The Obscenity of War
Sirs:
It is regrettable that Mr. Biddle in his otherwise admirable treatise on Mr. Justice Holmes (TIME, Jan. 4) should have seen fit to praise one of Holmes's rare public indiscretions, the rhapsodic defense of war. That was worthy of a Mussolini or the war lords of Germany and Japan. . . .
War in itself is obscene, not ennobling. . . .
S. AGOOS Boston
> Some other unorthodox views of war:
"Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war."--Homer: Iliad, XIII.
"I shall always respect war hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of eternal life, eternal law, reconstructing and uplifting society--breaks up the old horizon and we see through the rifts a wider vista."--R. W. Emerson: Letter to Thomas Carlyle, Sept. 26, 1864.--ED.
Broun Award
Sirs:
Your lead story under the Press in the Jan. 11 TIME is an excellent report on the magnificent job Dillard Stokes of the Washington Post has done and is doing to expose Nazis and their agents and their dupes in the United States.
Your story would have been better yet, I think, if your mention of the Heywood Broun Memorial Award, which Stokes received last year, had explained that this is an annual award of the American Newspaper Guild to the newspaperman who does the best job in the spirit of the founder of our union.
WILBUR H. BALDINGER
Editor
The Guild Reporter New York City
Quantrell
Sirs:
FOR SHAME, TIME. THE DESCENDANTS OF QUANTRELL'S GUERRILLAS, FAMOUS CIVIL WAR BAND OF RAIDERS, WILL FEEL SLIGHTED. I AM SURPRISED AT YOUR HISTORIAN'S ERROR ESPECIALLY IN A FOOTNOTE AS APPEARS IN THE 1 943 JAN. 11 ISSUE WHICH REFERS TO CANTRELL'S GUERRILLAS. CAN IT BE THAT TIME PRINTED SUCH A FLAGRANT ERROR?
CHARLES CLIFTON PETERS JR.
Washington
>> TIME erred. This historic guerrilla's name appears as Quantrell in some sources (National Cyclopaedia of American Biography), as Quantrill in others (Dictionary of American History], but never as Cantrell.--ED.
Reporter's Weapons
Sirs:
Should I happen to become a Japanese prisoner of war it might be a bit difficult proving I was a "noncombatant" after TIME (Nov. 16) has me dragging a .45 around Guadalcanal.
The only weapons I carried were a pen knife -- dull -- and a sharply pointed pencil. . . .
ROBERT C. MILLER Guadalcanal, S.I.
P.S. Correspondents Dick Tregaskis, I.N.S.; Robin Miller, New Zealand War Department; Jack Bowling, Chicago Sun; Bob Cromie, Chicago Tribune ; Ralph Morse, LIFE; Henry Keys, London Daily Express; Bill Hippie, A.P.; J. A. Bockhurst, News of the Day; H. E. Astley Hawkins, Reuters; and myself wish you all a Happy New Year from Guadalcanal.
Program for Peace Sirs:
Would it not be appropriate for you to explain why you started the first page of your first issue for the new year with so lengthy a quotation from Walter Lippmann under the heading "Sermon on the Desert?" The only reason I can think of is that you want to prove conspicuously that you share the moral confusion of which you complain. Maybe, however, you can make sense out of Pundit Lippmann's Olympian language, which I can't. . . .
It seems to me that the real trouble which Mr. Lippmann and various other intellectuals hate to admit can be stated under two heads: 1) Hitler is an archdevil, but there were devils before Hitler and will be devils after him, and the forces which led to Hitlerism will not disappear whenever and wherever one of his allies comes to our side. 2) The nature of modern war, the way the American people were put into this war, and above all the almost complete failure of Messrs. Roose velt and Churchill to state war aims or peace terms of any compelling power or adequacy to the crisis, make it wholly unreasonable to expect Americans, or the citizens of any other land, to accept and conduct the war on the plane of a high ethical crusade. Whatever hope there is depends on a political program, applicable to colonial peoples as well as to Europe, which will be appropriate to a lasting peace. In the absence of anything of the sort we must expect nothing but improvisations like that in North Africa with increasing strains between the United Nations in the light of their different interests and partial commitments.
NORMAN THOMAS
New York City
Civilians' Trust
Sirs:
Have just read your article on The Presidency in the Jan. 11 issue entitled "Disunited Nations." I imagine it comes as no great surprise to your general readers (from previous reporting by your magazine) as to the recalling of the Chinese military mission.
Its misuse for the last nine months must be as disgusting to many Americans as it is to me. If we are any way at fault in not raising a "hue & cry" for recognition of this wonderful nation's bid for a seat in war councils, then my only explanation is: the civilians' trust in our leaders' wise and strategic moves in planning and executing the fighting fronts.
MRS. R. C. SONGSTER
Canandaigua, N.Y.
Trollope & Shaw
Sirs:
In your issue of Jan. 4 you carried a story on the South African native strikes. TIME erred in giving South Africa's total white population as 10,400,000. The Union census for 1941 registers 8,333,500 non-Europeans, only 2,188,200 whites. The previous native census, taken in 1936, registered 7,586,041 non-Europeans.
