Spoils of War

Sirs:

I read your article about the German scientists [TIME, Dec. 9] and almost cried with disgust. . . .

I am a veteran of almost three years overseas--serving with the field artillery in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. I saw American boys killed by weapons invented by these same Nazis we are now catering to. I read of all the civilians killed by these fiendish weapons.

These scientists are now, and were, Nazis. They worked for and believed in a system that thousands of American boys died fighting to erase forever from this earth.

Why should they have the chance to become citizens? Why didn't we bring the late Field Marshal Keitel and General Jodl here to teach at West Point on the art of war? It makes as much sense.

I know that I do not want to be a citizen of the same country as these Nazis. . . .

HENRY H. BUHLER Minneapolis

McDali's Macbeth

Sirs:

Your review of Dali's illustrated version of Macbeth [TIME, Dec. 9] was superb.

JOHN T. WILSON Worcester, Mass.

Sirs:

SCENE: A library. CHARACTERS: Two TIME readers, Scotch highballs in hand, discussing TIME (Dec. 9, 1946). ist T.R.: How now, reader, what TIME this

day? 2nd T.R.: Alas, what TIME indeed; this anon

TIME.

ist T.R.: Speak out, wordster! 2nd T.R.: Last night, eleven o'clock, when I had read Macbeth's review in TIME, its tongue in

cheek Because McDali's crutch has touched our

Will And added naught to Shakespeare's tragic

verse,

Or so TIME says but, oh, so wittily, I could not sleep because I did not know Who wrote the piece I chuckled over so. ist T.R.: Ah, yes, I see now what you mean

--anon.

'Tis irritating, no ? So why not write The magazine and ask TIME who he was (Or she) who wrote the piece with such

finesse ? 2nd T.R.: Forsooth and I shall send this day

to TIME By one whom rain nor snow nor sleet can

keep From his appointed round (but miners can)

A tale of woe about my sleepless night. Pray let TIME name in issues yet to come The poet who so deftly called the strokes Of Dali that they turned on Salvador.

WINIFRED THOMPSON Beverly Hills, Calif.

P:Si monumentum requiris, circumspice (at Page 11, that is).--ED.

No Grouse, Eh?

Sirs:

You unintentionally do us a disservice [when you say] ". . . practically no ruffed grouse" [TIME, Dec. 9].

Some old fool up here has the same idea, and may succeed in shortening our grouse season by two weeks, next legislature. . . . We could have got our limit many times over. Hurricane blowdown full of them. So thick that cats, owls, fox, etc., are getting many more than hunters. We've seen eight in one tree this season, never went out a day without flushing at least 20 in short time. No apples this year, consequently all birds in thick woods, feeding on thornapples, hornbeam buds, and ground seeds. . . .

FRANCIS W. TOLMAN NEWTON F. TOLMAN Chesham, N.H.

After the Fire

Sirs:

The recent disaster at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta [TIME, Dec. 16], when fire took the lives of 122 people, will, I sincerely hope, cause a nationwide drive to compel every hotel in the land to place a coil of stout rope in each & every room.

H. C. ADAMS Toronto

Sirs:

. . . The only real precautions which may be taken against such a disaster are the use of nonflammable materials in construction, and the installation of an effective sprinkler system which might halt a fire at its origin. . . .

LAWRENCE MCCARTHY Washington

Sirs:

. . . Japan, with its flimsy construction, was said to be No. i opportunity for fire, but I doubt if many died except from bomb contact or atom-bomb poison, because they could get out.

In American hotels (and numerous apartment houses) we can't get out. This is the perfect example of civilization overreaching itself, providing better facilities, while incorporating less safety.

RAY K. DANIEL St. Augustine, Fla.

Sirs:

... I suggest that an automatic fire-alarm system, which could sound an alarm in every hotel room ... be ... required either by city ordinance or federal law. The present I inadequate protection is a horrible menace to millions. . . .

ROBERT I. LANSBURGH Asheville, N.C.

Or a Hairy Ape?

Sirs:

Your accurate piece on how self and wife were given the boot, or heave-ho, from the Social Register [TIME, Dec. 16] was not called to my attention. I found it myself. . . .

There was a hint, through post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning, that one reason for giving us the bums' rush lay in the fact that I had spent part of the year in writing a book about a Third Avenue bar [Third Avenue, New York; Little, Brown; $2]. This is close, but no cigar; I understand that in reality, my failure to report three times weekly in Tim Costello's Social Register Saloon on Third Avenue, a grogshop sometimes known as the Almanac de Gotha Bar & Grill, was one cause of my dismissal. . . .

