CPI
Sirs:
The review of Words that Won the War in TIME, Oct. 16, marks a new high in misstatement.
1) The photograph of the lady in tights, carrying my wife's name, is a fake, without even a remote resemblance to justify the blunder.
2) Never at any time did the Committee issue a "Halt the Hun" poster.
3) The Committee had nothing whatsoever to do with The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. It was produced by a private company, and I disapproved of it absolutely as a vicious appeal to hate.
4) The Committee had nothing whatsoever to do with any of the Liberty Loan drives except a protest against many of the "atrocity" posters gotten out by the people in charge.
5) My "hand" could not have been seen in the speedy passage of the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act for the reason that I was then, and am now, opposed to such legislation.
6) You say that "as a member of the Censorship Board, Mr. Hyde-Creel had plenty of authority to crack down on the press." The Board of which I was a member had nothing whatsoever to do with the press, but was concerned entirely with censorship of the mails. I fought organization of this Board, considering it both stupid and unnecessary, but after its organization, persuaded the President to make me a member that I might minimize its activities. The right to exclude newspapers from the mails for seditious utterances was absolutely and entirely in the hands of the Postmaster General, and the manner in which he used it caused me to protest so vigorously that it broke off all personal relations between Mr. Burleson and myself.
If you will have your staff take the trouble to go back over the newspaper files, you will find that I was attacked almost daily by Senators, Congressmen and so-called patriotic societies because I would not issue "atrocity" stories and refused at all times to preach hate.
GEORGE CREEL
San Francisco, Calif.
> To the picture agency which supplied a miscaptioned actress, a sharp rebuke. Herewith the real Blanche Bates (who never wore tights) as she appeared in 1901 in Under Two Flags. A private company produced The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin, though the CPI (which effectively suppressed other movies) let it pass without comment. TIME stated that Creel "deplored the national hysteria which his Committee had so successfully fostered." In general, as Authors Mock & Larson amply showed, George Creel's CPI occupied the position of bellwether of the propaganda herd.--ED.
Pants Protest
Sirs:
Don't you know it's unkind to strip the illusions from a million or more worshippers of a radio star? . . .
I'm referring to your brief but brutal description of Ted Malone (TIME, Oct. 30). I admit his hair is thinning in front, but you scarcely notice it because of his gray-blue eyes that twinkle one minute, go dreamy the next. I admit, too, that if he could shorten his belt a couple of inches he'd look as young as he is instead of older. But personality plus and a million-dollar-smile make the belt line unimportant.
But I won't admit--in fact I protest--the "rumpled pants"! I've seen him nearly every day for the past three weeks . . . and not once with "rumpled pants." However, I am told he might have had "rumpled pants" one day, for during a downpour he took off his topcoat to put it around a young woman who had none. Perhaps that was the day. And for that act of chivalry you have publicly proclaimed him a wearer of "rumpled pants"! Tough on Ted 'cause it isn't true. He's most particular about his clothes.
Rescind the "rumpled pants," and I'll still be a TIME booster.
MARGARET RUSH
Portland, Ore.
Sirs:
Orchids to Ted Malone for his reputed defrosting of U. S. wives. It should be said, however, that to millions of American women Mr. Malone's lush whisperings are merely emetic.
KATE STERNE
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
Quietus
Sirs:
In TIME, Oct. 30, you quote the New York Times as saying: "Men and women in Salem, two centuries ago, were burned for witchcraft far less amazing. . . ." Cannot your magazine help to put the quietus on this old lie, which crops up periodically? No witches were ever burned in New England: a number were hanged and one was pressed to death--a record of which we are not proud, but at least we are not guilty of the more cruel accusation.
PHILIP H. COOK, M.D.
Worcester, Mass.
> Unburied, still restless is the antique lie about Salem witch-burning. Many a New England witch suspect was hanged; one (Giles Cory of Salem) was pressed to death; none was burned. --ED.
