Bill Chickering
Sirs:
I knew Bill Chickering. I do not know his wife. I do know TIME, so I'm extending my sympathy to TIME. You both have suffered a great loss.
Bill went to Bougainville with my battalion and went ashore in the thick of the Cape Torokina battle. I hope that some day the American public will realize what combat correspondents go through to bring them the news. . . .
L. M. MASON
Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.M.C.
San Diego
Sirs:
It makes me feel pretty humble toward [war correspondents] and all the men in the service who are giving their all so that I can go to high school in the country that's safe and wonderful.
I hope and pray that there won't ever be another war because it has taken so many lives of many fine men, like Mr. Chickering.
But we won't forget them, any of them, ever. It's our duty and privilege to keep a lasting peace for them because our soldiers ate fighting this war for us. God help them.
DOROTHY BRIDGE
Hazardville, Conn.
Willkie Memorial
Sirs:
Last October, TIME ran a very moving article about Wendell Willkie, and thereafter a number of your readers wrote letters suggesting that a Memorial Fund be raised. . . . A group of men and women who worked with Mr. Willkie in many causes are now engaged in erecting an exciting memorial to him in New York City.
Mr. Willkie was one of the founders of Freedom House, and one of its most active directors. His fellow directors have launched the project of providing a building which might be considered a sort of "OneWorld Center." It will be called the Wendell Willkie Memorial Building, and over its doors will be a bronze plaque, reminding all who enter and all who pass that there the great human causes which Wendell Willkie had so much at heart will continue to be served under his inspiration.
The intention is, in this one building, to provide quarters for a number of non-political organizations, each one devoted to a separate cause. Freedom House itself will be only one of many. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will surely have its national headquarters in this Center. So will an outstanding national organization fostering international collaboration; another seeking to eliminate religious antagonisms; one active in the improvement of housing; one striving to better labor-employer relations--and so on, covering the whole range of humanitarian causes in which Willkie himself was always a fighting leader. There are few figures in American history who rose to leadership of the people as swiftly as Wendell Willkie did. The most succinct reason given for Willkie's phenomenal career as a public figure, to my mind, was that of Archibald MacLeish: "He trusted the people . . . and they remember. . . ."
HARRY SCHERMAN
Book-of-the-Month Club
New York City
P: Contributions should be addressed to Freedom House, 16 East 48th St., New York, 17, N.Y.--ED.
Options Limited
Sirs:
The paper shortage must be acute for you to omit eight of the 58 letters (gyll, w and dro) from the big name of the little town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch* (TIME, Jan. 15). ... Llanfair P.G. [is the] usual form for postal authorities and people in a hurry. . . .
Please don't hide behind the skirts of "optional spelling,"" because the only permissible variations are 1) substitution for euphony of s for the fifth pair of Is (letters 40 and 41); and 2) ti or ty for dy (letters 44 and 45).
DAVYDD WILLIAMS
New York City
Sirs:
. . . How can you expect your readers to have faith in your infallibility when you misspell a simple little word like the name of this village?
SIDNEY H. JONES
Philadelphia
P: TIME'S Miscellany researcher, who became confused in trying to read a plain Welsh sign correctly, is hereby excused.--ED.
Knight the Big Bum!
Sirs:
Anyone who will note the New Year's Honors List of Britain [which includes] the list of men elevated to the peerage by the King . . . will see immediately that what we need for internal tranquillity is a king.
In the last Honors List the King eased off that thorn in the side of the Empire, David Lloyd George, by making him an earl. And what does he do with an oldline union man such as the head of the coal miners' union?* He knights him. . . . These boys'll have to be conservative all along the line now; if they write it'll have to be in the dignified columns of the Times; if they speak it'll have to be in well-modulated tones over the dinner hour of the "wireless". . . .
In this country the plan would calm the populace considerably. Take John L. Lewis, for instance. . . . How easy it would be, if we had a king, to knight Lewis. . . . Sir Jonathan Llewellyn Lewisse of Coalhod-on-Cumberland. Isn't it magic? . . . Not a coal miner will listen to him. [Or] a businessman that got obstreperous. . . . You can see him now: Lord Henry Fordson, Earl of V-8-on-Highway No. 1. . . .
