Bricker for President?
Sirs: Fresh laurels! More bays! Your "Ten Presidential Commandments" anent Mr. Bricker [TIME, April 26] are a veritable Rosetta stone to an understanding of Presidential politics. . . .
ROBERT V. TITUS New York City
Sirs:
TIME's story of the Bricker "boom" and the possibility of a fourth term for Roosevelt leave me both amazed and appalled. How can it be possible that a nation whose every effort must be directed toward winning the war can even contemplate a national election in 1944?
True, we are fighting for just such things as elections, but let's fight for them first and enjoy them second. There is only one solution: national elections, like Sunday afternoon joy rides, three cups of coffee and T-bone steaks, must be out for the duration.
If prematurely jubilant Republicans and disgruntled Democrats fail to see the logic of this, I trust that our men, in the tanks, in the bombers and in the trenches, won't.
MAX HENCY
Champaign, III.
Sirs:
. . . When TIME reports "vigorously uninspired" utterances of Governor Bricker, TIME is venomous (see p. 10) only to those Bricker henchmen who are keen on unthinking democracy. Stir them into thinking with venom if you can--and if you can't, stir us into electing proper men to public office. . . .
J. C. KENNEDY Oberlin, Ohio
Upside-Down Maps
Sirs:
In looking over the last several issues of TIME, I note that of 17 maps published, twelve are set in the traditional manner with north toward the top of the page, while the other five--so help me--are set one each with northeast, east, south, southwest and west toward the top. While I have no particular objection to this policy of twisting your maps around, I think it would be no more than fair for you to furnish simple-minded readers like me with headache tablets with each map that necessitates our standing on our heads, reading upside down, or otherwise making ourselves dizzy. . . .
FOREST WHITCHER Berkeley, Calif.
> Reader Whitcher's headache tablets are in the mail.--ED.
They Expect to Be Learned
Sirs: I have read with interest the discussion aroused by the New York Times history test [TIME, April 12] ... It is no news to us [highschool teachers] that our pupils are not educated. The Times test happened to be a history test, but the results would have been the same had it been a test in English or mathematics or any other high-school subject.
There are some poor teachers, of course.
. . . Textbooks are dull. ... But in my opinion there are other factors of much greater importance. Here are some of them: 1) The tremendous resistance which boys and girls of high-school age put up to the process of education. . . . Brought up on thrills and entertainment, they find even the best of teachers pretty dull stuff as compared with Hedy Lamarr or Robert Taylor. . . They do not expect to learn, they expect to be learned. That is what all their experience has led them to expect.
2) The growth of "extracurricular activities" in many of our high schools has reached the point where the tail has swallowed the head. Sports, clubs, dances, teas, "pep" sessions, programs, youth movements and every conceivable kind of extracurricular activity . . . now [take] three-fourths of the time and energy of pupils and teachers . . . before they can even begin to think of study and teaching.
3) The years between 15 and 20 are the most difficult years in life. . . . Great biological changes are taking place. . . . Who cares about the dead past, when every fiber of one's body is tingling in a glorious present?
. . . Turn the high schools into charm schools. Teach courtesy and grace, the art of dress, dancing, the development of personality and talents, choral singing and personal relationships. There would be no resistance to this kind of curriculum. And after this, two or three years of concentrated history, English, mathematics and languages for those who want these things. And for the others-- well, they would at least be as well educated as they are now, and for all of us life would be far more beautiful. . . .
HELEN H. PRESTON Anderson High School Anderson, Ind.
Sirs:
. . . History is not only condensed for text books, it is dehydrated. They can push mathematics and Latin around and pound it in. Not so history. History is real, living and breathing. ... In the average classroom it dies a death of suffocation.
Let historians, and not educators, write history.
(MRS.) MILDRED ELWELL El Paso
Sirs:
. . . There are many reasons why students have failed so miserably in the past several years to maintain creditable scholastic standing and make sound academic records. . . . The present generation has been weaned on the comic strip. It has absorbed huge, indigestible amounts of outrageously inane (for the most part) Hollywood movie fare. It has been given cheap, miserably lean radio entertainment. In short, the younger generation hasn't been given half a chance to improve itself mentally. . . .
PRIVATE J. A. FALLON Scott Field, III.
Bomb the Brains! Sirs:
Japanese execution of prisoners of war (TIME, May 3) to my mind has changed the whole future policy to be followed in the war. If barbarism is indicated by the enemy, it has to be met with like cruelty. No holds barred! No silly Wilson or Roosevelt idealism. . . .
The bars are down. Our brave fighters have been assassinated for doing their duty. Why not be as realistic as the Japanese? My feeling is that the main target for bombs--or shells--should be the chancellery in Berlin, the Mikado's palace in Tokyo, Hitler's hideout at Berchtesgaden, the government buildings in Berlin and Tokyo . . . where the brains are! To my mind, eradicating the motivating source is more important than destroying the instruments. . . .
LEON H. HASS
Davenport, Iowa
A Vote for Fiorello Sirs: It would have been surprising indeed if Mayor LaGuardia had been appointed to the job for which he was mentioned (TIME, April 19). . . .
