Wrong Dough
Sirs:
Everytime I read a headline, "Doughboys Invade Leyte," or "Aachen Entered By Doughboys" I see red. Even if we Americans have been the richest nation of the world are we not delusioning ourselves if we accept the term "doughboy" as a synonym for "American"? . . .
RICHARD A. BUFFUM
Editor
The Wesleyan Argus Wesleyan
University
Middletown, Conn.
P: Let Reader Buffum fash himself no more; wherever it came from (authorities disagree),"doughboy" has no money taint. According to H. L. Mencken (The American Language): "Doughboy is an old English Navy term for dumpling ... is said to have originated in the fact that the infantrymen once pipe-clayed parts of their uniforms, with the result that they became covered with a doughy mass when it rained." Alternative version: Civil War cavalrymen coined it as a term of kindly contempt for infantrymen; it referred to the doughnut-shaped brass buttons on their uniforms.--ED.
Editorial Confession
Sirs:
Do TIME editors go in for New Year's stock-takings and that sort of thing? The question occurred to me when I recently read the following confession by the editor of a British magazine called Horizon:
"What have we lost or gained intellectually by five years of war? We have gained in seriousness, but lost in mental elasticity; the emotional strain of war has broken our curiosity, has fatigued us to the point at which we are cynical, impervious, distressed or hostile in the presence of new ideas."
I wondered: Is this only a special mood induced by the special ravages of war in Britain? Perhaps this British editor is more honest than American editors? What I especially wondered was whether this British editor's sentiment is one that TIME'S editors share, secretly or otherwise.
FARLEY SMITH
New York City
P: Less fatigued than Horizon's conscientious Editor Cyril Connolly, TIME editors sanguinely observe that pessimism among editors is not infrequently a sign of editorial health. With tongue only lightly in cheek, TIME applauds the shrewd observation of Harvard's late President Eliot: "Things seem to be going fairly well, now that a spirit of pessimism prevails in all departments."--ED.
Phyllis & Celia
Sirs:
Aren't you confusing talented Phyllis Thaxter, the Mrs. Lawson in 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (TIME, Dec. 4), with my talented grandmother Celia Thaxter?
TED THAXTER
New York City
P: Yes. TIME'S apologies to Grandson Thaxter for confusing his grandmother, Poet Celia, with Actress Phyllis, a distant relative. In her day Celia Thaxter was famed for her poems for children (notably The Sandpiper), her sketches of the grey New Hampshire coast and her summer garden "salon" on the Isles of Shoals, where her father, an exlighthouse-keeper, kept a popular hotel.--ED.
Sure Cure
Sirs:
Your amusing note on the Anti-Cigaret Alliance's six methods to use in quitting the smoking habit is hilariously noted (TIME, Nov. 27). . . .
There is only one sure and moneysaving way to quit smoking: just stop.
GEORGE A. WOODLAND JR.
Berkeley, Calif.
Senator Gillette's Record
Sirs:
... In TIME (Nov. 13) ... I am designated as "old-line Democratic Isolationist Guy M. Gillette." In view of the fact that I have fought since my return from World War I during a period of more than 25 years for the principle of international collaboration for peace, it is unfortunate that a magazine of your standing should see fit to designate me as an isolationist. Even a cursory examination of the record would have shown the unfairness of such designation. My speeches on the floor of the Senate, the Resolutions that I have introduced and the work that I have done during the past year in assisting to formulate the Connally Resolution and the Dumbarton Oaks document, certainly deserve something better than the type of comment appearing in your publication. . . .
GUY M. GILLETTE
Committee on Foreign Relations
United States Senate
Washington
P: TIME'S phrase (which conformed to impartial Capitol opinion) was prompted 1) by Senator Gillette's voting record (straight down the isolationist line against Lend-Lease, revision of the Neutrality Act, etc.), and 2) by the need to distinguish him from such impassioned new-line Democrats as Claude Pepper and Joe Guffey. Never to be confused with such clamorous isolationists as Ham Fish, Iowa's well-liked, forthright Senator Gillette,"apparently not too old-line to change, was appointed to the Senate Committee which last year wrote the Connally Resolution on postwar world cooperation.--ED.
War Memorials
Sirs:
I was interested in the article "Heroes" in the Nov. 27 issue of TIME. Certainly we Americans are awakening to the fact that a living monument for our dead is ... much more noble than any marble edifice. . . .
AILEEN BLACK
Lakeside, Neb.
Sirs:
... A community hospital seems to be one of the most appropriate projects for consideration by memorial committees, recognizing as it does the importance of adequate medical care in alleviating suffering for war injured. . . .
GEORGE BUGBEE
Executive Secretary
American Hospital Association
Chicago
Sirs:
... I heartily agree that this country can get along very nicely without jeeps in concrete. But maybe there is a cogent argument for statues of jeeps in strategic war metals. In another war, as in this one, we shall probably be caught short in metals. When that happens, metal memorials, however unsightly, would come in mighty handy. They might be inscribed: Expendable Monument; and below that, just to be on the safe side: Not to Be Sold to Japan for Scrap!
GEORGE LINDSTROM
New York City
Sirs:
. . . What guarantee does TIME have that Chattanooga, Coral Gables, Cleveland, Detroit, will build a useful memorial that will be any better than the thousands of bad statues? .. .
ERWIN F. FREY C
olumbus, Ohio
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.