Personal War
Sirs: Like too many other busy people, I buy TIME on the newsstands, read it on the run--and consequently miss many issues. I will miss no more.
TIME'S splendid tribute to the American correspondents in China, appearing in the newspapers, first attracted my attention. As a former Far Eastern correspondent who has lived under the Japanese terror, I know and appreciate the danger and the horror of living with the assassin's gun at one's back every minute of the day and night. Those correspondents who remained on the front lines of the Sino-Japanese War have long deserved recognition for their services to the American people.
Without detracting one whit from the courage and heroism of the American correspondents in Europe today, I would like to point out that Hitler's war is not a personal war against the U. S. newspaper men in Europe. In Asia, however, the frustrated Japanese war lords blame the American correspondents in Shanghai and elsewhere for their failure to frighten and befuddle the U. S. and disorganize the Chinese in the occupied areas. The Japanese and their hirelings are today waging a personal war upon those heroes of the American press--Randall Gould, J. B. Powell, T. H. White, Tillman Durdin, Arch Steele and Hal Abend.
After reading TIME'S advertisement in the papers, I bought my first copy of the magazine in weeks and there I found the most complete, accurate and fair estimate of the true situation in the Orient that I have yet to read in any magazine.
EARL H. LEAF
New York City
Gutteral
Sirs:
Please let me express to the editors of your Foreign News department my appreciation for the admirable expression contained in the following sentence: "Therefore, some of the sentences of Vichy have had a gutteral German hardness about them [TIME, Oct. 28]." I assume, of course, that this was intentional coining of a new word which certainly hits the nail on the head.
WALTER PHILIPPSTHAL
Minneapolis, Minn.
>It wasn't so bad as most misspellings.--ED.
Answer to France
Sirs:
This is my answer to that unknown Frenchwoman who wrote the letter entitled "Speak to Us" [TIME, Oct. 28]: Chere Madame:
It is with great emotion that I read your letter in TIME. The sentiments expressed therein go straight to my heart. I am a Frenchwoman who in the afterglow of 1918 married one of those soldiers who came to help us at that time. . . .
Like you I listen to every word of the BBC. From my faraway home, I have followed with wonder and despair the events up to and beyond the fall of France. . . .
As I watch the heroic defense of the British, my heart swells with pride for them, our allies, our brothers of 1914 to 1918. . . . My heart remembers the tramp, tramp, tramp of their feet on the cobblestones of the streets of Marseille to the front. They came from all over the world, Australia, India, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, England. I practiced my English (I was 14 years old) on them, and handed many a carnation to those on their way to the station. As I think of all those soldiers, of ours, of the strong ties of blood and tears, of common graves, of glory and friendship; of the new pledge in 1939 to fight again for life and the things that were dear, and then the terrible fall of our country, I can't believe that on top of all our suffering, innocent blood lost for nothing, the enemy should ask that France should so debase herself as to betray her only friend. . . . The dead will revolt, it is a denial of their sacrifice, it is kissing the sword that killed them. . . .
Dear friend, keep your courage, France wants you, needs you. . . . Great countries do not die; they have to live for posterity and humanity.
Vive la France immortelle, ses defenseurs devoues, vive L'Angleterre gardienne de I'honneur, que Dieu lid donne la victoire et a la France la liberte.
THERESE PERKINS
Joplin, Mo.
Cox for Cox
Sirs:
Your issue of last Oct. 21 refers to the 1920 Presidential campaign speeches of Democratic Nominee James M. Cox of Ohio as "fitful flickerings."
Here are the facts on the Cox campaign for the month of October alone: after a 9,000 mile tour of 24 States in September, more than 100 speeches were delivered from the Mississippi to the eastern seaboard. These ranged from rear-platform talks to addresses in the larger cities before audiences described by veteran correspondents assigned to the campaign as "tremendously large."
Some comments on the "flickerings":
On Oct. 29, President Wilson wrote Cox: "I am writing to say with what admiration I have followed your course throughout the campaign. You have spoken truly and fearlessly about the great issues at stake."
Dr. Henry Van Dyke, commenting on Cox's Madison Square Garden address, delivered late in October, said: "That was the greatest political speech I ever heard." . . .
JAMES M. Cox JR.
Dayton Daily News Dayton, Ohio
No Hurly-Burly
Sirs:
Perhaps it might interest you to learn how some of the not discouraged non-Okies, who live in New Mexico (TIME, Sept. 30), happened to bog down here.
