"Suckers" Sirs:
TIME [April 6] requests the comments of disabled veterans on the "Sucker" ad. My own personal reaction is one of mild amusement, for the following reasons.
I was discharged at Fort Sheridan with a disability of 28%. The Examining Board looked over the remaining 72% and decided there was just enough left to make a good chemical engineer. My disability, gentle reader, was from the neck up.
Previous to my enlistment in the Chemical Warfare Service, I had been a powder maker for the du Pont Powder Co. for three years; three years in which I had learned the value of technical training by watching men who had it promoted over my head because I didn't have it. Strange as it may seem, I bowed to the Board's ukase.
During the next 45 months Uncle Sam paid me $4,500 for board and clothes, and handed another thousand to the Bursar and the vendors of textbooks, for books, tuition, laboratory fees etc. On Commencement Day I placed third in a class of 22. Uncle handed me $200 and his blessing, suggesting that I find a job before the $200 ran out. I located one in the paper game and am still in it.
Now I know that $5,700, to a Princeton Punk, is just Papa's check, with his signature in the lower right hand corner and the $5,700 just above it, but to a mere powder monkey it's a lot to save in two years. If some Punk tries to burn me up with "Hello, Sucker," I'll plum incinerate him with an equally original "Says You." I fail to see where anyone made a sucker out of me.
Of course, some of the 28% disability still carries on at the Old Home, and the rest of it returns to the Ancestral Manor for a more or less extended visit now and then. Still, I was always. told, "A reasonable number of fleas is a good thing for a dog, it gives him something to make him forget his other troubles," such as Vassar Virgins, Princeton Punks, Peaceways and other hard-pressed exhibitionists.
As long as I live I'll never be able to forget I tangled with the Hun, but for the past 17 years I have tried desperately hard to let the rest of the world forget it. Edith Wynner to the contrary, men in general, who have been in a front-line dressing station during an attack, who have chewed up a towel or two to keep their screams from blending with the shrieks and moans of the endless "dressing hours," do not goose step, wave flags, or cry for more and better wars. Neither are they yellow. I speak with an authority acquired in 18 months spent in such widely separated military hospitals as Royat, Brest, Fox Hills, Cape May, Camp Dodge and Fort Sheridan. Edith's contacts with war-shattered wrecks must have been more extensive than mine.
HARRY W. GLENN
Ex-Buck Private, Company B
First Gas Regiment
Camas, Wash.
Sirs:
If being a wounded War veteran makes a man a "sucker" some of us will be proud of the title. But how a picture, as shown by World Peaceways, will do anything but add to the heavy heart burden our buddies are carrying, I fail to see. Surely those in wheelchairs know best of all the stark tragedy of war. Some of us are still suckers enough to believe we were fighting on the side of democracy. We thought so in 1917; we think so now. But if the whole discussion of patriotism and war is to be the subject for a high-powered advertising campaign, may I suggest two follow-up pictures: 1) "Hello, Head Sucker"--and paint in his wheelchair our broken War President who was so fooled by world events as to have said "Germany has once more said that force and force alone shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men; whether right as we conceive it, or dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destiny of mankind"--April 6, 1917. 2) "Hello, Original Suckers"--and show Captains Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur, who fought in far away North Africa to break up one of the original rackets when our nation was still a baby. Too bad we did not have some smug society to tell them they were not fighting for men's rights, but rather to bring prosperity to the shipbuilding industry.
If the World Peaceways will save their money until another world war comes, and then try to preserve the thin veneer of U. S. traditions on some of our foreign groups, they will better serve. Have them bring pressure on those racial and religious organizations that are forever trying to get us to poke our nose into other nations' affairs while giving lip service to peace. The "Hello, Sucker" picture was bush league stuff.
W. A. FINE JR.
4th Division
New York City
Fairness to Nudists
Sirs:
The item under Miscellany in TIME, April 6, may be newsworthy and as such has its place in your magazine.
However, in all fairness to the thousands of sincere nudists to whom such display as "Tanya" Cubitt's at San Diego is disgusting, why not make even brief mention of the fact that there is not and could not possibly be any remote connection between intelligent serious-minded Nudists and this other obviously Midway-type peepshow, for it is nothing else.
M. B. NELSON
Sloat, Calif.
Love & Profit
Sirs:
Under the title "Labor of Love," TIME of the April 13 issue refers to Simon and Schuster's "assertation that music publishing is for them ... a labor of love." Neither this nor the other Mr. S. has ever asserted that Essandess publish music as a labor of love. When we published the Schnabel edition of the Beethoven Sonatas in November I bet our sales-manager we'd break even on the venture within 14 months, and at lunch today volunteered to increase that bet. The Godowsky piano arrangements were published in "the same way: not as a six-weeks' bestseller, but as a work which through sheer merit and a halfway decent publishing job would sooner or later make its way into the black keys--I mean figures. I would appreciate your printing this little manifesto for two reasons: 1) Lest Papa Godowsky (who reads TIME) misinterpret our motive. 2) Lest the thousands of composers among your 600,000 readers deluge Brother Hilb with their manuscripts. Then, if this letter is not already too long, may I make an extremely mild protest at your emphasis upon our "profitable puzzle-&-game volumes." It is true: twelve years ago this month we published the first of a series of Cross Word Puzzle Books which turned out to be a pleasant and profitable venture. Since that time, however, we have published more than 400 books, less than 12% of which have been game and puzzle books. . . .
