Utopia in Arkansas
Sirs:
Here is a letter from my recently mobilized "little" brother [Staff Sergeant Lysle I. Abbott, at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Little Rock, Ark.]. He is 22 years old; graduated from college last year and intends to resume his education in law after his military service is completed. . . .
MILDRED FINDLEY New York City
. . . These tents we are living in are not tents at all, but rather cabins. Canvas they do have, but the board floors, over cement blocks, plus clapboard siding, coupled with the glass doors and gas stoves, make for real convenience. However, that wasn't enough. No, the Army has to pass out spring beds, with brand-new mattresses. Still not enough; new mattress covers, great big pillows, also new pillow slips, sheets, and new blankets.
We have electric lights, thus we are fully enabled to enjoy life to radio music. Our requisition was completed today, so tomorrow we will draw our new uniforms, which include, among other things, underwear, two, both cotton and wool longies, sox, overshoes, and even wrist watches, for four of us. ...
Caroline should see these kitchens. Four gas ranges (all this gas for hot water and cooking and heating is natural gas), two iceboxes that would fill our whole kitchen . . . brand-new, white-enameled.
Right across the street is the canteen, in which we can buy anything we want. Next door to that is the recreation hall, which is the nuts. Stage and movie projectors. About a half mile down the line is a swimming pool, just built, which could easily contain four Peony Parks.
When we arrived Monday, after a swell train ride, in our drawing room, workmen were still working. In fact there were 5,000 of them, who come every morning still. They are painting and plumbing as if their hearts would break. . . .
When mess call blows, we stroll into the mess hall, sit down and eat like pigs. Talk about service--we are waited on by K. P.'s. Dishes of food are on the tables. We'd die if we had to wash our own mess kits. In fact we don't even have mess kits, all we have to do is eat. The plates, hotel china, are washed by cooks in the automatic dishwashers. . . . Honestly one cannot possibly exaggerate the utter comfort we have.
I can't help but feel the President has something to do about this. Really I believe it would take a man of his position to see we are getting such wonderful attention. . . .
War, Peace & Money
Sirs:
Under "Fiscal" (TIME, Jan. 20), I read what you had to say about taxes and the budget . . . : "He [Franklin Roosevelt] termed the U. S. tax burden 'moderate' compared to other countries--somewhat as a doctor might advise a patient suffering from pneumonia in one lung that other people had double pneumonia."
I take it that a patient suffering from pneumonia in one lung--feeling bad enough --would rather escape pneumonia in the other lung--which he certainly will not do by kicking around and utterly disorganizing himself --destroying any body unity he could build up. A wise patient will swallow the nasty medicine--will ask for nastier medicine--in a chance to spare the other lung.
Doctors know--just as dictators know--that complaining patients weaken themselves. . . .
M. NELDA HEATH Philadelphia, Pa.
Sirs:
Now that Roosevelt has asked and Congress undoubtedly will grant all the powers of a dictator, thus removing from Congress all authority and all responsibility, why do we need a Congress?
Would it not be a long step towards paying the bill for national defense if the 435 Representatives and the 96 Senators were removed from the payroll for the duration of the dictatorship? There should be a saving in excess of $100,000,000* annually in actual cash expenditures besides the savings incidental to the elimination of mileage, franking, secretaries. . . .
J. H. McGARRIGLE Berkeley, Calif.
Sirs:
Theoretically to grant dictatorial powers to F. D. R. is undesirable, it is undemocratic, it savors of totalitarianism, and it would be better and safer to have the Congress in session to pass on moves and policies. But these are ideals and are impractical, they would lead to disaster and defeat because the Congress is incapable of even reasonably quick action.
The loudspeakers of Congress must be heard no matter how inane, bromidic and repetitious their statements are. For example, the whole country knows how Senator Blank feels and where he stands; it and his colleagues have heard him ad lib and ad nauseam and yet he takes up time, creates confusion and dissension, and accomplishes no good, makes no constructive suggestions and in fact has degenerated into a common scold.
Because of these loud and verbose speakers it is impossible to get quick action and makes it necessary to give to F. D. R. dictatorial powers and to set the Congress aside temporarily--for time is all-important. . . .
JOHN E. FIELD Denver, Colo.
Sirs:
Europe would not have been ready for another war for half a century after 1918, at the least, had Uncle Sam withheld his assistance --his money and credit.
If we must set Europe's quarrels aright every few decades and finance their war preparations, it would seem that we should have the rule of those countries so that such gangsters as arise may speedily be put out of circulation before they have had sufficient opportunity to grow dangerous to world peace. . . .
CHARLES E. GEE Atascadero, Calif.
Sirs:
I wonder if, in his heart, Lindbergh hasn't changed his mind a little. The England that he knew--the England of Baldwin and Chamberlain--is not this England. . . .
I too was an isolationist. The countries collapsing like houses of cards over there didn't seem worth even an airplane of ours. But since September I've changed. This England has changed my mind. . . .
BETTY LYMAN Omaha, Neb.
Sirs:
ON ALL SIDES I HEAR AND READ, "I AM SORRY FOR ENGLAND BUT--" WELL, I AM SORRY TO THE EXTENT OF ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS AND WILL GLADLY OBLIGATE MYSELF, MY HEIRS AND ASSIGNS TO MAKE TEN ANNUAL PAYMENTS OF $100 EACH TO ANY WORLD-WIDE ORGANIZATION THAT [undertakes to pay back to the U. S.] AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS OF ANY MONEY THAT IS LOANED BY THIS GOVERNMENT TO GREAT BRITAIN.
