Army v. Hot Dogs
Sirs:
In regard to the article "The Army's Stomach" [TIME, Feb. 15] I would like to say a few words. According to the recent survey hots dogs are the soldiers' favorite meat. This, gentlemen, is absolutely "bunk." . . . Every time we have hot dogs the soldiers wail and groan. . . . The only reason we eat hot dogs is because they're served to us so often. .
PRIVATE FERRIS A. AIDE
Ajo, Ariz.
Sirs:
. . . . Hot dogs, the soldier's choice of meat. Horrors! Soldiers prefer, first of all, steaks of any kind, secondly, roast beef or pork. "Coffee weak, prefers cocoa to coffee." I can hardly stand that one. Army coffee, if you can call it that, is never weak, but is so strong it eats your throat out (in a delicious manner) as it goes down. . . .
Feed us more steaks and battery acid, not hot dogs and cocoa.
STAFF SERGEANT JOHN W. DOANE
Denver
Pipeline To China
Sirs:
It may be that the High Command is ahead of me, and is already working on what I am about to suggest, but if this is not the case, I would like to offer the following suggestions:
Our best chance to really get at the heart of Japan through offensive operations is from China. If we had an ample supply of airplane fuel inside China, we could really put on an offensive. . . . Now, why not lay a pipeline from some East Indian port overland to Chungking or some suitable base, and pipe the fuel in ? ... A five-or six-inch pipe could carry a lot of fuel. The line would not have to be buried, just follow the contour of the ground, up valleys, along ridges, etc. The pipe should be available from the iron foundries of India. . . .
This may sound fantastic at first thought, but keep on thinking. . . .
C. P. CRAIG
Martinsville, Va.
McKinley, Sherman and God
Sirs:
When Wendell Willkie ran across President McKinley's Buffalo statement that "isolation is no longer possible" (TIME, Feb. 22), he might have proceeded a trifle further before giving Mr. McKinley the phony buildup as an internationally minded statesman.
Mr. McKinley's deeds and words as a congressman reveal a complete lack of interest in international affairs and total ignorance concerning them. As President he relied for such knowledge upon John Sherman, and God (who appeared to McKinley in a dream and told him to keep the Philippines).
Extreme protectionism, a sort of latter-day mercantilism, was McKinley's political theme song. And although he suggested reciprocal trade treaties with a Latin American Republic, he opposed wholeheartedly every attempt to realize such treaties because they were too generous!
When McKinley attacked "isolation," he spoke as an expansionist, admittedly a certain breed of internationalist. But the motives for his internationalism--"McKinleyism," as Edward Atkinson called it--were those of high-pressure minorities inspired by self-interest. McKinley's reciprocity was a weapon of economic conquest, a give-&-receive proposition in which we gave a hard left and received the purse.
I hope Mr. Willkie will not attempt to prove next that President Harding was internationally minded, even though Mr. Harding spoke gravely about "association of nations" before he was elected.
JOSEPH PHILIP LYFORD
Ensign, U.S.N.R.
Port Aransas, Tex.
"A Heart Too Large"
Sirs:
Wendell Willkie's quotation from William McKinley (TIME, Feb. 22) started me on a little political sleuthing in search of half-remembered words which I finally found in the Preface to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Napoleon III in Italy, dated Rome, 1860:
". . . If the man who does not look beyond this natural life is of a somewhat narrow order, what must be the man who does not look beyond his own frontier or his own sea?"
"I confess that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too large for England, having courage, in the face of his countrymen, to assert of some suggestive policy--'This is good for your trade; this is necessary for your domination; but it will vex a people hard by; it will hurt a people farther off; it will profit nothing to the general humanity; therefore, away with it!--it is not for you or for me.' When a British minister dares to speak so, and when a British public applauds him speaking, then shall the nation be so glorious that her praise, instead of exploding from within, from loud civic mouths, shall come to her from without, as all worthy praise must, from the alliances she has fostered, and from the populations she has saved."