I was looking for a little vacation property, found the most gorgeous views, inspiring air, and the most challenging society in the world. I exchanged my vacation plans for permanent residence. . . .
Attractions in New Mexico beside landscape and superintelligent conversation are a low cost of living and noncompetitive returns, the fascination of a bilingual population, an Indian group colorful beyond anything I have ever seen in Europe, a local architecture mud-built and beautiful, and an absence of the hurly-burly that, when I used to live in the East, I mistook for daily life.
CYRUS McCORMICK
Santa Fe, N. Mex.
> To Chicago Reaper Scion McCormick, one of many non-Okie notables "bogged down" in scenic, climatic New Mexico (TIME, Oct. 28), thanks for another appraisal.--ED.
Something There
Sirs:
When I read Louis Raemaekers' statement in the Sept. 30 issue of TIME, I didn't think much of it. But a half hour ago I read mild, kindly Mrs. Foster's letter in the Oct. 28 issue, and I've been thinking of it ever since.
She's really got something there in her suggestion to sterilize every German. As a matter of humanity and for self-protection, the idea should be put into practice universally --at once. . . . We must sterilize not only the full Germans, but also everyone with as much as an eighth or sixteenth or even a thirty-second of German blood in his veins. Of course that might have to include several of the royal houses, but I am sure they would be only too glad to do their part in this great humanitarian enterprise. . . .
The arts and sciences must be purified. No more need peaceful, respectable persons listen to the barbaric, Hunnish melodies of Brahms, Bach, Beethoven Mozart, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Schubert, Strauss; no more need our ears be offended at Christmas time by the hellish notes of Stille Nacht, the voice of Schumann-Heink; no more of the militaristic preachings of Schiller, Goethe, Luther.
The world finally will be rid of the linotype, in fact, of movable type. No more shall it be shackled by the Relativity Theory of Einstein, the Quantum Theory of Planck, the Wave Mechanics of Heisenberg. Out with Kekule's theory of molecular structure, Helmholtz's electrodynamics, the chemistry of aniline dyes, etc. Out with microscopes, telescopes, cameras, and other instruments requiring lenses, perfected in Germany, fundamentally of course for military usage. Out with Ehrlich's "Magic Bullet," Mendel's laws of heredity. Finally, but not until our program has been completed, out with the sterilization of innocent peoples. . . .
WALTER RICHERT
Berkeley, Calif.
Sirs:
I was interested in the statement following Mrs. Marie T. Foster's intriguing letter, that "more people in the South want to go to war with Germany than in any other part of the U. S." I had suspected that this might be the case, for it seems very logical that it should be so. (I am only surprised that the percentage [24%] should be as low as it is.) I do not base this opinion on the fact that the South is still more purely Anglo-Saxon than any other part of the country, and would therefore have the strongest emotional impulse to aid Britain.
I suggest that the greater feeling of belligerency in the South springs, perhaps unconsciously, from very practical causes. It is the only part of this country that has experienced invasion within living memory, and it has had bitter proof that the war that is waged on one's own soil is the most costly of all. It is, moreover, the only part of this country that has known what it is to live under a military occupation, and the Germans have given ample proof that they have improved not only on the methods of General Sherman, but also on those of the Reconstructionists. . . .
MARIANNA JENKINS
Philadelphia, Pa.
Ali
Sirs:
I wonder how long it is going to take Americans in general and yourselves in particular to learn that the inhabitants of India are by no means necessarily Hindus.
Merely because our own aborigines were misnamed "Indians" by the original adventurous discoverers who had more courage than knowledge, it does not mean that the inhabitants of India have lost the right to be called Indians.
That is exactly what the inhabitants of India should be called and in your issue of Oct. 28 you refer to a certain registrant under the American Draft Law, one All Aftab, as a Hindu. Nobody with the name of Ali could possibly be anything but a Mohammedan. . . .
W. B. SCHLEITER
Managing Director
Muller & Phipps (India) Ltd.
New York City
> Right is Reader Schleiter on one point. Ali Aftab is a purely Arabic appellation common among Mohammedans. But TIME has often been at pains to distinguish between Hindus and other elements of India's population. Does Reader Schleiter use the word "Americans" to mean inhabitants of the U. S.?--ED.
Byrdmen
Sirs:
AS ONE OF 17,000,000 REGISTRANTS WOULD LIKE TO "KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE MEN ELIGIBLE UNDER THE DRAFT AGE IN LITTLE AMERICA?
ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE JR.
Indianapolis, Ind.
> The Byrdmen encamped in Antarctica, like other eligibles who were abroad on Registration Day, will have to register within five days of their return to the U. S.--ED.
So Far, Safe
Sirs:
Fortunately, the "Nobel foundation's funds" are kept in Stockholm, where the prize money is always paid out, and not in Oslo [TIME, Oct. 28]. So far.they are safe, being invested in Swedish gilt-edged securities. In Oslo the Germans could have found only funds to cover the running expenses of the Peace Prize Committee, appointed by the Norwegian Storting.
NABOTH HEDIN
The American-Swedish News Exchange, Inc.
New York City
"I Ask You"
Sirs:
. . . The enclosed copy of a letter from Major Norris Waldron, written from England, may be of interest.
It probably illustrates what the average Canadian youth thinks of the present war and our associations with Great Britain.
H. ALEXANDER MACLENNAN
Hamilton, Ont.
Dear Pete:
... I was talking to a London taxi driver a week or so ago. They "keep the score" and . . . they always tell you how many German planes have been brought down so far that day. . . . This particular day sixty-odd had been brought down over the Channel. Said the driver: "Coo, they are going to fill the bloody channel with their planes and the buggers will be able to walk over."
From what I can see they will never succeed in getting the English wind up. I was at a tea on Sunday and the brother of our host was there. A delayed-action bomb had fallen through the roof of his country place and had buried itself under the library. This was the Thursday before and they were still waiting for it to go off. Of course, he had been moved out and no one was allowed near the house. He was quite cheerful about it for as he told me, when I sympathized with him, "It is really not so distressing, you know. The drains never worked properly anyway." Now I ask you! . . .
NORRIE
Sirs:
The German propaganda services claim that London's life is totally dislocated by the frequent air raids. I do not know what the American press are publishing on this subject, for this cover-to-cover TIME reader in England has been without his TIME for some weeks, too long, but perhaps this personal story will be of interest to you.
Last Friday I suddenly had to go up to London from my offices about 30 miles outside, to see a client in the Shepherd's Bush district. I motored up looking for signs of damage, and I had to look hard, the only damage being a few large holes in the roadway, which, if there hadn't been a war on and a battle of London in progress, one would have taken for just ordinary road repairs, with the typical "navvies" at work, complete with hydraulic drill and their usual good humour.
Traffic was as normal as ever, vans, lorries, etc. going about their business. I got within about one-half mile of my destination when suddenly three workmen on the pavement just in front of my car, crouched and broke into a hurried run and then threw themselves flat under the cover of a wall. As I pulled up, wondering what was happening, I heard the unmistakable screech of a bomb getting nearer, and then the near explosion as it hit the ground: in front of me a big "shelter here" beckoned and as I hurriedly parked and locked the car, the din of anti-aircraft fire and falling bombs was uncomfortably close. I had arrived in the middle of an air raid, afterwards officially described as heavy, without knowing it from the outward appearance of the capital.
Surely there can be no better answer to the Nazis' vain boasts.
ALEXANDER ANSON
Watlington, England
Not Last, Not Least
Sirs:
. . . Let this note record my first squawk against my most consistent news source. In TIME, Oct. 21, you repeat a crack that I allowed to pass unchallenged some weeks ago.
The crack: "The University of Chicago's . . . former associates in the Big Ten (now Big Nine)."
Retraction should be forthcoming in view of the following facts: 1) Chicago, far from being a former member of the Western Conference, carries as many sports in which they have intercollegiate competition as any other, more than most of the other schools; 2) Chicago during the past decade has won more titles in the Conference than any other member except Michigan.
We are not last, not least. . . .
DEMAREST L. POLACHECK
Chicago, Ill.
>A salute to the University of Chicago's versatility. But in Western Conference football, which TIME happened to be discussing, not even Reader Polacheck can count more than nine teams since Chicago dropped out last year.--ED.
Lost Poet
Sirs:
In the issue of TIME, Oct. 14, you reviewed a book called "And I Will Be Heard" by John Beecher, listed as privately printed. Can you tell me whether it would be possible to secure a copy and if so, where and at what price? . . .
LELA T. COMMON Toronto, Ont.
> A reproof to TIME'S Books editor for not knowing the answers. Will Poet Beecher, whereabouts unknown, supply them?--ED.
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