Peace Comes Home to Roost

Sirs: Is it not strange that the same people who were so recently giving their sons and moral support to a bloody war so we might have peace, have now begun to cry about their homestead rights when their land is needed to house the symbol of peace? JOHN T. CROWE, M.D. St. Louis

Curmudgeon Bussed, Cussed

Sirs: Famous sayings in history brought up to date: "Public officials are the trustees of the people."--Grover Cleveland.

Ok what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive!--Sir Walter Scott.

"I would dare to dispute the integrity of the President on any occasion my country's welfare demanded it. ... After all, the President of the United States is neither an absolute monarch nor a descendant of a sun goddess."--Harold Ickes.

For Man of the Year for 1946 I nominate honest, fearless, and the most capable man in the U.S.--The Honorable Harold L. Ickes. F. B. GRIFFITH Alexandria, Minn.

Sirs: If, on Feb. 13, you felt a great breeze from out of the West, don't be puzzled. It was just a great sigh of relief from the people of the West that the Old Curmudgeon, Harold L. Ickes, had, at long last, resigned. ... So many of us have lost our homes here in the West through the action of Mr. Ickes in setting aside great tracts for the scenery. . . . ANN COOPER Cody, Wyo.

See Here, TIME

Sirs: In your article on the Johannes Steel campaign in the issue of Feb. 18, your statement that I "agreed to head a veterans' committee already heavily loaded with other left-wingers" is neither correct nor fair. I endorsed Mr. Steel as a candidate of the American Labor Party, but I have taken no active part in this or any other political campaign, and I have not "headed a committee" since I left high school. I am not sure what the "left wing" consists of this season, but your article leads me to believe that my politics are much clearer to you than they are to me. In the four months since I was released from the Army I have made statements advocating 1) racial tolerance, 2) open-mindedness in labor-management disputes, and 3) correction of the Army's caste system. . . . Being tagged a left-winger (which I don't think I am) makes for all sorts of difficulties which I don't feel I have deserved. It not only makes my good Republican neighbors view me with suspicion and distrust, but it fills my mail with invitations to make talks or write articles for all sorts of political organizations which I wish would leave me the hell alone. . . . MARION HARGROVE Chicago

P: TIME erred; harried Reader Hargrove was elected to head the veterans' committee but declined to serve.--ED.

Politics as Usual

Sirs:

My duties . . . carried me by Pier 6 yesterday where I spotted the sleek German cruiser Prinz Eugen. ... I went topside and sighted a trio of Kraut sailors frying spuds in a section of the galley. With inadequate college German I questioned the sailors carefully, with an eye toward their ideologies. I learned that . . . the Atom Bomb was a development of German science, that Hitler was dead, that given four months Germany could have won, that freedom of speech was a sickness enjoyed by democracies and not compatible to German Natur.

To my amazement, expecting to find these common men of the German Navy a beaten lot, I found arrogance and firm belief in Nazi doctrine. Peculiarly, Goring was referred to as "that bastard." In the midst of my enlightenment a Kraut C.P.O. stuck his neck through the watertight door intoning in guttural Low German the fear that I was a reporter--"Seid still!" Why do we continue to fail so miserably? (NAVY ENSIGN'S NAME WITHHELD) Philadelphia

Why Strike?

Sirs: What are these people striking for anyway ?

In your Feb. 4 issue you inform a surprised world that since V-E day to the end of 1945, 32,000,000 man hours and $257,000,000 in wages were lost in strikes. My slide rule tells me that the strikers must have been making $8.03 an hour at that rate. . . . H. KING HEDINGER New York City

P: TIME should have said man days. --ED.

Vague, Amateurish Lysenko

Sirs:

In your review of Lysenko's book, Heredity and its Variability [TIME, Feb. 11], you conclude: "If Lysenko's . . . methods [of stimulating organisms to new directions of growth] really work, the world has a powerful method of adapting plants and animals to the needs of man." It may be stated that methods like those of Lysenko have been tested for decades before his time by friends and foes and neutrals and their verdict has been: "They don't work!" Lysenko has not caused a revolution but has rather gone back to the prescientific era in genetics. Lysenko's experiments are reported without exact data and his interpretations are deduced from vague, amateurish concepts. . . . Genetics is a progressive science, welcoming expert criticism, but Lysenko's is disappointing. CURT STERN Professor of Experimental Zoology University of Rochester Rochester N.Y.