RICHARD L. SIMON
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
New York City
"Great Lovers"
Sirs:
Never has the U. S. municipal judiciary sunk so low ... as when Judge Sylvain Lazarus of the San Francisco municipal court vilified and insulted the Filipino people (TIME, April 13).
Granted that the Filipinos brought before his bench have committed heinous crimes from a to z. That does not necessarily mean that the Filipino people by and large are criminals.
His dissertations on the "arts of love" by the Filipinos cannot hide the ugly fact that the hatred of race-conscious Californians against Filipinos is purely from the economic standpoint. Filipino labor competes with white labor. . . .
And as for the Filipinos being "great lovers," there is nothing surprising about that. We Filipinos, however poor, are taught from the cradle up to respect and love our women. That's why our divorce rate is nil compared with the State of which Judge Lazarus is a proud son. If to respect and love womenfolks is savagery, then make the most of it, Judge. We plead guilty.
ERNEST D. ILUSTRE
Chicago, Ill.
Uninstructed Republicans
Sirs:
An article appearing in TIME, April 6, well illustrates how far the opponents of the proposed uninstructed delegation from California to the Republican National Convention will go in their efforts to becloud the real issue between the two rival tickets. This article, after explaining that a steering committee of 21 and a slate of 44 delegates were named to promote the free ticket of uninstructed delegates, proceeds to state that a certain gentleman of Los Angeles [General Manager George Young of the Los Angeles Examiner] "quietly mailed a questionnaire, 'Who is your favorite choice for Presidential candidate?' to the 44 members of the uninstructed slate and the 21 members of the steering committee. Mistaking the questionnaire for a general straw vote, all but one of the 65 replied. The score: Hoover, 47; Landon, 17."
The article then proceeds to refer to the uninstructed delegation as Mr. Hoover's delegation. I submit that such a representative group of men and women as those on these two committees would not be foolish enough to make such a mistake; but I was genuinely surprised that your apparently prejudiced correspondent entirely overlooked the fact that although the alleged straw ballot accounts for 64 votes, 10 of the 21 members of the steering committee are included among the 44 delegates which would leave only 55 persons capable of voting. Moreover I have learned from personal inquiry that a number of the delegates never replied to the questionnaire at all. It so happens that I was appointed on the uninstructed delegation as a representative farmer and it also happens that those selecting the ticket knew that I favored Governor Landon and that I intended to vote for him at the convention; but no pledge or other commitment of any kind was asked of me nor, so far as I know, of any other member of the delegation. The important thing to remember is that the uninstructed delegation was originally conceived for the purpose of combatting the proposed Merriam delegation, which was to have consisted of 44 Merriam followers definitely pledged to support his candidacy for President of the U. S. A number of leading citizens, including the vast majority of the young members of the Republican Assembly, felt that a better candidate might possibly be found for this exalted position than our Governor, and that it would be a great mistake to send a delegation to Cleveland hog-tied and sworn to fight for him to the last ditch.
PHILIP BANCROFT
Walnut Creek, Calif.
TIME'S highly reliable San Francisco source, while still maintaining that the Examiner's poll took place, now admits that some of the delegates might have scrapped their questionnaires without replying.--ED.
Across the Corridor
Sirs:
Thousands of Girard College men will have appreciated your generous article on Stephen Girard, Girard College and Doctor Herrick [TIME, April]; especial appreciation will be felt by those of us who have wandered beyond Passyunk.
Many holidays during my impressionable moppetry were bewildered into discouragement from a child's losing argument on the Christian influence of Girard College and the basic Christian intentions of Stephen Girard in connection therewith as prescribed in his unique will. I have fled from my tormentors of 1912; your accurate article will answer the tormentors of 1936.
A dynamic maxim attributed to Stephen Girard reads: "My deeds must be my life; when I am dead my actions must speak for me." We hope Christian manhood leaving Girard College is eloquent action; a mere educational plant done up in Chester County marble is rather static--entirely speechless!
If some of the historical effort expended on the tragedy of Benedict Arnold should be devoted to the patriotic inspirations of Stephen Girard as he engendered them in the War of 1812, this country would have another hero. Patriotic heroes are a welcome variety of politics.
We hope some day to see in San Francisco's Civic Centre--a charming crossroads--a bust of Stephen Girard, with that wistful look of human kindness that begets a rich man's philanthropy, where he might smile at Leland Stanford across the corridor of time.
J. BAIN GRIFFITH
Detroit, Mich.
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