing and squabbling not to help us but to find fault with our job. Instead of setting a good example for other nations to follow, you as a nation act so shamefully that we are almost ashamed to own you as fellow citizens. . . .

Until something is done to make Congress and the War Department become more interested in seeing that we get a fair deal instead of using us to sway public opinion to their side, we will never feel that doing a good job is worth the effort. . . .

(SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD) c/o Postmaster New York City

"Greeting to Hitler"

Sirs: ... I feel compelled to comment upon the picture captioned "Prague 1939: Greeting to Hitler," which appears in the Oct. 22 issue of TIME.

Contrary to your caption, the locale of this picture is not Prague (as should be apparent from the German-language shop signs in the background), nor was the time 1939. . . . The sobbing woman with arm outstretched in Nazi salute has been consistently interpreted as a symbol of forced obeisance to the German conquerors of Czechoslovakia.

Let us give the devil his due: the picture was snapped by a German press photographer and first appeared in the National Socialist newspaper, Voelkischer Beobachter, in the fall of 1938, shortly after the Sudeten "Anschluss." The Nazi explanation was that here were portrayed the intense emotions of joy which swept the Sudeten Germans as Hitler crossed the Czech border at Asch and drove through the streets of the nearby ancient city of Eger, 99% of whose inhabitants were ardently pro-Nazi Sudeten Germans at the time. . . .

Its appearance in TIME is the first instance I have seen wherein this photo has been depicted as showing the reception of Hitler in Prague six months after the Sudeten incident. I suspect that few if any arms were extended, either in joy or grief, on that calamitous day.

EARLE A. CLEVELAND Lieutenant (j.g.) U.S.N.R. San Francisco

P: TIME'S thanks to Reader Cleveland for 1) correction of what is apparently a widespread error; 2) new proof that sauce for the Nazi goose is sometimes sauce for Allied propaganda.--ED.

Chaucer v. Local 555

Sirs:

... Is this not like Hitler's book-burnings ? If Chaucer must be banned because he tells us that medieval Jews were usurers (a profession forbidden to medieval Christians by their popes, and to medieval and modern Moslems by their Koran), what of Shakespeare with his Shylock, and Dickens with his Fagin; what of the Bible (I Thessalonians, II, 14-16); what of the Koran; what of the Arabian Nights, where a Jew is said to have cheated an orphan (Aladdin) and his widowed mother of the true price of a table service brought them by a jinn? . . .

ANTHONY CURTISS

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Sirs: Your note, "Chaucer, the Agitator" [TIME, Oct. 15], calls attention to the action of Local 555 of the Teachers' Union in condemning Chaucer's Canterbury Tales because of their supposedly being a stimulus to race prejudice. One can only gasp in shocked amazement that any group of presumably educated educators could arrive at such a completely untenable opinion. Had these pedagogical-engineers read Chaucer with even the minimum of understanding, they would have discovered an author more cognizant of the ills of humanity than many a more recent writer and would have found him a champion of moderation and toleration of all types. Far from advocating the banning of Chaucer's poetry from the curriculum, Local 555 would do well to reverse its position and urge that the Canterbury Tales be read more widely. . . .

THOMAS A. KIRBY Department of English Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, La.

No Owls, Eh?

Sirs:

Reading about "owlish Fred Vinson," "owlish Boss Crump," "hen-shaped Mayor LaGuardia," I am disturbed by an increasing ornithophobia. I now spend too much time peering into the faces of my friends for aviary symptoms. No owls, they. I have only succeeded in upsetting and alienating them. In a world fraught with crises, one prospect looms: one of these days they'll find me addressing a pigeon as "Your Honor."

EDWARD APTAKER Cambridge, Mass.

P: Reader Aptaker had better stop peering so hard.--ED.

Man of the Year

Sirs:

Since nominations for Man of the Year are now open, may I suggest that this year, you should not be nominating Man of the Year, but instead, Men of the Year. I refer to G.I. Joes, the soldiers, sailors and marines, who in my opinion have more than merited the title Men of the Year.

SIDNEY A. BERNSTEIN Tujunga, Calif.

Sirs:

Our nomination for the Man of the Year--a characteristic Artzybasheff portrayal of an atomic bomb. . . .

MR. & MRS. GUSTAVUS A. BENTLEY Jamestown, N.Y.

Sirs:

Naturally the greatest Men of the Year were those who gave their lives for our freedom.

My nomination is the most outstanding battle casualty of the war--Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

JACOB R. EHRLICH Miami Beach

Sirs:

. . . For greatest advance over starting point and expectations--Harry S. Truman.

DONALD F. SAVERY Kansas City

Sirs:

For Man of the Year I nominate Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi for his strong fight against legalized persecution of U.S. citizens under the proposed FEPC House bill No. 2232. . . .

When American business has to give up the fundamental right of hiring & firing and delegates this right to incompetent bureaucrats, the end of the America we have loved and fought for will be at hand.

S. G. THIGPEN Picayune, Miss.

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