Soldiers v. John L Lewis

Sirs:

The Jan. 25 issue of TIME arrived in yesterday's mail, and the main topic of conversation last night was the coal strike in Pennsylvania. We decided that we would like the following message conveyed to Oscar Servaczgo, striking Wilkes-Barre anthracite coal miner.

We can't tell how many we are, but we're a company of farmers, clerks, salesmen, miners (coal and copper), truck drivers, laborers and mechanics. . . . We're volunteers, draftees, and old army men from 17 to 37. . . .

Some of us belonged to unions and some did not; some like unionism, some do not. But one and all, we're convinced that labor dictatorship must go. Every one of us, and our Kentucky and Pennsylvania coal miners too, cheer the crumbling of John L. Lewis' domination over you coal miners. . . .

. . . We want to come back to a free America where we can get a job without "kicking in" to some soap-box union racketeer. . . .

Incidentally, we were not so moved when Butte copper miners refused to work beside Negroes. We fight beside them over here, and it's a sad day for the people of the United States when they ask the Negro to fight for them abroad and then refuse to let him work at home. . . .

SERGEANT JOSEPH L. HEYER "Somewhere in North Africa"

U. S. Gold for China?

Sirs:

Doctor Shuhsi Hsu's prediction of the possibility of Chinese collapse (TIME, Feb. 8) looks ominous. You say that Jap blockades now are strangling China as the Central Powers were strangled in the World War. This is correct, but isn't there a possibility of alleviating this disastrous situation by a strong economic attack on the Jap strangler? The Chinese dollar has depreciated badly, and is partially dominated by the Japanese military yen in areas near the zones of occupation. Thus the perimeter of the flow of trade is from national China towards occupied China. By importing gold bullion from the U.S.'s oversupply and buying in occupied areas with gold, the flow can be reversed. The consumers goods . . . necessary to stiffen the Chinese internally will flow into the free interior. When sold for China dollars they will help reduce excess purchasing power. This is possible because of Jap puppet administrators' corruption. If goods are not movable, they can be destroyed where bought.

I suggest a U.S. buying commission handling the whole deal, and directing policy to bleed from Jap territory essentials which cannot be imported by air cargo or even over a reopened Burma Road. This cannot be done with Chinese dollars because their high velocity forces them back into free China; likewise U.S. dollars eventually do the same. Gold with real value will go underground, and cannot be effectively outlawed by the Japs. Even if passing into Jap hands, its use to them will be negligible as they have already sufficient (gold) for their own purposes.

It is a one-way weapon, vitalizing now what must be considered a future base of operations. After the war let's recover our gold from the Japs with compound interest. If air transportation is unavailable, one pack train of gold through Tibet will run the scheme for a year. . . . The possible interest on the investment far exceeds that being obtained in Fort Knox vaults.

A. V. RAVENHOLT New Delhi, India

Will White's Taste

Sirs:

I'm not a Republican and I'm not a Democrat; just a kid in high school who reads TIME every week to keep well-informed, but in your issue of March 8 I ran into something that makes me wonder.

I can see two sides of President Roosevelt; one shows him putting forth semi-socialistic plans to help the common man, and blasting big business, while the other shows him behind a shield of semi-socialism to gain popularity, making terms with big business, but whichever way I see him, I don't think it is in good taste to God damn him. . . .

After singing God Bless America, I'd feel sort of guilty asking the same God to damn our President, even if only to show the freedom of criticism we enjoy in our democracy.

I think Will White and TIME are acting in bad taste to spend time on a dissertation on the proper way to pronounce God damn Roosevelt.

ERNEST A. LINCOLN JR. Miami

> Honi soit qui mal y pense. Kindly Editor White was not really damning the President, just exercising his Kansas brand of humor.--ED.

Democracy Betrayed

Sirs:

I note a quote in a letter in your March 15 issue to the effect that the men who fought for democracy 1914-18 were "betrayed." ... I take issue.