For whatever else Fiorello is or is not, he is a stanch antiFascist. And antiFascists, paradoxically, are not in the best of standing with the policy-makers of the officially anti-Fascist forces.
EDWARD SCHINDELER Laguna Beach, Calif.
White-Collar Predicament Sirs: In chronicling the contemporary American scene, it seems to me that TIME and others have failed to appreciate the predicament in which a great many millions of Americans find themselves today. I refer to the plight of white-collar workers and others who, through no fault of their own, are not benefiting by the high wages being paid in war industries.
. . . That the country is rolling in wealth which must be "siphoned off" is an erroneous and a dangerous generalization. In my travels I have seen hundreds of persons, never highly paid, who are in serious financial difficulties because of ever-increasing taxation and the great boost in living costs.
With the further upward-spiraling of taxes and living costs, I predict that a large segment of the population will find it impossible to meet their obligations. If they seek employment in war industries they will leave unfilled services that can well lead to a serious disruption of the whole war effort.
I have no panacea to suggest. I am just noting a condition.
EARLE DOUCETTE Augusta, Me.
TIME's Venom (Cont'd) Sirs: "Do other readers agree that an undertone of venom is TIME's chief lure, that sadism governs their reading habits?" (TIME, April 19).
Yes.
BARNABY CONRAD JR. New Haven, Conn.
Sirs:
. . . Hell no!
ROBERT BOLTON
Angola, N. Y.
Sirs:
The circulation of hot dogs would fall off were it not for mustard, but mustard is not their chief lure. . . .
D. R. W. WAGER-SMITH Albuquerque, N. Mex.
Sirs:
I fairly drool at the mouth, curse the mailman and am in general in a state of frustration when my copy of TIME is late. I wondered what ailed me--now I know--it's the sadist in me. . . .
DOROTHY ROLAND Nahant, Mass.
Sirs:
I resent the letter in TIME as to the undertone of venom. . . .
May I suggest that Mr. Lambert speak just for himself, as he not only does TIME an injustice but their readers also.
OLIVE A. MACOMB Long Beach, Calif.
> The score to date: Yes, 20%; No, 56%; Maybe, 24%.--ED.
Polish Unreality Sirs: With a colossally characteristic disregard for reality, Poland's General Sikorski dares speak now of the reapportionment of Eastern European territory after the present conflict is over. . . .
TIME, April 12, speaks with typical candidness in mildly stating that "... both the time and the tone [of his statements] were ill chosen." Instead of pleading with the U.S., Great Britain and the Soviet Union to re-establish a Poland, Sikorski goes ahead and formulates plans for a miniature cordon sanitaire composed of small eastern countries to block off Russia, and even entertains hopes of acquiring Czecho-Slovakian territory.
The thousands of Polish heroes who died to prevent just such depredations . . . would, if they could, speak up to Mr. Sikorski and the Government in Exile, urge them at least to temper their demands upon Allies who are at present . . . busy fighting and winning the war so that nations like Poland may again exist.
ALBERT R. KALL Morristown, N. J.
Printer v. President Sirs: TIME, April 19: "They listened when he said 'Los que no se obtiente por la buena es negativo' (That which is not obtained by good will is negative)." They probably raised their eyebrows too, if Avila Camacho ever said it that way. . . .
It would be: "Those which is not obtainted . . . etc." and I'll bet you a year's subscription to the Latin American edition that the President of Mexico didn't say that. . . .
W. F. BLACK Montreal, Que.
> No bet. TIME's tired printer slipped, misread Lo as Los and obtiene as obtiente.--ED.
World War I Cigarets
Sirs:
Your story about the mystery of cigarets [TIME, April 12] proves again that history repeats itself and the Quartermaster Corps is still the Quartermaster Corps. In World War I if you had no other way of gauging your proximity to the front line, you had only to observe what the locale was smoking.
If Egyptian Deities or Pall Mall, you were at a base port.
You were near Paris if they smoked Melachrinos--at the rail head, Camels.
And when you came upon Bull Durham labels you were damn near the front line.
FRAZIER FORMAN PETERS Warwick, N. Y.
Russia's Mumbo-Jumboism Sirs: Apropos your recent article on "Churches in Russia" (TIME, April 12) and particularly with regard to this quotation: "Most foreign observers . . . believe that the Kremlin is basically just as anti-religious as it ever was," I should like to offer a word of parenthetical comment. It is apparently little remembered that pre-revolution Russia's official religion -- and consequently "religion" as the Russians understand the term -- was about as unchristian a religion as any African mumbo-jumboism. In support of this I offer the following statements made by John MacMurray, eminent professor of moral philosophy at London University (in a review of Julius Hecker's Religion and Communism, in 1934): "I can come ... to only one conclusion and it is a conclusion that all true friends of religion will share -- nearly all that religion has been, and has meant, in Russia ought to perish for ever from the face of the earth and from the memory of men." Does this explain the traditional bias of Russian Communist leaders against things religious? . . .
GEOFFREY H. JOHNSON
Toronto, Ont.
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