"Lest We Forget"
Sirs:
Despite the slow seepage of horror from earlier reports, I was unprepared for your account [TIME, April 30] of the German concentration camps. Erla--the trapped, clawing, burning men; Buchenwald--the massive cordwood of the starved dead; Belsen--the small children, "too nearly dead themselves to cry," nestled against the rotting bodies of their mothers.
Let us have an international Day of Remembrance after this war, with persistent requiem music such as recently honored one man of good will--remembrance for those who died innocent and helpless, as well as for those who died active in combat for them.
Lest we forget, let us not pretty up these sites. Let their preservation be scrupulous in every detail. Let their numbers and distribution be sufficient so every German--with Allied encouragement, if necessary--be acquainted with them with Teutonic thoroughness. Let them be accessible to people of all countries as one of the distinguishing monuments of our time. . . .
HAZEL M. WIGGERS Chicago
Sirs:
. . . These brutal, insane and inhuman acts should make it the business of each and every one of us to see that all Germans and Japs in any way connected with perpetrating and executing these crimes be quickly brought to trial and shot. These pictures should allay the American misconception that the only German criminals are those in high places and that the mass of Germans are innocent, God-fearing people, victims of circumstances. . . .
(Cn. SP. Q.) ALBERT A. GOLDBERG Norfolk, Va.
Sirs:
. . . There has been much talk about the re-education of the Nazi. How about starting right now in prison camps over here by showing them all the pictures of the Nazi horror camps--the pictures that have hurt the rest of us so badly--and by telling them all the details? Let them know they come from a race of monsters, that there will never be reason for pride in a German.
(MISS) H. C. Wordeman New York City
Sirs:
. . You have rendered a great public service in obtaining from your correspondents such vivid and unforgettable descriptions of seemingly indescribable conditions at Buchenwald, Belsen, Erla and Nordhausen. . . . May I add a reference to a leaflet which the Germans widely distributed among our armed forces as they were advancing from the West? This leaflet was entitled Brain Splitters for Suckers Only. On the second page of the leaflet appears this question: "And have you talked to an eye witness of German atrocities?" Your article is an answer to that question. On the second page of the leaflet they add this observation: "The German people are just as decent as you and your folks." Your article is likewise an answer to that statement.
NAT SCHMULOWITZ
San Francisco 32nd or 33rd?
Sirs:
F.D.R. was President a long time, so long that newspaper editors in general forgot that he was the 32nd President. I took refuge in the thought that TIME [April 23], with all those researchers, would set everyone right. A broken reed! You cannot count either. President Truman is the 32nd person to be President. If one refers to him as the 32nd President, that is half-true. But when he is called the 32nd President of the U.S., you have permitted an error to creep in. Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th President of the U.S. It is true that the records of Congress list F.D.R. as the 31st President. But the Congress is a separate branch of the Government. Check with the Constitution. WILLIAM E. BARINGER, PH.D. The Abraham Lincoln Association Springfield, 111.
P:I Thirty-one men have served 32 tenures as President of the U.S. Whether Harry Truman is the 32nd or 33rd President is, in the absence of any final authority, up to Mr. Truman. He has decided that he is the 32nd President of the U.S. The Congressional Directory, Senate Manual, and the numbered nameplates on the Presidential portraits in the White House concur with him.--ED.
Historic Route
Sirs: . . . Since Presidential movements are news and since the censorship which cloaked [Roosevelt's] ended with his death [TIME, April 23], you may be interested to know that there was another [railroad] route which President Roosevelt used almost ex clusively in recent years. He traveled on the Baltimore & Ohio from Washington to Phila delphia; from there his train went over the Reading to Bound Brook, N.J., where it traveled over the Jersey Central Lines to Jersey City, and on to Highland, N.Y., over the New York Central's West Shore Railroad.
At Highland, the President used an auto mobile to complete his trip across the Hudson and on to Hyde Park. . . .
Presidential special trains raise many problems for the railroad handling them. The President's safety comes first, and elaborate precautions are taken. On our own road, for instance, all freight trains in the 31-mile distance we carried the President each trip were required to be at a standstill a half-hour before his train was scheduled to arrive at that point.
