Suspicion
Sirs:
Your report on "Babes in the Sea" in the Sept. 30 issue strikes me as a considerable departure from your usual editorial objectivity. Apparently you have accepted the British story whole cloth, without any examination of the details.
First an explosion "threw the vessel violently on its beams"--something like a car being tipped over on its sides; your nautical editor take note--"next minute a second torpedo crashed into the engine room." Whence the torpedoes, TIME? Did anyone see them? Or are they just part of the British report?
They will bear looking into. First, it was a dark night, which makes torpedoing a very hard job, even assuming that by pure chance the vessel should have been discerned--she was showing no lights, I presume. More important, it was an exceedingly stormy night: high wind, mountainous waves, rain and spray. Ask a naval expert about this--he will probably tell you that effective submarine operations under such conditions are all but impossible. Secondly, two torpedoes were reported, which is strange, considering the relative unimportance of a passenger vessel. . . .
Perhaps you will agree with me that the story has its dubious side. A more logical conclusion is that the "torpedoed" vessel in convoy met with an accident of a quite different nature. Possibly an internal explosion--sabotage, if you will--such as a boiler explosion; the power is sufficient. Or perhaps a collision with another ship: in the darkness somebody zigged when he should have zagged. In either case an alert British propagandist could make excellent capital of the mishap--with a rigid and sympathetic censorship holding up the news until the collective stories should hang together fairly well. . . .
MERLE B. McKAIG
Yeadon, Pa.
>Reader McKaig is too suspicious because: 1) Other ships have been torpedoed at night. 2) Modern submarines can fire torpedoes in high seas. 3) It would be normal to fire at least two torpedoes, since high seas lessen accuracy. 4) The City of Benares (11,801 tons) was a catch worth two torpedoes. 5) A boiler or other internal explosion would blow up through the decks, tend to produce a slow sinking (The City of Benares sank within half an hour). 6) That week (Sept. 15-22) Germany claimed the sinking of 201,862 tons of shipping and the British acknowledged a loss of 131,857 tons--their highest week's shipping losses of the war.--ED.
Willing, Not Anxious
Sirs:
In your issue of Sept. 30 on p. 17, you credit me with having been in jail as a conscientious objector in the first World War. I hope I should be willing, though, of course, not anxious, to go to jail in support of my deepest convictions, but I have been so fortunate that such has never been my fate, either in the World War or at any other time. I have been arrested on occasion but not during the World War, in connection with free speech and similar fights, in all of which I have been able so far to emerge victorious. . . .
NORMAN THOMAS
New York City
> TIME erred but still gives Reader Thomas credit for being willing to go to jail for his convictions.--ED.
No Cacti, No Reptiles
Sirs:
When you mentioned Arizona's Senator Ashurst orating to the cacti in the Sept. 23 issue of TIME, it prompted us to inform you that Flagstaff, the honorable Senator's home town, has no cacti, being 7,000 feet elevation and in the heart of the largest pine forest in the world. Cacti such as the Senator would lecture to, as you state, do not grow at such an elevation. Flagstaff has neither cacti nor reptiles as one naturally expects in Arizona. . . .
LEO WEAVER Secretary
Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce Flagstaff, Ariz.
> TIME would never dream of associating reptiles with Arizona.--ED.
Willkie Friend
Sirs:
After reading the Sept. 30 issue of TIME, I was inspired to write you my thought and what I personally know about Mr. Willkie. I am a colored lad, 23 years old, and am an apprentice embalmer and not a politician. I have taken up my amateur political career for one reason only, the New Dealers are spreading rumors around among the members of my race, stating that Mr. Willkie is opposed to the welfare of the Negro. In my small way I have been walking and talking and telling my people that these rumors are false. It would make a business letter far too lengthy if I went into detail about the facts and difficulties encountered in attempting to get articles published in any of the Negro publications. I will give you the facts about myself and my connections with the Willkie family. . . .
I was born June 16, 1917, in Rushville, Ind., where I lived for 22 years. Rushville was a small town where the colored folks had the same opportunities as the white. Philip Willkie spent most of his time riding around in the city with my grandfather, my brother and myself. We grew to be very close friends. And in this way I became very well acquainted with the rest of the Willkie family.
From personal contact and observation, I was surprised to learn that many colored people actually believed these false rumors that had been circulated about Mr. Willkie and his attitude toward our race. And I have taken a leave of absence from the funeral home where I am employed to tell my people about Mr. Willkie. . . .