ALAN MACDONALD Danville, Ill.
Dizzy
Sirs:
The American Association of Lexicographers & Grammarians (if there is such a body) ought to have you birds indicted for counterfeiting of and assault and battery on the English language. There never was and probably never will be such a mass of verbal contortions and hodgepodge within two covers as appear weekly in your dizzy rag. I only read it once in awhile for fun. If I read it completely every week, I'd soon be as dizzy as you are. . . .
T. E. SPEAR New York City
Dizzily
Sirs:
TIME has erred again in reporting the death of James Joyce (Jan. 20). Who but Joyce could have written your article entitled "Up the Roller Coaster" with its "patient, powerless, hopeful meaninglessness" and its "humping dizzily up that first clanking climb"?
GUY E. NOYES New Haven, Conn.
> The great James Joyce has undeniably passed on (see p. 72) and there is no Ouija board in TIME'S editorial offices.--ED.
Garner's Furniture
Sirs:
TIME, Jan. 20: Isn't Mr. Garner's furniture good enough for Man-of-the-Earth Wallace? But then--what's a few dollars for furniture in a "budget" of 17 1/2billions?
D. D. COOPER White Sulphur Springs, Mont.
> To TIME'S research department a sharp rap on the knuckles for not detecting that the picture showing outgoing Vice President Garner telephoning from a lonely chair in an otherwise empty office was a photographer's hoax --merely taken in the outer reception room, from which a desk had been removed for refinishing. Actually Mr. Garner removed no Vice-Presidential furniture; the same that served him will serve incoming Vice President Wallace.--ED.
Opposite Effect
Sirs:
In TIME, Dec. 23, you print, one after the other, speeches by Hitler and Lord Lothian. Your presentation of these speeches leads me to feel that the comments on it that come immediately to my finger tips may be of some interest.
It would be of great value to the intensifying of our spiritual and intellectual relations with Latin America if the thoughtful public could appreciate the essential difference in our mentalidades, could realize, for example, that these two speeches, printed side by side, in Spanish translation, would have precisely the opposite effect down here from that they produce on 90% of the U. S. readers of TIME. They would be first-rate totalitarian propaganda. This does not mean that Latin Americans, in general or individually, are stupid.
Nor does it mean that they are particularly vulnerable to meaningless vehemence and invective. . . . The Latin American cannot be expected to react exactly as we do because he lacks 1) firsthand experience of the sustained and healthy functioning of democracy, 2) the fundamental mistrust of Hitler's word, fed in North Americans by the feeling of intimacy with the tragedies of Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, etc., given us by our press, our great magazines, our radio, which after all have no true counterpart even in the wealthiest metropolitan centres [in South America], and 3) sentiment or love of any kind for the British Empire. . . .
ALBERT B. FRANKLIN Quito, Ecuador
Back to Birmingham
Sirs:
German bombings may leave the good people of Birmingham, England comparatively unmoved, but if there is one thing that brings out a cold rage ... it is having their first-class football team, Aston Villa, claimed by Liverpool, as in your issue of Jan. 13.
P. WHETHAM Vancouver, B. C.
> Deluged by dozens of protests in addition to Reader Whetham's, TIME hastily restores Aston Villa (soccer) to Birmingham where it belongs.--ED.
Inspiring Example
Sirs:
Your article in Medicine [Jan. 20] regarding the establishment of Meharry Medical College of Nashville and the six great men, five Meharry brothers and old Dr. Hubbard, is one of the most moving human tales I've ever read. In the midst of the grim necessity of being about to set the world right by force of arms comes this inspiring example of warmhearted, honest and courageous men--the Meharrys.
Also, the way in which the article is set forth indicates your staff has a neat regard for and appreciation of the finer contributions to human progress we all so desperately need. Journalistically the "out of the mud" story is something of a classic. . . .
QUAYLE MUMFORD Evanston, Ill.
Provincial Foresight
Sirs:
Your article in the Books section on the repentant Communist sympathizers [Jan. 6] was excellent, but so gentle as to be almost maternal. It left me wondering how much longer these men, who so belatedly recognized Communism for what it is, must be called "intellectuals?"
Their chagrin today is not due so much to the fact that they made a mistake, I suspect, but rather to the knowledge that the vast majority of non-intellectuals who inhabit the hinterland west of New York City--and whom our "intellectuals" despised for their Rotarianism, their devotion to business, their taste in art and entertainment, their patriotism, their family life, et al.--these same provincials saw clearly ten to 15 years ago that Communism and Fascism were cut from the same pattern and that as governments both resembled Capone's rule of gangsterdom. Such ignorance and lack of discrimination pained our urban "intellectuals," but it was the latter, not the former, who were confounded when Stalin joined hands with . . . Hitler and invaded the Baltic States. Moreover, these same Americans rejected Communism with contempt, saying in effect: "I don't want no bureaucrat telling me what to do." Which statement seems to me not as beautiful but just as enlightening as Lewis Mumford's belated verdict that "the struggle is for the human soul." . . .
HOWARD PECKHAM Ann Arbor, Mich.
* Total 1940-41 appropriations for the Congressional "Legislative Establishment": $23,923,711-
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