Mann's Translator
Sirs:
I am writing to you because, unfortunately, I do not know the address of the gentleman who came to see me a short time ago, and with whom I had a pleasant conversation, to be used, I presume, as material for a story in your esteemed magazine [TIME July 3]. On that occasion, I became guilty of a forgetfulness which I want to correct with this letter.
It is my wish to take the opportunity to prove my gratefulness to my translator of many years, Mrs. Helen Lowe-Porter in Princeton, for her extraordinary achievement she has accomplished with the translation of all my books, from Buddenbrooks up to the last volume of the Joseph series. I am fully aware of the tremendous difficulties which my not exactly simple way of writing puts in the way of her mediatorial zeal and faithfulness, and I cannot appreciate enough the great credit Mrs. Lowe-Porter has earned with her linguistic reproduction of my work for the English-speaking public. Not always have the reviews done her full justice, and that is why I wish to express my appreciation publicly. My literary standing in this country and in Great Britain would certainly not be what, gratifyingly, it is, if I had not had the good fortune of finding a translator of the devotion and linguistic talent of Mrs. Helen Lowe-Porter. . . .
THOMAS MANN
Pacific Palisades, Calif.
P: H. T. Lowe-Porter, nee Helen Tracy Porter, 68, is a native Pennsylvanian.
A graduate of Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., she has lived most of her life abroad.
Mann sends his manuscripts piecemeal to his translator, who works on them almost as hard (eight hours a day) as their author does. Mrs. Lowe bakes her own bread (see cut), keeps house for her husband, Dr Elias Avery Lowe, an Oxford paleographer, who joined the staff of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 1936. Her hyphenated surname is the result of her mistaken notion that married Britons always join surnames.
At present she is on an island off the Maine coast, translating Mann's current work-in-progress.--ED.
War for Fair Play
Sirs:
You are saddened by our war losses and you say: "World War II is not yet a crusade" [TIME,' June 26]. As the late Prof. Boas pointed out, it is almost impossible to tell what masses of people have thought in the past or are thinking in the present. For each one of us, it is mostly a projection of individual thought. So, for the American soldier this war may not be a crusade, but something better on a lower emotional plane: a fight for fair play.
My father was a Russian Jew who loved this country because it gave him a chance to live like a decent human" being. I was blessed with a mother who knew no boundaries of race or religion, especially when other people were in trouble. My grammar-school and high-school teachers taught me to love good sportsmanship. They taught what they were, even more than what they knew.
So when the last war came I went over to France as a machine gunner with that same 4th Division which is now fighting at Montebourg. We did not talk about slogans then and our men probably don't talk about them now. We thought we knew what we were fighting for, although it was hard to hold onto beliefs when boys we loved were killed before our eyes.
Soldiers don't deal in labels. But they do have ideals which mean too much to be worn on the sleeve. Call it what you will: sportsmanship, fair play for the underdog, or most Americans' rebellion against the idea that a human being is just a walking belly. . . .
MAYNARD L. GINSBURG
Woonsocket, R.I.
130,000,000 Military Experts
Sirs:
It seems to me that a letter I have received from a U.S. Army officer in Burma has an interest for the American people. If you agree with me, perhaps you will care to print these excerpts:
". . . I guess I have been lucky. I have had part of my pack shot off my back; I have had a mortar shell, which would have blown my head off had it exploded, fall harmlessly a foot from my foxhole; I have had a bullet zip through my clothing without so much as a scratch. . . . I have walked, waded, climbed and slid through 500 miles of "impenetrable" jungle; I have been bitten by every known, and some that are unknown, type of insect, but especially by leeches, wood-ticks, red ants and mosquitoes. I have quenched my thirst with a colloidal suspension of mud for days on end; I have spent 22 hours of every day in the same foxhole for 14 days--I won't try to describe the odor of putrefying flesh and excrement; I have had dysentery for days on end, seemingly hundreds of times. And yet, though I have lost 20-30 pounds and, in common with the rest of the men, feel like a convalescent taking his first step after a long siege, I manage to stay on the right side of that tenuous line which separates the healthy from the sick. . . .