Quest for Certainty
Sirs:
My physics-teacher husband and I enjoyed your comment re John Dewey's magnificent unintelligibility (TIME, Oct. 30).
Here's our favorite. We copied it years ago from The Quest for Certainty. . . .
"When, on the other hand, it is seen that the object of knowledge is prospective and eventual, being the result of inferential or reflective operations which redispose what was antecedently existent, the subject matters called respectively sensible and conceptual are seen to be complementary in effective direction of inquiry to an intelligible conclusion."
MRS. DEWEY MINER
Kansas City, Mo.
Add Underscore
Sirs:
It is rare indeed the opportunity that one has of mentioning an error in your fine research staff. However, in the issue of Oct. 23, p. 30, there is the statement: "Although one old battleship, the Britannia, was downed by submarines two days before the Armistice in 1918, not a single capital ship (my underscore) of the Grand Fleet was torpedoed by a submarine during the whole of the War. . . ."
If my memory serves me, Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty (no kin, unfortunately) had as his flagship the Lion and was leading five battle cruisers just before the battle of Jutland, May 1916. At that time the Lion was torpedoed and put out of commission, and Admiral Beatty transferred his flag to another ship. . . .
CROOM BEATTY III
Hamden, Conn.
> To his own underscore, let Reader Beatty add another for TIME. Shellfire, not torpedoes, wrecked Lion at the Battle of Jutland (where no submarine action occurred).--ED.
Cliveden Set
Sirs:
Enclosed letter from my sister in England may be of interest as another letter on war doings. She is a teacher in London schools and has been evacuated with a group of children.
L. M. GAUNTLETT
Glendale, Calif.
Dear Len:
I am evacuated from London with 84 little girls & boys--two to four years old. One morning the Head came along and said "Evacuation tomorrow at 8:15 a.m." At last it had come. Ever since last September the schools have been preparing every detail. All parents had to fill in forms if they wished their children to go with the school in charge of the Teaching Staff. Badges had to be made for every child, gas mask cases, and some kind of kit bag for their food for 24 hours and their change of clothes. . . . No one knew where their billet would be until arrival. In the poorer schools, it was a pathetic sight to see the rags on the children & nothing in their pillowcase, which was all they could get for a kit bag.
Miss Willis with whom I share the flat at Hampstead, is Head of an Infants School of 300. All didn't register to go, but there were the elder brothers & sisters who could be included with the little ones if their parents wished, and vice versa, but they mostly chose to leave the little ones in their own environment and let the elders join them. Some little ones went to the upper school, but the teachers were glad not to have them! . . .
It was a terribly wearing time. They lost their labels, the parents kept altering their minds & going on or coming off the register & each day returns had to go to County Hall & to Government Offices. . . .
Miss Willis' three departments number about 900, & they started off at 8:45 to walk, dragging their bags, to their arranged place of transport. There, all was a seething mass of children from schools all round, & frantic officials, trying to get them into the trains. They were put in just anywhere, & schools have got separated. The head master is in Scotland with 25 boys--Miss Willis is at Henley-on-Thames with seven members of the infants' and men's staff. They are having half sessions in the Village School. One room with all the village children in the morning, the same & only room for the Bevington children from 1:15 to 5:30. It is chaos of course, & can't last. The girls' school head is somewhere else with some staff & children. I have heard from friends that the same has happened to them. Children & staff are billeted in cottages, houses, mansions, in a hopelessly mixed way. Some have clothes, some have one rag . . . .
. . . The schools are scattered all over England & Scotland. My school is at Shirley near Croydon, and Miss Willis' in Kensington--and we have discovered each other quite near! Taplow Lodge is an empty house (Georgian) lent by Lady Astor. About 20 rooms, and quite all right as temporary quarters. There is no furniture. The babies' mattresses are on the floor--five large rooms full. Most of the staff are managing in the servants' quarters, & the Head & I have a furnished bedroom each--that is to say a few necessaries put in, & a comfortable bed.
All this happened on Sept. 1 and we have been here a month on Friday. It seems like years, & that other life of privacy belongs to the past, but it will come again. . . .