That power nations went in for an orgy of self-interest and special privilege is history. But who was to blame? It is customary to throw the onus upon the "old-school diplomats," "power politics" and their special interest associates. But was there not equal or even greater responsibility in the generation that held the determinative vote, yet failed to use it directively? It was the youth of England, representing their generation and holding the balance of power, that declared that under no circumstances would they fight for their country. . . . Our schools, universities and high-brow writings were rotten with compromise, appeasement and supine pacifism. . . .

Under these conditions, governments did just as their constituents directed; no government that acted the contrary could have survived. . . .

P. A. TAVERNER Ottawa

A Guitar for the General

Sirs:

WORKERS FOR SHIPBUILDING DIVISION OF CONSOLIDATED STEEL CORPORATION LTD. HAVE CONTRIBUTED THE PROPER NUMBER OF DIMES WITH WHICH A FINE GUITAR AND EXTRA STRINGS HAVE BEEN PURCHASED AND SENT AIR EXPRESS TO GENERAL CARL SPAATZ IN TUNISIA ... AS RESULT OF STORY ON PAGE 22, TIME, MARCH 22. ...

CAPTAIN H. B. HIRD

U.S.N. (Ret.) Orange, Tex.

20-Year Plan

Sirs:

Let's make our fundamental war aim a peace without resentment; and to achieve it, make the following one of our victory demands: Control of the schools of Axis and Axis-dominated countries at least for the next 20 years. . . .

For teaching and administration in these schools, I suggest we adopt Louis Adamic's proposal and use only loyal German-Americans in the German schools, Italian-Americans in Italy and Nisei in Japan. . . . They certainly would cause less resentment among the populace than unsympathetic administrators of other stocks.

A generation of Germans, Italians and Japanese reared in democratic traditions would be far better guarantee of continuing world peace than a huge United Nations "police force."

CORNELIUS J. DWYER Flight Officer, A.U.S. Alliance, Neb.

Goethe on Germans

Sirs:

It was a tonic to be shared to discover again some words of Goethe--one of Germany's greatest poets and thinkers and in a smaller measure one of her statesmen--in which this enlightened man deflates the state, upholds the dignity of man. . . .

"... Germany is naught, but the individual German is much--although they like to believe the opposite. The Germans will have to be, like the Jews, uprooted, and dispersed the world over, before all the good which is in them and which would work towards the well-being of all nations can be brought out. . . ."

CHARLES D. ARING, M.D.

Cincinnati

Trumpet Blowing

Sirs:

In TIME, March 22, on page 78 you write: "The English . . . want less blowing of their own trumpets by Americans. . . ." On page 79 you assert: "Once American technology was a storehouse of learning that Europe hired . . . but through the years of war and prewar depression the rest of the world changed in its view of what it wanted from the U.S. ... It wanted the essential secret of U.S. enterprise, the quality within it that brought forth on the continent a new nation, a new birth of liberty, and with them a new wealth beyond the richest visions of the old. Thus 132,000,000 Americans . . . had become the only people of the earth's two billion who could save the hopes of the world in the simple struggle to save their own."

Is this not "blowing of their own trumpets by Americans?"

ALFRED O. MENDEL New York City

> Yes.--ED.

Anti-Semitic Alarm

Sirs:

I am alarmed by the openly expressed anti-Semitic convictions of a large portion of the citizens of this community. . . .

Because of the prevalence and obvious harmfulness of this particular form of Nazi poison, I believe it should be dragged out in the open and scotched.

Recently I have been told that "all the Jews stay out of the army, or if they get in, they are given commissions--the President is a Jew--you can't get a defense contract unless you are a Jew--Jews own 80% of the nation's wealth--Jews got us into the war--the WPB is controlled by Jews" --and so on.

Being a third-generation American of Irish descent, I am prepared to hear any day that Ireland was settled by the lost tribes of Israel.

MAURY PAUL

Los Angeles

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