Why Die for Danzig?

Sirs:

I have just received a letter from my son, now a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces. . . . I quote part of it:

"I wish I had more faith in the new world to come after this war is won. When I was born, Dad was in the Army. When he was born, both his father and grandfather were in the Confederate Army. When my baby boy was born, I was in the Army. When his son is born, will he also be in the Army? . . .

I hate the Army. I hate being regimented and restricted and ordered around and bawled out and ignored and insulted. I want to live and work and love in any way I please, and I want everyone else in this world to have that same privilege so long as he doesn't harm me or those I love in the process. . . . Why haven't we the intelligence and common sense to build a world order where these stupid and brutal wars would be impossible? . . . It seems that even a fool could see the necessity of a strong world organization to keep the peace. Yet we have men in our Congress who do not see it. . . ."

Those of us who have sons in this war--I have two--are thinking of the French soldier and his "Why die for Danzig?" Why should my sons die only to have the ideals they have died for destroyed by a stupid, petty group of mediocre men who are no more fitted to decide the destiny of this great nation than I am? Why die for pressure groups, farm blocs, international cartels, war profiteers ? . . " There are no doubt honest and conscientious individuals in Congress. (I have recognized no statesmen.) One has only to study their faces, pictured at various times in your magazine, listen to their immature mouthings over the radio, to realize their heartbreaking deficiencies, their utter lack of true greatness. . . . The peace, I am afraid, is already lost.

G. S. HURDLE

San Diego

Berkley v. the President

Sirs:

All praise to the President for his veto of the revenue bill [TIME, March 6], and to Mr. Willkie for facilitating the veto. This is perhaps the first time the President has been wholly right, or Mr. Willkie wholly forthright, on an urgent domestic issue. Both men, in this instance, have behaved like statesmen, accepting the proper risks or responsibilities of leadership along with the privileges. . . .

HENRY C. SIMONS

Department of Economics

University of Chicago

Chicago

Sirs:

Man of the Year--Alben W. Barkley. Thank God, it can't happen here.

M. B. NICHOLAS

Englewood, N.J.

Sirs:

. . . Our representatives in Congress should not deceive themselves. Such talk about the "liberty" and "independence" of Congress is pure political hokum, and no one knows that better than the men voicing such nonsense. . . .

A. M. HENDRICKSON

St. Paul

Sirs:

. . . This smells like the prewar Congress that voted down all military appropriations and heralded the President as a warmonger. . . . After this thing is over we will elect a Congress that won't give our kids the same raw deal we got.

(PRIVATE)

Denver

Sirs:

. . . Congress is sadly in need of reorganization. It has grown to be a big, clumsy, unwieldy debating society. . . .

W. L. RIDEOUT

Big Bear Lake, Calif.

2044 A.D.

Sirs:

The time is the year 2044. An artist has Been commissioned to do an educational mural for the World State Post Office, Washington Branch. He decides to depict the life of 100 years ago in a place called the United States.

A big mural. Bigness is essential. Have a brawny specimen climbing a marble staircase. With muddy boots. On either side of him, in pools of blood, the dragons he has slain: a nigger, a jap, a kike, a hun, maybe an old philosopher, over whose bodies hovers a hungry vulture bearing a certain peculiar resemblance to Martin Dies. The stairs lead up into the clouds, where Mrs. Miniver sits, a Chesterfield between her lips, a Coke bottle in her left hand, a place-marked copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by her side, her right hand extended. She is swathed in flags of the United Nations. . . . Gamboling gaily about her, cherubic likenesses of Abbott & Costello, drooling.

Below, spurring our hero onward and upward, accompanied by a softly humming choir of diesel engines, are the Andrews Sisters, lustily rendering the Hut-Sut Song into a battery of microphones held before them on a pink cushion by H. V. Kaltenborn, who stands impassively on a flaming pile of back issues of PM. At the foot of the staircase, a cluster of highway signs. The arrows . . . are blank but a huge neon sign flashes on & off, Speed Limit: Unlimited. Above the clouds, the holy trinity of Henry Ford, Winston Churchill and Frank Sinatra, each in control of a .50-caliber machine gun, a megaphone, and some screaming women.

To the right of this panorama, a gigantic aluminum escalator, paralleling the marble stairs, is being constructed under the supervision of Henry J. Kaiser. Waiting high above where the complete stairway will reach is Superman. Waiting expectantly below, eager to make the first ascension, are Louella Parsons, Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Grable, Ida Cantor and Elsa Maxwell, munching hot dogs and representing American womanhood.

(Corp.) Daniel Hale Gray

Phoenix, Ariz.

Hallelujah!

Sirs:

TIME has done it again! Your article concerning the Army Airways Communications System in the Jan. 24 edition, just received here in India, was met with cheers and hallelujahs. For many months men of this organization have had a rough time trying to tell the "folks back home" what A.A.C.S. is all about. Now we merely refer them to your story. . . . Thanks, TIME.

c/o Postmaster

New York City

Mouthful

Sirs:

A wave of indignation has arisen among my mates about several articles TIME has printed to the effect that fighting men of the U.S. are unaware of the war aims. You say that when asked to state their opinion on this all they say is: "I wanta go home." Home stands for more than a building. It stands for a loved possession free from threat among free neighbors. Couldn't it be that the concept of total peace is a big mouthful to say all at once? In parts, it is voiced to a buddy in a bull session, to Mom in a letter, or in an evening of foxhole prayer.

The men who died at Tunisia, at Tarawa, didn't make that sacrifice just to go home. They died that "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . ."

(MMr/c) A.C. Martin

Advanced Base

Southwest Pacific

P:TIME realizes that men die, as they live--and as they fight--for all kinds of reasons.--ED.

Little Willie

Sirs:

. . . For 20 years, since my first Englishman taught me my first ruthless rhyme, I've been searching for a copy of Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (TIME, Feb. 28). But no one even knew Little Willie. Is he really in print, and can he be had? Incidentally, we like our version better:

Little Willie, in the best of sashes,

Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes,

Suddenly the room grew chilly,

No one wanted to poke poor Willie.

A. VERNE FULLER

Muskegon, Mich.

Sirs:

Those rhymes of yours were really sissy. They made 'em better than that in the good old days. Listen:

Willie fell down the elevator,

Wasn't found till eight days later.

All the neighbors said, "Gee whiz,

What a spoiled child Willie is."

Willie poisoned Grandma's tea,

Grandma died in agony,

Willie's always up to tricks,

Ain't he cute? He's only six.

L.C. Van Derveer

Atlantic City

Sirs:

. . . Some seven years ago when Dr. C. F. Frank and I attended a boring scientific meeting . . . we got hold of good old Harry Graham's Rhymes, but we were puzzled as to the "heat" involved. We decided to paraphrase them without application of heat. . . . This is the result:

When baby's cries grew hard to bear

I put him in the Frigidaire.

I never would have done so if

I'd known he would be frozen stiff.

My wife said, Dear, I'm so unhappy,

Our darling's now completely frappy.

I wonder what became of Frank? . . .

DR. FREDERICK C. NACHOD

Haddonfield, N.J.

P:Is Dr. Frank, like Ruthless Rhymes, out of print?--ED.

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