Poet's Corner

Sirs:

Confidentially now, just what in hell was your reviewer of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets talking about, on pages 96, 98 and 101 of your June 7 issue? ... To this person--he, she, or more likely, it--goes my enthusiastic vote to be Queen of the May.

J. L. CLUTE

Pensacola, Fla.

>Plainly enough to some readers (see below), TIME's reviewer was talking about the poetry of T. S. Eliot. Perhaps Reader Clute should stick to prose.--ED.

Sirs:

TIME has given me a good introduction to the work of a man whom I knew I ought to know. For this, thank you. Toward the end of the review a lyric is quoted, The dove descending . . . which strikes me hard with pleasure in the poetry and in the impact of the thought. . . .

NOEL BLEECKER VAN WAGENEN Towanda, Pa.

Heaven on Earth

Sirs:

Postwar planners seem to be unanimous in wanting to assure the Japanese people that we meditate no harm to their God-Emperor. It is doubtless true that Hirohito is personally an inoffensive little man, and that he had little or nothing to do with the present Japanese program of conquest.* But the program is being pushed in his name and that of his house, and it would seem that the Japanese people are thoroughly sold on the idea of his divinity, and of their duty to bring all people under his rule.

It therefore follows that when Japan is defeated, the United Nations will have it in their power to knock the props from under possible future Japanese plans of conquest. . . . This could be done in two ways: 1) by the complete physical extermination of the whole heavenly family; ... 2) by the forcible removal of the whole heavenly outfit to America, where it could serve as the permanent hostage ... for the good behavior of the Japanese people. . . . We might get a little revenue on the side by charging admission to see the God-Emperor.

ROGER C. HACKETT Balboa, C.Z.

Freedom, Government-Controlled?

Sirs:

I am first an American, then a Southerner, and as I lie in my slit-trench during a break in maneuvers, my blood boils with rage at reading radical, damyankee Dr. Conant's wish for "setting up Federally financed but State-operated machinery for retraining the veterans and placing them in jobs, etc." [TIME, May 31). This Government control of so-called "freedom" is what I, and, I assure you, many like me are fighting against. . . .

(PFC.) JOHN B. RANSOM III Camp Shelby, Miss.

Angel in the Pacific Sirs: My congratulations ... on the admirable review of Thomas Wolfe's Letters to His Mother (TIME, May 10). To those of us who share the belief that Thomas Wolfe's untimely death was the greatest loss to American literature in modern times, it is indeed gratifying. . . .

Here on this Pacific island, there are few things I cherish now more than the sheer pleasure I find in reading. Much of that pleasure has been directly due to the battered Look Homeward, Angel now making the rounds in the barracks. . . .

(SGT.) LESTER F. EPSTEIN

% Postmaster San Francisco

Eyes

Sirs:

Cunningham of the Mediterranean (TIME, May 24):

Doenitz of the Sub-Atlantic (TIME, May 10):

The eyes of both have that "mariner's sadness"--or is it Artzybasheff's

WALTER ANDERSON

Buffalo

> Artzybasheff of Kharkov and Manhattan (TIME, June 16, 1941, et seq.):

Good Democracy

Sirs:

REPEAL CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT [TIME, JUNE 14], GOOD DEMOCRACY AND WISE WAR POLICY. WEST COAST WILL SUPPORT, NOT OPPOSED REPEAL. LET'S SHOW CHINA WE MEAN FOUR FREEDOMS. . . .

HjALMER SORENSON Seattle

The German Mentality

Sirs:

. . . You published an article entitled "German Bishops Speak Out" (TIME, May 24), from which the following is an excerpt:

"The document signed by aged (84) Adolph Cardinal Bertram, Archbishop of Breslau, noted that . . . Luxembourg 'received the German troops in a friendly way,' now detests 'all Germans' because of 'closing of the monasteries . . . numerous banishments . . . [deaths of] citizens in concentration camps. ....'"

The remarks made by the German bishops concerning the reception given the German invader . . . are incorrect. . . .

Far from displaying friendly feelings, the Luxembourgers were both stunned and enraged. . . . From the outset, acts of violence were perpetrated against the German military authorities, despite the fact that the population was disarmed. ... It is true that the Luxembourgers were at first almost paralyzed by the succession of catastrophes, one worse than the other, which preceded and followed the French armistice. That this understandable frame of mind, which lasted scarcely three months, should be interpreted by the Germans as friendly indifference is but another proof of the immeasurable insufficiency and lack of understanding so characteristic of the German mentality.

The German cardinals and bishops are attempting to impress German public opinion and authorities with the opportune argument that the Nazis have unnecessarily drawn hate upon Germany by their brutal and antireligious policy in the occupied countries. . . . When will they, or rather dare they, condemn Nazi injustices and atrocities, not because such crimes have provoked hatred that is harmful to Germany, but because they are offenses against the most elementary laws of human and divine justice ?

ANDRE WOLFF

Commissioner of Information Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg New York City

Wanted: Taxes, Not Subsidies

Sirs:

TIME of May 17 [and June 21] considers the question of subsidies as a means of preventing a further rise in the cost of living. . . . For extremely limited purposes subsidies might possibly be useful, but not as a major weapon in the .fight against inflation.

The seeming success of subsidies would be deceptive since, at the end of the war when price controls and subsidies were discontinued, it would be necessary either to allow product prices to rise commensurately with the increase in costs that is taking place, or to reduce costs. The former would itself be inflation. The latter would produce difficulties too great to contemplate, namely, political turmoil and widespread unemployment. Workers would oppose the reduction in their wage rates, and farmers the reduction in the prices of their products.

The failure now to levy taxes sufficient in amount to meet all government expenditures (including the subsidies) will mean that the excess of expenditures over tax receipts must be met by newly created (bank or printing press) money. After the close of the war, when rationing and price control are removed, the offering of this money for goods will bring on a swift and disastrous rise in all prices. . . .

The danger of subsidies is that we shall infer from the fact that the cost of living is held down during the war that we are successfully avoiding inflation. . . .

In the long run, therefore, subsidies aggravate rather than cure inflation. The preventive of inflation is enormously higher taxes, a fact which the Secretary of the Treasury seems not to understand.

LLOYD W. MINTS

Associate Professor of Economics The University of Chicago Chicago

McWilliams Postscript

Sirs:

A postscript to your review of Carey McWilliams' excellent book, Brothers Under the Skin, appearing in your issue of May 24:

Recently in a San Antonio bus I saw a Negro girl of about 18 ejected from the one remaining empty seat in the crowded vehicle, a seat next to a white woman. And ... it wasn't the white woman who raised the fuss but a soldier of the U.S. Army, sitting across the aisle! He threatened to report the bus driver to transit company officials if the girl wasn't made to move. There was no place to move to, so she had to stand next to the empty seat the remainder of her 30-minute ride. . . .

What a fine ambassador of good will he's going to make when sent overseas to represent America in its program of securing for the peoples of every race freedom from the fear of domination! . . .

(Pvx.) DONALD GROSS San Antonio ^

*For other news' and views of Japan see p. 100.

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