Or take Roosevelt. . . . Make him a duke and there'd be no more trouble.
JOHN MANCHESTER San Francisco
Advice Wanted
Sirs:
In a footnote in your issue of Jan. 29 you say:
"Last week, Oliver Stanley, His Majesty's Secretary of State for Colonies, was in the U.S., enunciating the proposition that Britain would reform its empire but would not submit to any form of international advice."
The following is an extract from the speech made by Colonel Stanley to the Foreign Policy Association in New York on Jan. 19:
"We cannot share with others the administrative responsibilities which are ours alone. We believe that to attempt to do so would be impracticable, inefficient and undesirable. But in discharging those responsibilities we do want cooperation from others, we do want advice and we do want and shall welcome criticism, if that criticism is constructive and informed."
Earlier in his speech the Colonial Secretary . . . said:
"We believe that all colonial powers in any given region and other countries who have a particular interest in the region should meet together in order to discuss their common problems, and to help each other to find their common solutions. So many problems today --economic, health and transportation--transcend the frontiers of individual units, and can only successfully be dealt with on a regional basis."
In view of these very clear statements by the Colonial Secretary, I am confident you will agree that your summing-up of his attitude, in the footnote to which I have referred, was scarcely exact.
PHILIP HEWITT-MYRING British Information Services New York City
A Pulitzer for Whitehurst?
Sirs:
You may be interested in this reaction to your "Excuse It, Please" story [the firing of a Florida copy editor for an unauthorized editorial lambasting Palm Beach revelries--TIME, Jan. 15].
In his weekly radio feature on WJAS, Harold Cohen, local drama critic, commented that ex-Copydesk Assistant Whitehurst of the Palm Beach Post-Times undoubtedly told the truth about New Year's Eve in his city and in most other American cities; and, instead of being fired, he should have had his salary doubled, and should be recommended for a Pulitzer prize.
JOHN F. DUFFY Pittsburgh
Girls Wanted
Sirs:
We are a couple of fighter pilots stationed in Assam. . . . Since coming overseas, we have had brought home to us, rather forcibly . . . that women aren't inclined to wait for long when a man has to take time out to fight the war. So we find ourselves the proud possessors of two big shining silver fighter planes but without any girls to name them after.
We would appreciate [your printing] this in your '"Letters" section in hopes that at least two girls, in whose hearts still faintly glows a spark of patriotism, will see it and send us a letter with their picture enclosed. The picture, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, captioned by the accompanying names, will be emblazoned boldly upon the plane's nose, and we can once more soar majestically over Burma without feeling bitter towards one of the things for which we are fighting--namely AMERICAN WOMANHOOD.
BRYANT G. NEWTON Lieutenant, U.S.A.A.F.
LEONARD R. BRILEY Lieutenant, U.S.A.A.F.
APO 629 c/o Postmaster New York City
Kekule's Vision
Sirs:
Your article "Portrait of a Molecule" (TIME, Jan. 22) stirred me profoundly. You mention the fact that the shape of the molecule of hexamethylbenzene, magnified 100,000,000 times, corresponds to the shape of its commonly used chemical formula.
Frederick A. Kekule (1829-1896) [was] the man who conceived the symbol of the "benzene ring." Dr. Huggins' photo appears to have confirmed what Kekule had seen in a purely visionary way ... a phenomenon he had no way of observing directly. . . .
To me it represents a valuable contribution to the problem of "Science and Intuition." Seeing the photo of the molecule was like retracing the flight of a genius to whom nature had revealed one of her innumerable secrets, a tiny fragment of her divine gestalt.
EMIL A. GUTHEIL, M.D. New York City
P:Kekule's vision of the benzene ring, which has been called "the most brilliant piece of prediction to be found in the whole range of organic chemistry," came to him in a dream about snakes. He wrote: "One of the snakes seized its own tail and the image whirled scornfully before my eyes. As though from a flash of lightning I awoke . . . occupied the rest of the night working out the consequences of the hypothesis."--ED.
* Reader Manchester apparently means Sir Mark Hodgson, general secretary of the Boilermakers' Union.
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