"Tell your civilian friends that we don't really begrudge them their luxuries. . . . What does gripe the hell out of us is that America seems suddenly to have developed 130,000,000 military experts. The Senators and press correspondents are the most vociferous and hence the most obnoxious. . . .
"If you think things are moving too slowly in Italy, that we are wasting precious moments in the South Pacific, or moving tediously in Burma, I invite you to sit with me in a foxhole under mortar and artillery fire and let's see how ready you are to jump out of the hole to launch an attack. Or lie with me in elephant grass with bursts of light machine-gun bullets shredding the stems six inches above your head and tell me that time is urgent, that we must be getting on with our advance. . . ."
ELEANOR SPRUANCE
Danville, Pa.
Minesweepers' Favorites
Sirs:
Your six photos in TIME'S Pacific Pony (June 5) have sparked the fuse of an intra-ship civil war.
Today, 29 days out of San Francisco, we dropped the hook. Not long ago this spot was Jap-held. And yet an hour ago we boated ashore, picked up our bulging sack of precious mail, pulled out your Pony--the first of its kind to be seen by any of my crew of 92 fresh-caught enlisted men and officers--and the fireworks began.
The relative, though undeniable, beauty of the six Santiago society belles was argued pro & con, hither & yon until the entire crew--officers and men alike--were lobbying for their candidate. Pressure group opposed pressure group until, to avert a blowup, I was forced to hold a secret ballot. The result:
Maria Luisa Correa Larrain 30 The Robles Entry 23 Olivia Bunster Saavedra 19 Sylvia Gonzalez Rodriguez Elinor Poudensan Vasquez a dead heat, 14 each
The polls have just closed, and I have just now counted the ballots. Yet, even as I write this, I am beset by loud cries of foul play. The biggest beef (from the losers) is that the smallness of the pictures, plus the loss of detail inevitable in lithographic reproduction, has shown the winner to ad vantage, the losers to disadvantage.
In short, how in hell can I get the original glossies to satisfy this bunch of minesweeping extroverts once & for all?
D. N. LOTT Lieut. Commander U.S.S. Clamour c/o F.P.O. San Francisco
P: To silence the Clamour's clamor, glossy prints are on the way to Lott's lot.--ED.
It Didn't Work
Sirs:
I read the article about not having to wipe dishes in TIME, June 19. [Doctors recommend rinsing in 170DEG water.] I am eleven years old and have to dry dishes. The story didn't work on my mother so I still have to wipe them. I wish you would write something a little more stern.
JULIE POIROT Golden City, Mo.
Independent Clement
Sirs:
TIME (May 22) says: "The Pennsylvania Railroad Co.'s tart-tongued president, Martin Withington Clement, was once asked by the Interstate Commerce Commission why he let Manhattan's Kuhn, Loeb & Co. underwrite a Pennsy bond issue. Snapped he: 'I deal with whom I please.' "
No member of the ICC ever asked Mr. Clement why the Pennsylvania Railroad let Kuhn, Loeb & Co. underwrite a Pennsylvania Railroad bond issue. To an insinuation by an attorney for Halsey, Stuart & Co. that the Pennsylvania R.R. was dominated by Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Mr. Clement replied that he, and of course speaking for the Pennsylvania Railroad, dealt with whom they pleased.
You can readily see, therefore, that TIME'S article put an entirely erroneous light on the situation.
T. J. Ross
New York City
Finland's "War" Debt
Sirs:
TIME (June 26) says that Finnish Minister Procope "represented the one country that continued to pay back its World War I debt to the U.S." Surely you must know that Finland never had any such debt to pay back.
H. F. BEAVEN Ottawa, Ont.
P: Technically true. But many so-called "war" debts were created after World War I. Finland, a noncombatant, paid $9,000,000 cash for U.S. food delivered in 1919. When the U.S. later extended credit to other needy nations, the credit was made retroactive for Finland and the $9,000,000 was returned. (Finland still owes $8,567,490.43. Her famed payments have disposed of little more than the loan's interest.)
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