The People, Yes & No
Sirs:
Re TIME, April 22:
"The U.S. people had never taken their obligations seriously."
"The U.S. people were indifferent."
I'm damn mad, as one of those people, to hear that accusation over & over again even if you include the Administration and the press in the indictment this time. . .
If the farmers don't want to kick in with the wheat, make them. This is still part, of the war, and twelve million of us weren't just asked to kick in with four or rive years of our time. Many farmers were exempted from fighting, to raise food for the country--you mean to tell me that they're permitted to keep the food after taking the exemption ? .. .
As I see it, everybody looks bad but the U.S. people.
ED GREBE
Dubuque, Iowa
Sirs:
To TIME, thanks for a triple lashing of the Administration, the U.S. press and the U.S. people concerning their roles in the world food situation.
A laxity uncharacteristic of this nation is doing more to develop ill will toward the U.S., and hunger and starvation for the people of Europe, than citizens of the U.S. dare to realize. How can we honestly sit down to the table with our consciences and not make sacrifices to aid pitiful and undernourished children ? . . .
ROBERT B. SHIPLEY Wilmette, Ill.
Advice on "Clean Hands"
Sirs:
May I, as an Englishman, thank Mr. Ernest Nathan [who said that none of Britain's colonial natives risked their lives for the Empire in the war against Japan--TIME, April 22] for his letter of lofty advice upon how an Englishman may obtain "clean hands?" I trust that the hand that wrote that letter is quite clean in the eyes of your millions of Negroes, not to mention the Indians who have for generations been concentrated in reservations. . . .
Would it not be a good idea, friend Nathan, if we gave up criticizing each other and kept an eye on what is coming to us? Twice before we have come together to conclude that which jointly we could have prevented. Many crosses will testify to this.
C. E. GROOM Edgware, Middlesex, England
Stand to Be Counted
Sirs:
I see in the press that Representative Rankin and his boys on the un-American Committee are looking for the names of all persons who were engaged in anti-Fascist activities.
Gladly will I volunteer my name, signed to this letter. I was a member of the U.S. Navy for 3 1/2 years, while that force was engaged in anti-Fascist activities. I am sure that Representative Rankin can get the names and addresses of about twelve million more persons . . . if he will enquire in the War & Navy Departments. . . .
GUY H. RANER JR. Los Angeles
Return to the Dark Ages?
Sirs:
It is strange how we of the occupation forces over here on the other side of the world sometimes find ourselves feeling as though we are now watching our country somewhat as we watched a football game or a school play back home--from a spectator's viewpoint. . . .
I would like to try to present a brief picture of how it looks to an American on this side. . . . It is disturbing to see examples of that same ideology against which the war was fought rearing their ugly heads again. Are we now to re-establish the class-consciousness which the war tempered so much--discrimination by color, nationality, religion, wealth, or even bars on the shoulders and stripes on the sleeve? Now that the fighting is over, is the Negro our inferior because his skin is dark, or is the Jew to be condemned for reasons unknown to me? . . . Can We pretend to have a "democracy," with organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan operating unrestricted? . . .
If this nation, with our allies, could thwart the greatest plot against world liberty and equality in history, why then can't we direct our unparalleled efforts for our cause to within our own borders, and purge the remaining domestic elements of dark-ages intolerance, ignorance, and disunity? . . .
ROBERT V. WILLIS
Korea
Ungypped American
Sirs:
A bit nasty, that one of yours about Jorge Pasquel [president of the Mexican Baseball League, who wrote a letter accusing Base-bailer Rogers Hornsby of "robbing" him of $2,000--TIME, April 22] and the Mexican people.
I have spent a number of years and had many business deals in that country, and have yet the first time to get gypped on any Mexican's promise to pay. They will haggle and bargain with the best of 'em, but once there has been a meeting of minds and a definite passing of the palabra, one doesn't have to worry much about promissory notes, mortgages and conditional sales. . . .One Mexican . . . has offered time & again to pay me a debt contracted many years ago by his father, who died insolvent. A very common occurrence which Americans view with astonishment and generally hold in contempt. . . .
JOHN P. EVERETT
Washington
P: "That one" was not TIME'S, but Rogers Hornsby's, who said: "Get all the money deposited on this side of the border. . . . They have funny standards down there."--ED.
Man against Hunger
Sirs:
I think Gus Kuester's is the most reassuring face that has appeared on TIME'S cover [April 29] in the past seven years. Why not Gus Kuester for the Man of This Year?
DAVID REICHGOTT
New Haven, Conn.