R. R. METHEANY
St. Davids, Pa.
Szigeti
Sirs:
In naming the exceptions to the first-rate violinists who are not Jewish [TIME, Feb. 22], how about Szigeti? He is probably the most first-rate of all the first-rate.
LIEUT. CONRAD MOSES, D.C.
Camp Hale, Colo.
-- Hungarian-born Joseph Szigeti, 50, famed "violinist's violinist" and ardent Benny Goodman fan, is also Jewish--ED.
A Conservative Peace?
Sirs:
To the assertion of Arthur Koestler, "The coming victory will be a conservative victory and lead to a conservative peace" (TIME, Feb. 22), might go the answer of Woodrow Wilson, spoken at St. Louis, Sept. 5, 1919:
"I feel like asking the Secretary of War to get the boys, who went across the water to fight, together on some field where I could go and see them, and I would stand up before them and say: Boys, I told you before you went across the seas that this was a war against wars, and I did my best to fulfill the promise, but I am obliged to come to you in mortification and shame and say I have not been able to fulfill the promise. You are betrayed. You fought for something that you did not get. And the glory of the armies and the navies of the United States is gone like a dream in the night, and there ensues upon it, in the suitable darkness of the night, the nightmare of dread which lay upon the nations before this war came; and there will come sometime, in the vengeful Providence of God, another struggle in which, not a few hundred thousand fine men from America will have to die, but as many millions as are necessary to accomplish the final freedom of the peoples of the world."
MELVIN D. HILDRETH
Washington
Top Neuropsychiatrist
Sirs:
In the Feb. 22 issue of TIME I regret that you omitted the name of Colonel William C. Porter, M.C., U.S. Army, in your article on "Neuropsychiatrists in the Army."
I am Commandant of the School of Military Neuropsychiatrists by virtue of the fact that I am Commanding Officer of this Post, which has several training activities in addition to this particular school. Colonel Porter is the Assistant Commandant, and actual head of the school. He has had years of experience in military neuropsychiatry and is a recognized authority in this specialty. Prior to being assigned here he was Chief of the Neuropsychiatric Service at the Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., and taught neuropsychiatry at the Army Medical School at that station.
W. L. SHEEP
Brigadier General, Med. Dept.
U. S. Army, Commanding
Headquarters Lawson General Hospital
Atlanta
-- TIME'S omission of Colonel Porter was a howling oversight.--ED.
Technique
Sirs:
Sometimes it looks as though what this people lacks is the ability to pursue a train of thought. For instance: we want to do all we can to win the war, yet we criticize our allies in an injurious spirit. We implore England to free India, while never giving a thought to the problem of the subject race in our own country. We ardently want to have India gain her independence, and we use a technique calculated to put England's back up. If we were logical, we would1) stop criticizing British policies in public, 2) talk about the Negro problem instead of the Indian problem and 3) make an intellectual effort to understand the complications of both. Psychologists say that if you persistently use a faulty method to achieve your desires, it is to be suspected that you do not really want to achieve them. Let us hope they are wrong.
H T. LOWE-PORTER
Princeton, NJ.
Postwar
Sirs:
You have 20 departments, all excellent, but one too few. Why not make them number 21 --a man-sized number--by adding a department on perhaps the most momentous activity of our times? I would call it World Government, or Peace Planning.
I don't need to convince you that many of your readers are deeply interested in developments in this field. You cover it already, but now one must hunt for such news here & there in your 20 departments. Here is a good opportunity for TIME to march . . . ahead again.
CLARENCE K. STREIT
President
Federal Union, Inc.
New York City
-- TIME will continue to print postwar news, like other news, in the appropriate department. But TIME will extend and deepen this coverage by a series of special articles under the general title, "Background for Peace." These articles will discuss various postwar problems, from relief and world federation to the outlook for plain people in Des Moines and Poland. The first article in this series will appear next week. -- ED.
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