"Really Funny"

Sirs:

I just finished reading your very nasty article concerning the membership of the America First Committee [TIME, Oct. 6]. You can't besmear General Wood's character so you just paint him as an estimable old gentleman who doesn't suspect much and go on to abuse of the membership. What you Easterners do not know about America First is really funny. . . .

MRS. LANDON S. LAY

Glen Ellyn, Ill.

Sirs:

We appreciate your efforts to be impartial but have you not given too great prominence to the isolationists in your Oct. 6 number?

... In this free country we have no power to restrain any company with lots of money from attempting to delude the public but your effort to be impartial does not require you to give them free advertising. . . .

JOSEPH C. HARVEY

Newtown, Pa.

Sirs:

I have just read your lead article ... on Isolationist Wood. Here you have done as reprehensible a thing in your way as Lindbergh did in his. Lindbergh used anti-Jewish prejudice to try to keep us out of war; you are employing anti-Jewish prejudice as a subtle means to take us into war--by implying that the way to right Lindbergh's wrong is to follow the course opposite to his. . . .

E. M. NESBITT

Beaver, Pa.

Sirs:

We wish to congratulate you on the splendid article about Robert E. Wood. Thousands of his friends will sympathize with him in the situation in which he now finds himself. There is no doubt that his intentions were the very best, but his organization soon found itself filled with members who had subversive plans, and had a desire to assist Adolf Hitler and at the same time get revenge on the President for real or imagined wrongs. . . .

A. J. RAYMOND

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Mother

Sirs:

I am an interventionist, and necessity is my mother.

STEPHEN COLEMAN

Chicago, Ill.

Names

Sirs:

I thank you for your reference to me in your issue of last week. It is not every middle-aged man who can say that he has been called a "glossy darling." I have been called shorter names, and liked them less. But let me correct you in an inaccuracy. You refer to me as Dikran Kouyoumdjian (Michael Arlen). It should read Michael Arlen (Dikran Kouyoumdjian). Over 20 years ago I became legally, technically, officially Michael Arlen. I paid -L-5 in legal expenses, and have been working ever since to get my money back. Perhaps your calling me a "glossy darling" will help. . . .

MICHAEL ARLEN

New York City

Hurricane Warnings

Sirs:

The heartfelt thanks of the Weather Bureau to TIME for its excellent article on the September hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico [TIME, Oct. 6]. Besides being an accurate and representative report, this account does the Weather Bureau the important service (we hope) of telling potential victims of future storms what a hurricane warning may be talking about. Thanks to the help of the Red Cross and the Southern press and radio and police, we have made some progress with this kind of education; but it remains a continuing necessity. . . .

Permit us at the same time to raise a meteorological eyebrow at your phrase "the Weather Bureau's . . dry warning." . . .

R. E. SPENCER

Meteorologist

Weather Bureau

U.S. Department of Commerce

Washington, B.C.

Record?

Sirs:

TIME'S account of the visit of the Windsors [TIME, Oct. 6] was one of the crudest bits of writing ever to appear in your notoriously unkind pages, which must set a record of some sort. Rather a cheap record, however, because the officially snubbed Windsors are quite defenseless; hardly fair game for your newshawk's acid-tipped beak. . . .

To our recent guests, "the slightly moth-eaten Prince Charming, the fading Juliet," one shamed American's apology.

LELA COLE KITSON

El Paso, Tex.

TIME cannot undertake to portray the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as shimmering dream children in order to spare the feelings of incurable romantics.--ED.

Victorians

Sirs:

If TIME thinks Prince Charming is "slightly moth eaten" the minds of those who opposed him must have been riddled with termites.

The Baldwins, the Chamberlains and all the other Victorians certainly are responsible for Britain's present plight. Illustrative of their complacency is this letter enclosed, although granted that the writer was loyal and conscientious. Although the writer died some months ago, I ask that you do not include his name if the letter is published.

HI SlBLEY

Monrovia, Calif.

>The letter forwarded by Reader Sibley was written to him by a British news-agency executive, and was dated March 11, 1938. Excerpts follow.--ED.

I do not . . . agree with you either that Hitler is a "murderous lunatic" or that Germany may be considered as discouraging the crossing of the Atlantic for any length of time. There is a great deal of talk about war, and those who believe in that talk are the people who suffer. I myself--and my job deals largely with foreign affairs--cannot visualize another Great War, at all events in our time.

In regard to your remarks about Austria, my sympathies are, of course, absolutely with that country. . . .