DOT
Taplow Lodge
Cliveden
Taplow
Bucks, England
Silent
Sirs:
Thank you for telling us (TIME, Oct. 30) what the English poets who were the youth of 1914 are doing under the impact of the new war. Would it be possible to elicit a statement of their present mental attitudes from Sassoon and Graves? They are of the tried troops of both action and thought, at once brave soldiers and honest men. It is appropriate to recall that Sassoon in 1917 made a public protest against the prolongation of the war in the following words:
"I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation."
After making this protest Sassoon continued in the ranks. What either of these poets have to say should be of moment to all intellectually honest people of whatever nationality. Sassoon is the man to whom Wilfred Owen addressed his poem, The Next War:
We laughed, knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death--for Life; not men--for flags. . . .
CATHERINE LILLIS-NEVINS
New York City
> If and when Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves et al. make a public statement, TIME will report it.--ED.
Stopgap
Sirs:
In this part of the country, when someone jumps into a gap in the conversation with this remark: "I heard a most extraordinary story the other day"--anyone may interrupt with "Stop right there! I know what you are going to tell us. A friend of yours, or someone's sister, or your aunt's cousin, picked up in her car a woman who was walking wearily along the street. She got into the back seat and after a silence announced 'Someone will die in this car today.' After the driver had recovered a little, she went on 'Hitler will die on . . . (varying dates according to the version of the story).' The driver, now thoroughly scared, put her uncomfortable passenger out at the next corner and drove on. She was stopped at the next crossroads by a policeman who asked her to take a badly injured man to the hospital. She could not well refuse and the policeman and casualty got into the back seat. On the way to the hospital the man died."
I have heard this story five times in different parts of New England. Yesterday I read in the latest copy of The New Yorker--from the letter from Paris--the following: ". . . A gipsy woman got into an autobus and sat down next to a Parisienne who moved her handbag out of the gipsy's reach. The gipsy said, 'Why do you do that when you have only 18 francs in your bag?' The woman had exactly that sum. Then the gipsy told each of the other passengers how much he or she had, down to the last sou. 'Since you know so much,' one passenger asked, 'tell us when Hitler will die.' 'On December second,' the gipsy said, and got out at the next stop."
This must be the French cousin of our story. Or is ours the American version of the French story? Is there an English cousin? Will this story pop up wherever Hitler's mere existence is a blight or a threat? It is almost a folk tale already. I should like to hear further news of it.
D. W. FLINT
Concord, N. H.
> Stop right there!--ED.
Major Bob's Boys
Sirs:
Hearty congratulations to TIME for recalling its Sports Editor from the Antarctic coverage of ice hockey among the penguins, or wherever he has been during Major Bob Neyland's twelve years as Head Football Coach at the University of Tennessee!
He should, however, brush up on what has been happening throughout the long years of his absence before bursting forth with any such smug, sectionalistic, and effete example of ignorance as his "minor league," "hillbilly," and "subsidized players" effort in TIME, Oct. 30. True, circumstances have forced him to dig up a few bouquets to toss at this year's team and "the Major," but his apparent reluctance to do so and his "scoop" discovery of Tennessee as a major league team have forced this constant reader of TIME to take up his pen and write his first letter to an editor.
To begin with, Tennessee has had winning football teams, studded with All-America and All-Southern players, bedecked with the scalps of the best teams in the country, so long under Neyland that it is rumored that the football extras of the Knoxville newspapers are made up before the games--leaving only the space for the score to be filled in when the results of the slaughter come over the wire. (Egad! And slight pause to cool.)
. . . If Tennessee has just attained to the major league of college football this year, then the Yankees were unheard of before their invasion of Cincinnati and Joe Louis was just another Detroit boy with a bad temper before he pommelled Lou Nova. . . .
DONALD McSwEEN
Tenn. '37
Lebanon, Tenn.
> For Tennessee's major league team, three old-fashioned cheers! --ED.
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