Sirs:
Now you are cooking with gas. It is the millions of small independents, the Gus Kuesters, who are the salt of the earth of this Republic. . . .
ARTHUR E. BAUER
Dayton
Sweden's "Flying Hare"
Sirs:
Fur-fowl have been bred successfully not only in Indiana [TIME, April 15], but also on our side of the Atlantic, in the woods of North Sweden.
The City Museum of Sundsvall, center of the timber industry, keeps the stuffed remnants of the only wild "skvader" hitherto known to have been caught. The skvader has a hare's head and legs (with the typical capercailzie red patch over the eyes), and the wings and hind body of a capercailzie. . . . Very little is known about the habits of the skvader. Owing to the great wing loading, its flyability is probably poor, if any. The taxidermist, who prepared it, died without revealing the place where he had caught the unique specimen. No zoologist has been able to say for certain whether the hare was the mother and the capercailzie the father, or vice versa. One school of scientists have even gone so far as to express doubts that the parents were alive at the time of their union. These unfounded suspicions have, however, been booed by leading Swedish lepo-ornith-ologists.
HANS BAGGER Linkoping, Sweden
P: TIME warns Sweden's lepo-ornithol-ogists not to boo too loudly, reminds them that Indiana's fur-fowl is known to lay only sterile eggs.--ED.
No Bartender He
Sirs:
Your account of the founding of A. P. Giannini's Bank of Italy in that remodeled San Francisco saloon [TIME, April 15] has one mistake. The assistant cashier, Armando Pedrini, was not the saloon's bartender. Armando Pedrini, graduate of the Royal Technical Institute of Bologna, was hired away from the Columbus Savings & Loan Society where he was a teller. Later, after he had hit the top in A. P.'s organization (president of National Bankitaly Co., Bankitaly Co. America, Corp. of America), he joined up with the Elisha Walker group which tried to take over Transamerica in 1931. By the time the plan had failed, old A. P. was glad to forget Armando Pedrini, who retired. Pedrini died in 1940, aged 69.
FRITZ GOODWIN
San Francisco
Frankie's Soul
Sirs:
I saw your picture of Frankie with Jo Davidson [TIME, April 22]. You of course selected the worst picture you could find of him so you could get off your quip: "Sinatra and his big bow tie . . . didn't look half so much like a heart-leaping popular idol as 63-year-old Davidson and his little one." I was not amused.
I could tell you that it isn't Frankie's looks. It's the "soul" in his singing, but you probably wouldn't be able to understand.
MARTHA ANNE KELLOG New York City
The Crete Underground
Sirs:
As usual, your issue of April 29 relentlessly chronicles the hebdomadal manifestations, outstanding and otherwise, of human pusillanimity, stupidity, and cupidity, culled throughout the world by an impressively multifarious staff. . . . But the one truly great event of the week--indeed, of the entire postwar period so far--is not even mentioned. I refer, of course, to the magnificent gesture of the survivors of the heroic Underground of Crete . . . who, by refusing Allied compensations almost to a man, gave to us all the privilege of holding our heads a little higher. . . .
E. C. TEODORESCU
Former Secretary of Legation of Rumania Charlottesville, Va.
P: I TIME seconds Reader Teodorescu in tribute to the heroic Cretans, 2,264 of whom refused to accept a penny to help replace the villages and monasteries destroyed by the occupying Germans in reprisal for the Cretans' help to the Allies in World War II.--ED.
Saddle-Leather, Men & Women
Sirs:
Regarding . . . Paramount's The Virginian [TiME, April 29], I have something to say. . . . I'll have you know The Virginian is no horse-opera. . . .
It is a classic, a saga of the West. There is no "gingham charm" to it. Its charm is rather that of tough saddle-leather, and of the strong, brave men and valiant, charming, delightful women who made the West. . . .
GENIE PHILBRICK DOWLIN Forsyth, Mont.
Word from a Friend
Sirs:
Good Neighbor Uncle Sam may be spared a red face if he stops to consider possibility of discipline by United Nations similar to that suggested against Spain. Reasons: a) persistent rumors of bigger & better atomic weapons being prepared by him; b) contemplated increase in his permanent fighting forces; c) insistence on retention of military bases overseas; d) saber-rattling speeches such as that uttered over the radio on Town Meeting of the Air, April 25, by ex-Governor Earle, tantamount to declaration of war on Russia. Are you not developing into aggressor nation ? Always hate to see good friend making a fool of himself.
P. V. HOBBES Montreal
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