Most of my school days were spent in Rushville, where my brother and myself built up an excellent reputation. We were members of the Rushville Junior Band for two years, in the Senior Band for four years, and were also members of the High School orchestra. We also played in the orchestra in the church where the Willkies attended service. . . . We were members of a white Boy Scout troop, and I later became Asst. Scout Master and finally Scout Master for the same troop. . . . I believe that this information, if properly circulated, will be a big help to Mr. Willkie and will kill a great deal of the prejudice the colored people have for him because he was born in Elwood, Ind. . . .
ROY J. EVANS
Chicago, Ill.
Pertinent Thought
Sirs:
"A people may prefer a free government; but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight . . . when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if, by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with the powers which enable him to subvert their institutions--in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; and though it may be for their own good to have had it for even a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it."
This pertinent thought might well have sprung from the political philosophy of Wendell Willkie. But, as a matter of fact, it didn't. It might have been voiced by any of Mr. Willkie's contemporaries. In point of fact, it wasn't. Quite possibly it came from the mind of one who viewed with considerable alarm the current events in Europe. Frankly, it didn't. It is not beyond belief that it should have come from any lover of the American form of government whose beliefs included an honest repulsion of Hitler and any other threat to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It might have, but it didn't. It was John Stuart Mill, who, in an essay on Representative Government published in 1860, warned us against laying our "liberties at the feet of even a great man" and not to "trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions." Whatever the source, whenever the date of original publication, the words are worthy of serious consideration during a Presidential campaign in which the choice is between a President who wields unprecedented power and a candidate who believes that is wrong.
EDWARD M. BRAINARD
Hartford, Conn.
Difficulty
Sirs:
Like some of your other readers, I have had a little difficulty in determining which horse you are riding in this campaign. As well as I can make out your position, you stand for all aid to Mr. Roosevelt short of election.
EDWARD C. WATSON
St. Petersburg, Fla.
Rooter
Sirs:
It's very strange what variety your political preferences assume in the eyes of various readers. Now, I really believe you try to be fair, and, far from favoring President Roosevelt, it seems to me that you tip the scales slightly for Mr. Willkie. Perhaps that's because I am a hearty Roosevelt rooter and suffer twinges when you criticize him. But, Roosevelt or Willkie, I definitely endorse TIME.
WINIFRED O'SHAUGHNESSY
Cleveland, Ohio
Lopsided
Sirs:
. . . Your lopsided issue of Sept. 23 has convinced me that TIME is for the continuance of Mr. Roosevelt in office for a third consecutive term and is seeking to bring about his reelection, which I believe would wreck our Federal Constitution under which our people have so signally prospered for nearly 150 years and so far outstripped all the other peoples on the globe. . . .
R. A. MEEK
Black Hawk, Miss.
Unfunny Campaign
Sirs:
Your recent articles in re Wendell Willkie have been completely "unfunny" to the reader and others to whom I have talked. I know that what I say makes small difference to you, but your "sophisticated-smart" reports on Willkie have been "hitting below the belt." You seem to believe that amateurs in politics whose voices "croak" and "scratch" are objects to be ridiculed. Your smears, very subtly put, on Willkie's every action fall flat; and your reports concerning lack of enthusiasm and cynicism at his Chicago appearance are not true.
Mr. Willkie, regardless of what you think, is not selling patent medicine; and as a news magazine, your attempts to editorialize your news commentaries come as a hard slap to many who have always regarded you as source No. 1 for accurate information.
I wouldn't be so silly as to cancel my subscription, probably because I'm Scotch; but if you must be funny, let's have a joke page and let the rest be facts. There's too much poison-pen stuff from Dorothy Parker and Pegler, without your taking a hand. . . .
B. L. SIMPSON
Evanston, Ill.
> TIME has not tried to be funny. At bottom this is not a funny campaign (see National Affairs). TIME readers and other intelligent voters should know the bad news as well as the good news about both major candidates.--ED.
No Temptation
Sirs:
I have discontinued reading the newspapers because of their inaccuracies regarding the Presidential candidates. TIME is the only publication that I have found that gives me the news unbiased and unvarnished. Please do not ever deviate from your policy of "telling the truth always"--"letting the chips fall where they may." No matter how much vilification is heaped upon you--or how much you are tempted to listen to big Willkie advertisers.