A staff meeting of key officers was held before every movement of the President over our lines, and approximately 20 key supervisors were assigned to various key locations in case of any difficulties. Specially selected coal was used; supervisors, master carpenters, bridge inspectors, track foremen and trackwalkers covered the entire right-of-way to examine all bridges and all track conditions; highway crossings which normally were unprotected at night were given special protection to guard against automobiles striking the train.
While we naturally are proud of our record in transporting the President, this information is offered not in an effort to extol the Jersey Central but to give you an appreciation of the unpublicized job done as a matter of special routine, year in and year out, by all the railroads who participate in transporting our Presidents.
RAYMOND F. BLOSSER Director of Information The Central Railroad Company of New Jersey Jersey City
Comforting Cocoon?
Sirs:
By the shade of Neville Chamberlain's umbrella, our State Department is really slipping! After so speedily admitting Argentina to the San Francisco conference, they have neglected invitations to the other Axis partners--Hitler and Tojo.
Not only is the Argentine membership unfair and an outrage to the boys who lie buried in Europe, and to the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it is turning the security conference into a weird farce.
Did Argentina goose-step her way to San Francisco via Egypt, or at Anzio, or was it Stalingrad? . . .
Unless situations of this kind are handled better, without this bewilderment to the American people and the world, and our peace aims more clearly expressed, the cocoon of isolationism which we shed not too long ago is going to seem very comforting.
MARY MERLE
Elmer, NJ.
Red Voice
Sirs:
In reading your April 30 issue concerning Paramount's new picture, The Unseen, I am somewhat disturbed by your description of Herbert Marshall as a "neighbor with a voice like sloe gin." As producer of Red Horse sloe gin, I am at a loss to understand the description. . . .
Our sloe gin is ruby-red, has a creamy, frothy head, is slightly sweet, and is produced from imported sloe berries (the sloe berry, a cross between a cherry and a prune, is grown abundantly in Ireland). . . .
GEORGE BROIDE D. J. Bielzoff Products Co. Distillateurs & Liquerysts Chicago
P: Ernie Pyle's Heart Sirs: The big, warm, human heart of Ernie Pyle has become known to millions of Americans since the beginning of the war, but members of the staff of Duke Hospital, at Durham, N.C., have known about it for nine years.
In 1936, Pyle, then a roving reporter, wrote to the Dean of Duke Medical School about a pathetically afflicted child he had chanced to see, suffering from a strange disease, and offered to pay the expenses of diagnosis and treatment. That was long before the famous war correspondent was "in the money," and it meant no little personal sacrifice on his part.
As a result, the child, a twelve-year-old boy, was taken to Duke, treated, and studied. . . . The case is frequently referred to by medical professors. The disease in its final stage was an incurable type of calcification of the flesh and skin, and the child died in about 18 months.
"Please understand," Ernie Pyle wrote, "that I realize that the child itself cannot be saved, but maybe others could in the future if doctors knew what was the matter with this one. . . ."
In the light of this case and of his later famous dispatches from the fighting fronts throughout the world, it is clear that Ernie Pyle's quick response to human suffering was a noble, ingrained trait, that he made no effort to avoid his own sense of responsibility. He suffered with the suffering.
JOHN HARDEN Raleigh, N.C.
Acetate for Acetone
Sirs:
TIME [April 30] gave a complete report on German atrocities. The account of the Erla inhumanities, however, was in error in its reference to acetate. For instance, TIME said "guards unlocked the two doors and hurled in acetate, dousing the tinder-dry buildings" and . . . "in one split second the acetate ignited and burst into a roaring inferno."
These and the other references to acetate are undoubtedly errors, since this term as commonly used refers to cellulose acetate, widely employed in making cellulosic thermoplastics and textiles. Apparently acetone, a highly inflammable liquid, large quantities of which are made in Germany, was used by the heinous SS guards, rather than acetate. . . .
WILLIAM T. CRUSE Executive Vice President The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. New York City
P:I Right is Reader Cruse. Some acetates do burn, but cellulose acetate is not one of them.--ED.
There, Miss Stein!
Sirs:
If self-expatriot Gertrude Stein will stick to her non-average business of writing non-intelligible prose and let the American soldier do his above-average fighting in a serious American way, the war will be won in a quicker-than-average time so that we can go back to making better-than-average plumbing for more-comfortable-than-average American homes where no esoteric Stein is read. J. N. CARR Lieutenant, U.S.N.R. E. F. PETERSON Lieutenant (j.g.), U.S.N.R. % F.P.O. New York City
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