Anthony Trollope may have been right. Trollope visited South Africa in 1877. On his way back to England he wrote: "South Africa is a country of black men -- and not of white men. It has been so; it is so; and it will be so." On one of Bernard Shaw's visits to the country he horrified everyone by remarking that a sensible solution to the native problem would be wholesale intermarriage with the whites. The results would be fine, he pointed out, since they would combine the black man's magnificent physique with the white man's mental prowess. I understand that no one thought of quoting Shaw against himself by bringing up his reported reply to Isadora Duncan when she (according to the story) suggested that they have a child in order to combine her beauty with his brains. He is said to have refused her suggestion on the grounds that the child might be born the other way around. . . .
PAULINA RENFREW
New York City
"The Controls Are Like Iron"
The following letter from North Africa was written to a friend by TIME'S representative in Baltimore, now in the Air Forces. -- ED.
Sirs:
... We will have all of Africa in not so very long. Guess that sounds like Mein Kampf--"Today Europe--tomorrow the world," but the fact remains we are indubitably winning.
I wish I could describe a raid to you the way it feels. . . . You taxi out for takeoff. In a few minutes you are in the air and taking your position in the formation. There is not much conversation on the way. . . . You know the time of arrival at the target and you watch the clock on the dashboard crawl by. Then . . . you see your destination. The speed is picked up and there is a last-minute check on the instruments. Conversation picks up briefly--"Is this the bus to Baltimore?"--"Clear the bombways"--"Give 'em hell, doc" --"Here we go." All this is over interphone; . . . there is no talk between ships but you know how the others feel. . . . And then you're in it. Black puffs of smoke begin breaking in front of the nose, off the wing, right overhead. They break suddenly in clusters and hang in the air like tiny clouds. You are twisting and turning, diving, climbing--anything to keep those clusters from coming too close. The sky is full of them and there doesn't seem to be room to fly through. They get closer and you hear the whisper of them as they break in close. There is a gunlike report and a sharp pain in your shoulder. In the windshield a large hole through the safety glass. You think you've been hit. The co-pilot's wrist is bloody, and your shoulder feels numb. You can't go fast enough; you're crawling over that target. You've got to level off and fly straight to drop those bombs, but you'd rather do anything than give those gunners a straight shot at you. You level off and hang on. Tracer bullets stream up past the nose. You can see them coming a long way off and they come so slow, so leisurely till suddenly they whizz by like miniature meteors. The light on the instrument panel blinks rapidly as the bombs are released and you are free to begin dodging again. You have all the speed you can get and the controls are like iron. What was seconds seems hours before you are clear of the flak and can relax long enough to take stock of the damage. Your shoulder is okay, just hit by a piece of glass going two or three hundred miles an hour. Your hand looks frosted with splinters of glass sticking out. The co-pilot's all right, just cut. The bombardier crawls back. One side of his face is covered with blood but he's okay. You call back over interphone--"Everybody all right ?" "Yup, all okay." The ship's been hit a number of times but it's flying and you're on your way back. You light a cigaret. The raid's over. . . .
HOWARD KELLY
Man of the Year
Sirs -
In choosing Joseph Stalin Man of the Year, TIME not only hit the nail on the head, but sunk a spike in one blow. Stalin stands for the Russian people, for what they are and for all they have done, the way they've done it, their guts, patriotism and downright loyalty to him as a leader in a country at war. The Germans fight like devils, but the Russian people, all of them, are fighting like all hell and their fight is in the name of Stalin. In him has the impossible been attained--for a second time. Whether or not we agree with his form of government, let us in 1943 look toward this giant, take heed of his meaning and fight like hell.
MICHAEL JAMES
Seaman and Class, U.S.N.
Cape May, NJ.
Sirs:
I quite agree with your selection of Stalin as Man of the Year for 1942. However, it is interesting to compare the Christlike expression given to his portrait today with the satanic mien he bore on your cover as Man of the Year for 1939.
ELIZABETH B. ZIMMERMAN
Galveston
Readers' Beef
Sirs:
Fie upon you TIME ! In your issue of Jan. 4 you show a photo of my very good friend Paul Goeser demonstrating "how to trim a full loin from a beef."
I've known Paul for a good many years and I know that he is not a magician, which he would have to be in order to cut a loin of beef from the cut he has in front of him, which happens to be a forequarter. For your information, the loin of beef is cut from the hindquarter, and the specifications outlined in the caption are exactly the same as have been followed by the Chicago packers for years, and are perfectly intelligible to any good meat man, Senator Butler* to the contrary. . .
WALTER G. HOSHOUR
Supervisor of Meat Operations
Food Fair Stores, Inc.
Philadelphia
Sirs:
I note with interest, the picture of an OPA demonstrator severing a loin of beef from the forequarter. Of course, we know that OPAers are miracle men, but this is the miracle of miracles. Also, if the demonstrator's knife slipped, he would perform his own appendix operation. . . .
JACK EVANS
(MEAT CUTTER EMERITUS)
Chief of Police
Walsenburg, Colo.
Sirs:
... I see several points in technique to criticize. A magician usually dresses the part, and seldom has his audience so close to his display of sleight-of-hand. Has the OPA hired a protege of the great Blackstone? Is this a variation of the old trick of sawing a woman in half? How else is it possible to get a full loin from a forequarter of beef?
J. V. TILTON
Sioux City, Iowa
Sirs:
The OPA demonstrator . . . might well make use of a "theodolite," because he is way off the beam. Also the butchers might well be blushing. More likely he is marking out the rib cut from the forequarter.
But why quibble? Who is to choose between a rib and a loin these days ?
M. L. THYER
Chicago
*Said Senator Butler: "The whole thing's nutty."
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