MRS. LUCILE SCHMITT
San Antonio, Tex.
> To give credit where slurs are not due: no advertiser, Republican or Democratic, has tried to tell TIME how to set its editorial course in this campaign.--ED.
Mr. Gedye's Job
Sirs:
Your statement [TIME, Sept. 23] that Mr. G. E. R. Gedye "lost his job with the London Telegraph for criticizing Neville Chamberlain in his book, Fallen Bastions," would, I think, be less open to misconstruction if you could add as a footnote the following quotation from a letter from Mr. Arthur E. Watson, managing editor of the Daily Telegraph, which was published in the New Statesman on April 22, 1939:
"Mr. Gedye published a violently worded political commentary on events in Central Europe. Those events were a chapter in a story not then, if yet, finished, and the progress of which it was Mr. Gedye's duty as our Central European correspondent to report impartially day by day. Mr. Gedye honestly took the view that he could publicly show a partisan attitude to those events without impairing his reputation as an impartial recorder of news. We believed that our readers would not think so, and that in fact Mr. Gedye had himself destroyed his value to us as a reporter. As a result Mr. Gedye resigned by mutual arrangement. . . ."
ALEX H. FAULKNER New York Correspondent
The Daily Telegraph New York City
Seasonable Comment
Sirs:
I agree thoroughly with Professor Sleator's comment (TIME, Sept. 23) that Sept. 21 does not mark the beginning of autumn. According to a study I once made for Heating and Ventilating magazine (October 1919) the peak of summer averages about July 23, and the dead of winter about Jan. 23, so that the seasons properly begin on March 8, June 8, Sept. 8, Dec. 8, in this country.
WILLIAM BUCKE CAMPBELL
Philadelphia, Pa.
Sirs:
Your comment . . . was accurate and adequate--perhaps more than adequate for a communication of not much importance. But I am glad to have publicity for my protest against the misuse of the good word summer.
. . . My family is deeply gratified to note that I was not referred to as mole-necked or be-bifocaled. . . .
W. W. SLEATOR
University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Mich.
"Y" Still Serving
Sirs:
In reference to your article [TIME, Sept. 30] "No More 'Y'?" regarding what you term a change in the status of the Y. M. C. A. and other welfare agencies, I feel it is essential that your attention be called to the order issued from the Adjutant General's Office of the War Department on July 10, 1940 to correct any implication that the work of the Army & Navy Y. M. C. A. will cease.
For over 50 years the Army & Navy Y. M. C. A. has served the men in uniform in times of peace and times of war. Its program of leisure-time activity is now operating at 41 points in continental U. S., Hawaii, the Philippines and China, with five new branches opened during the past year. . . .
The official order specifically mentions the Army & Navy Y. M. C. A. and announces that Y. M. C. A. activities at posts at which Y. M. C. A. buildings have been constructed will continue under their present plan of operation. . . .
Expansion plans to meet the requests of high-ranking officers and community leaders who desire the Army & Navy Y. M. C. A. to furnish a leisure-time program for hours that the men are not on duty were started many months ago for the new points of concentration, including Fort Dix, Pensacola, Shreveport, Moffett Field and 30 others. . . .
FRANK ROSS McCOY Major General U. S. A.,
Retired Co-Chairman National Army & Navy Y. M. C. A. New York City, N.Y.
Expansion Committee New York City Yardstick
Sirs:
"Love . . . came to television last week" (TIME, Aug. 26, p. 46). But not for the first time. That occurred on May 1, 1931, when Frank Du Vail married Grayce Jones before the television camera and microphone of W2XCR in New York City. . . .
I expect almost any day to find some singer calling herself "the original television girl." In order to avoid claims and counterclaims, it might be well to settle that question too. The title rightfully belongs to Alice Remsen, radio singer, who used to be the regular Saturday night attraction over W2XCD of Passaic, N. J. during the spring of 1931. . . .
I don't think she was ever told why we had her on every Saturday night. One reason of course, was her popularity and enthusiastic interest in television. . . . But the engineers also had an interest (impersonal) in her. They tinkered with the equipment constantly and wanted to televise the same subject at frequent intervals in order better to judge the results of their work. Of particular interest to the engineers was a slight space between Miss Remsen's upper front teeth. The distinctness with which this space could be seen on the ground-glass screen became one of the yardsticks of early television reception.
PHILIP F. FRANK
West Hartford, Conn.
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