Another theory, which may be the one that historians will support, is that I, at least, did not belong, any more than Eugene O'Neill's Hairy Ape.

JOHN (HEARTBROKEN) McNuLTY New York City

Screams from a Balcony

Sirs:

In recent months I, as well as many of my associates, have regarded with increasing alarm the rapid demobilization of not only our entire armed strength, but also the small army of occupation we are maintaining in the ETO. . . .

The cruel minds of the German people know only too well that if they showed their true feelings of everlasting hatred, vengeance, and arrogance, we would maintain a rigid, good-sized, well-disciplined occupational force. So their cunning minds lead them to bow over backwards, knowing that this attitude will soon reassure us that these poor misled people have learned their lesson. So we will go home and live happily ever after--until another Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, or Hitler climbs onto a balcony and starts screaming. . . .

T. MALLIN ist Lieutenant, Air Corps % Postmaster New York City

Speaking of Clarinets

Sirs:

Let TIME'S critic listen again before passing judgment on one of Brahms's last and most mature works, the Second Clarinet Sonata [TIME, Nov. 25]. Far from banality, this, the greatest of all clarinet sonatas, has the warmth and depth that only a Brahms could give to Romantic music. . . .

CHARLES C. PETERSON Fort Myer, Va.

Sirs:

May I assure you that the work is not only of sheer beauty and loveliness from beginning to end, and one of this composer's ripest works, but one of the gems of modern chamber music?

ERWIN SILBER

Cleveland

Waltzing Mice: I Ib.

Sirs:

Weighing a pound of waltzing mice [TiME, Dec. 9] is not so difficult as you seem to think. First, you play your mice a recording of Die Fledermaus, and when they begin waltzing, you turn down the volume and start reading to them out of Edmund Wilson's Memoirs of Hecate County. This puts the mice to sleep. So you gently place them upon a scale, couple by couple, until it shows a full pound. Then you turn up the volume, and the mice wake up and again go into their dance. Result: a pound of waltzing mice.

CHARLES T. KIRK Brooklyn

Look Again, Mr. Orwell

Sirs:

British Author George Orwell's comments on our women, their tastes, and their fashion magazines [TIME, Dec. 9] are observant and articulate. However, Mr. Orwell's premise is shaky if he would judge our ladies by an inspection of the fashion magazines and of the "overbred, exhausted, even decadent" mannequins therein. . . .

A few days in any farm, community would reveal to even a critical British traveler that surprisingly few of the girls or their mamas are pale and wan, with "narrow hips . . . and slender, nonprehensile hands." He would discover in any small town, and perhaps be cheered to learn, that not all of the homes consist of a "spectacled, crushed-looking man" dominated by a starved and sterile-appearing clotheshorse. . . .

Far closer to the American woman's ideal is the attractive and productive lady of the home, the farm, the office, who offers useful goods or services for the benefit of herself, her family and her country.

WILLIAM MULHALL Los Angeles

Sirs:

I should like to assure George Orwell there are still plenty of dandelions among the orchids in the American scene. .

VIRGINIA JACKSON

Arlington, Va.

A Lie, He Says

Sirs:

You like many other publishers who have come under the influence of the communistic propaganda machine in this country have made a false statement about this writer in TIME [Nov. 25] and which we are demanding a retraction of same.

You repeated a lie by ... John Roy Carlson that this writer was a member of the "Bund" and a Klansman, both of these statements are false and I will submit an affidavit under oath that I never made application for membership into the German-American Bund at any time, never paid dues therein, never carried a membership card, never attended even one of its membership meetings. . . .

Now insofar as the "Klan" is concerned, I never belonged to the Klan, never made application for membership in the same, never donned a Robe, never took an OATH in the same. . . .

It is true that I have charged that their exists an unholy alliance between the Roman Catholic-controlled political machine in New York City and State, and the Jew-Communist-controlled political machine under the guidence of Governor Thomas E. Dewey, and that the Protestants of City and State of New York are civic and political outcasts, more I will back this up with facts and figures, how about publishing that statement?

EDWARD JAMES SMYTHE Executive Chairman Protestant War Veterans of the U.S. Washington

P: Herewith (minus scurrility) the case of bigot Smythe--such as it is.--ED.

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