Remembrance of Things Past

Sirs: Who is your prodigiously presumptuous reader [TIME Letters, Feb. 18] so unlettered that he reports he was bored by your fine story on Craig Rice's important place in a highly significant field of letters? I suggest he read Having Wonderful Crime and then tell us honestly if he is still bored. I doubt that Craig Rice ever bored anybody. When we were both practically flunking a "journalism" course at San Diego State College, I can guarantee it was not because she was dull. In fact, I view with alarm your report that at the age of 18 (see cut) she was a "thin, dried-up little girl who was very plain." Not so. She was a very satisfactory armful. . . . JAMES CRENSHAW Herald and Express Los Angeles

Grown Up?

Sirs: Some several years ago I subscribed to TIME. After a period I became so impatient with the policy of your so facetiously handling the news that I discontinued the magazine. . . .

I [am] gratified to find that your magazine has now matured. I am not a journalist and so do not pretend to set your policy. You . . . might be pleased to know that at least one of your ex-readers is considering returning to TIME as a source of condensed news. . . .

Ross PAULL

Colonel, A.U.S. Denver

Wolfe! Wolfe!

Sirs: In the last issue of your magazine [TIME, Feb. 11] you included a discussion of American fiction during the past 30 or 40 years. . . . You appeared to apologize for the fact that the outstanding novelists of the last decade were Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and John O'Hara. Pardon us, but we had thought that no one need apologize for the splendid writings of these men. However, our real issue with you is the fact that you omitted Thomas Wolfe from your list of our best authors. This is incredible. . . . Although they are unorthodox, his novels which are sheer poetry in spots are well on their way toward becoming American classics that are required reading for any student of literature. . . . JOHN C. HENCHEL E. L. GALLIGAN Philadelphia

Weighted, Bigoted?

Sirs: Perhaps you would be interested in knowing how the G.I.s out here feel about [Private] Hicswa, who was court-martialed, sentenced to die for the murder of a Japanese [TIME, Jan. 28]. The men agree that he should be punished--with a jail term--but that death is too severe. . . . We disagree with your statement that the Stateside papers "overplayed [Hicswa] . . . outrageously." The Army court-martial system is so weighted and bigoted, especially toward the enlisted man, that we feel that any and all court-martial cases should be brought before the American public. . . . (CPL.) ART YELLEN [AND FOUR OTHER SERVICEMEN] Guam

Under the Carpet

Sirs: Lichfield prison [TIME, Dec. 31] is more proof that the Army is badly in need of ... an Inspector General's Department interested in uncovering facts. It has been our experience that when the I.G. plans a visit, he warns the victim ahead of time to have all the dirt under the carpet. . . . [SERVICEMEN'S NAMES WITHHELD] New Delhi, India

A Pat for Army Relief

Sirs:

. . . There have been so many criticisms of the Army's waste of materiel and bungling in general. But there is one branch of the Army which has received very little publicity and which has done "a wonderful job . . . the Army Emergency Relief. I know from my own experience that the A.E.R. is most generous about lending money or giving it outright where the soldier or his family is unable to repay a loan. . . . With us it was a question of allotment checks being six months behind schedule. I know that the A.E.R. has helped hundreds of service families in just such a predicament. . . . Why not give it a big pat on the back? (MRS.) MARGARET K. BENTLEY Jamestown, N.Y.

Red Hats, Tin Horns

Sirs:

. . . Do you not think we have given about enough publicity to "red hats" and "tin horns" of Roman Catholicism? They have rights, but should these rights be disproportionate? Is there not any room for at least a few favorable reports of significant developments in the Protestant Church. . . ? Publicity is given to one, [Senator] Bob Wagner, who has accepted baptism from the hand of a Roman Catholic priest [TIME, Feb. 11], Why not be fair next week and publish an account of the conversion of one of several Roman Catholic priests who have entered the Protestant Church in America? . . . (REV.) DONALD MACLEOD Princeton, N.J.

P: TIME does not deal in publicity, but in news.--ED.

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