In Austria things have, for years, been extraordinarily difficult. Almost everyone is poverty-stricken and living from hand-to-mouth. Although one would sincerely regret Austria being merged in the German Reich, the fact remains that the average Austrian would, for a variety of reasons, probably find life far easier than at present. Unless there were drastic frontier alterations in Europe, which one cannot visualize except as the result of a war, Austria clearly has no future. This certainly cannot be said of Germany, which one must admit is an extraordinarily progressive country, however one may deplore many happenings resulting from the Nazi regime.

Many worthy Jews and others, who were in every way desirable citizens, have suffered for the sins of their coreligionists, but this has always been the case throughout history.

One thing is certain. Germany, today, is in an infinitely healthier state than she was before the Nazis came into power. At that time the country had sunk to the very lowest limits--bribery, corruption, immorality, and every other kind of vice was rampant. All this has now been swept away. . . .

Pislam Civ

Sirs:

With reference to Hollywood's ingenuity in devising peculiar names, you may be interested to know that Pislam Civ (not Siv or Xiv) appeared in the one-act play contest at Bowdoin College in 1936 or 1937, if my memory serves me. This character, however, was male and derived his name from Psalm CIV. Is this a clue to how rapidly an idea travels from Maine to California?

A. P. L. TURNER JR.

Missoula, Mont.

Sirs:

Thanks for the story in TIME, Oct. 6, giving the good old yarn of "Pislam Siv." It happens that the clergy and seminarians, at least in my seminary days, enjoyed that a good many times! However, as we told it, the psalm was not XIV, but CIV

REV. FRANCIS P. FOOTE

Burlingame, Calif.

>Hollywood has a well-known weakness for ancient stories, slightly altered.--ED.

No Strangers

Sirs: Your good reporting of national and world news is especially appreciated by many of us out here in the Far East. We can keep in touch with the national scene even when we live in a foreign country. Your . . . sketches of Secretary of Agriculture Wickard and Under Secretary of State Welles are cases in point. By such writing and by displayed advertisements you keep us itinerant Americans from being strangers with our own land when we return periodically. .

JOHN P. MINTER

Soochow, China

Headline

Sirs:

Always trying to beat TIME'S headline writers to the punch, may I suggest for some future story of conditions in a bomb-battered German capital (as per British promise)--"Berlin Diarrhea."

B. A. BELL

Los Angeles, Calif.

Poor Slogan

Sirs:

TIME (Aug. ii) under Jumping Devildogs, in enumerating various articles of equipment as carried by parachutists, stresses the importance of a knife by relating it, rather erroneously, to my parachute accident over San Diego, last May. The point is, salvation rested on staying with the plane, not cutting loose from it. ...

"Don't do an Osipoff" is a poor slogan and is poor phraseology. It suggests the accident was the result of an error. Rest assured it was not.

W. S. OSIPOFF

U.S. Naval Hospital

San Diego, Calif.

> Lieut. Osipoff's accident occurred when faulty gear fouled his regular parachute on the tail assembly of the plane from which he was jumping, leaving him snarled in the shrouds and dangling in the air. He was spectacularly rescued by a Navy pilot who flew close enough to the other plane to take Osipoff into the cockpit. On receiving Osipoff's letter above, TIME unable to understand why, if he had had a knife, he could not have cut himself loose and descended with his emergency chute, wired him for enlightenment. Lieut. Osipoff replied as follows.--ED.

NAVY DEPARTMENT PROHIBITS COMPLETE DETAILS HOWEVER CAN SAY THIS: TWO PARACHUTES WERE USED ACCORDING TO DOCTRINE. ON TAKING OFF WITH THE FORWARD IMPETUS OF TRANSPORT PLANE [WHEN THE FOULING OCCURRED] EMERGENCY PARACHUTE BROKE LOOSE FROM . . . HARNESS AND STREAMED OUT THE EXTENT OF SHROUD LINE; SILK OF THE CHUTE REMAINED INTACT. I PULLED IN THIS CHUTE SEVERAL TIMES WITH THE INTENT OF USING IT; HOWEVER, BECAUSE OF BEING SUSPENDED ONLY BY ONE KNEE, I DID NOT OPEN IT. WITH AN ATTEMPTED USE THE OPENING SHOCK WOULD HAVE CATAPULTED ME OUT OF THE HARNESS. HAD TO KEEP MY KNEES LOCKED IN ORDER TO HANG ON. AIR PRESSURE TERRIFIC. KEPT SPINNING ALL THE TIME. TO BE ABLE TO CUT LOOSE AS SUGGESTED NEEDED SEVERAL MORE ARMS. ON THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE NEITHER BAD NOR TERRIFYING, CONSCIOUS ALL THE TIME. LIEUT. LOWREY'S RESCUE THE AMAZING THING AND TO HIM BOUQUETS. PRACTICALLY RECOVERED FROM BROKEN SPINE. TRY IT AGAIN IN TWO MONTHS REGARDS.

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