Understanding Wanted
Sirs:
It is agreed that relations between the U.S. and Russia are hampered by suspicion and lack of understanding. It is all too evident that the sooner an extensive program of exchange scholarships for the youths of our two nations--and all the other nations--are established, the sooner this condition will be removed and the sooner a world union of peoples will be in sight.
It is not conferences and big business and nationalism and bad history books and politics and diplomacy which will bring about lasting peace; it is understanding between the great masses of people across the earth. This can be brought about completely only by exchanges, temporary and permanent, of units of population.
ALLISON MOORE Culver City, Calif.
Religious Russians
Sirs:
The Toronto and Kingston Synod of the Presbyterian Church in Canada need not apologize for its resolution admitting that there is a powerful streak of spiritual power in Communism [TIME, May 28]. If the Russian people were not so deeply religious, Communism could not have succeeded. This war ought to illustrate to the most gullible that our conception of Christianity with its repetition of wars is neither Christian nor lasting and cannot hope to please the Lord who preached brotherhood and love.
WOLFRAM HILL
St. Paul
Canadian Japanese
Sirs:
I am writing to you as an individual about an article which appeared in TIME [April 2]. It was an unfortunate article entitled "Who Wants Japs?"
Racism in Canada is even more virulent and vigorous than in the U.S. We have had pitiful pleas from Japanese-Canadians and Caucasian-Canadian friends of the Canadian Nisei asking if some pressure might not be brought to bear by America on the Canadian
Government to ease the situation. . . . Just as in California, they have been forcibly evacuated even though not one of them has committed any acts of treason or sabotage.
Second, their property has been actually seized and forcibly held by the Government at whatever price the market brought--and much suspicion of collaborated underbidding exists. ...
Thirdly, Canadian and British citizens of Japanese ancestry cannot attend--for all practical purposes--any college or university. Thus, McGill bars them on the frank contention that serfs of inferior race deserve no education. Fourth, they cannot practice any profession or engage in business. . . . Fifth, they have no franchise rights now, except a few "honorary Aryans" who were already residents of Ontario before the war. Sixth, I understand that even outside of British Columbia they cannot reside in the communities where any one objects. . . .
It would mean so much if a magazine like yours, so influential, so widely read, would be careful of how it spreads this evil doctrine, against which we have just concluded a war in Europe.
PEARL BUCK
Perkasie, Pa.
P: Reader Buck has overstated her case. For instance: McGill is the only Canadian university which bans Canadian Japanese, and indications are that the ban will be lifted; Toronto recently licensed a Nisei beauty-parlor operator; all Ontario cities but Toronto are at present open to Canadian Japanese.--ED.
TIME on Okinawa
Sirs:
I know the effort you have made to put fresh news into the hands of your subscribers at the earliest possible date.
At the 7th Division Command Post on Okinawa Shima, 325 miles south of the Japanese homeland, the May 7 issue of TIME was delivered to me on May 10. I frequently have my TIME a week from the issue date, which is an accomplishment. However, to cut that time to three days approaches a miracle.
Regardless of any time differential, you may congratulate your Circulation Department for its "Three Day" record.
A. V. ARNOLD
Major General, U.S.A.
Commanding
Headquarters Seventh Infantry Division
Office of the Commanding General
% Postmaster
San Francisco
What Is the G.I. Bid?
Sirs:
It appears to me that the postwar Regular Army and Navy come in the same class as the weather -- everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it. ...
What are we doing to keep the men in the service -- to make them want to remain in the service? . . . The G.I. Bill of Rights is fine.
It gives the ex-serviceman an opportunity to go back to school, start up a business, or build a home. The mustering-out pay gives him a start toward any goal that he may have in mind. But the man who remains in the service loses all these benefits -- including the mustering-out pay ! What inducement has the Government to offer? Is it going to give those who remain in the service an advancement in rank, a pay bill adequate to enable them to maintain a home and family, quarters on the post where a man may be with his family, educational privileges for his children and for the man himself? Why not let the servicemen know about these things now? Give them a chance to think about staying in the service instead of getting out.
. . . The way things stand right now, the pay will revert to the 1939 standard at the end of the war, and everyone will just hope that we are able to maintain an Army and Navy under these conditions.
R. E. HUNTINGTON
Warrant Officer (j.g.), U.S.A.
% Postmaster
San Francisco
P: The basic pay of $50 a month for privates is permanent and will not, like the additional pay (20%) for overseas service, revert to its 1939 level ($21).--ED.
The Haligonians
Sirs:
I have spent considerable time at Halifax during the past five years as a naval officer, and thus your article "Hot Time in Halifax" [TIME, May 21] has particular interest for me. In my opinion the five, three, and two-year sentences imposed upon servicemen by irate Haligonians are an injustice. Two years of a man's life in jail are indeed a dire punishment for breaking a plate-glass window during mob excitement, and a bitter reward for long days of sacrifice at sea to "safeguard democracy." ...
One can conclude that "Halifax's Hot Time" is no more than it deserved. The majority of its people have not gone out of their way to help the Navy or their families. For poorly furnished, cold, unpainted rooms they have charged the highest prices they could get. Indeed, there is no worse port in which a sailor can spend his well-earned leave than the grey misery of Halifax. In the length & breadth of the city he cannot get a seat in a movie or restaurant (and what restaurants !) without going ashore early and standing in a line often extending several blocks.
It is felt by the writer that although Halifax has had to undergo hardships greater than any other Canadian city during the war, the Haligonians have not gone out of their way to be friendly or hospitable towards the Navy, which has played such a tremendous part in the winning of the war.
(NAVAL OFFICER'S NAME WITHHELD)
Winnipeg, Manitoba
"Do You Wonder I Love You?"
Sirs:
This letter from a soldier in Italy has recently reached me. ... I thought possibly you might want to publish it, or some parts of it: "I went into this war with a personal dislike for the political ideas of the English.
I have worked for almost a year now with them side by side on the same fields. The British soldier is a hell of a good egg. . . .
"In one instance I worked on a British field near here on the runway making repairs, and had as my commander on that job a group captain in the R.A.F. His family was 'in trade' in England, and his brother owns a pub in London. For my money he is the finest gentleman I've met over here in any army. There was not any rank between us; it was man-to-man on that job. But the men under him, the little civil servants in his command, were as near to perfect examples of the dry-rot in the British Empire as I have ever had the misfortune to come to know. They fought me on every turn and if I had not been able to go to .,____ direct, his runway would not be repaired today.
"Perhaps the real trouble is the way we Americans go at a job. We waste materials in a criminal manner and we cut corners in a way which makes a man who is wedded to paperwork tear his hair. But, man, how we get the job done! The day I turned the runway over to , finished and ready to use, he said to me as we were leaving: 'Now I will tell you a secret. If I had asked my Commander to get the Government chaps to build this, I would have waited six months for some bloke in London to approve all the papers and contracts, and then another six months to get troops down here to start work. But instead I asked for the loan of you chaps, and you arrive the next day in two little trucks. The next thing I know you have hired all the natives with two arms and two feet for miles around and a big cloud of dust rises over the field and when it settles three weeks later . . . there I see my runway! God, do you wonder I love you?' "...
RUSSEL GROUSE
New York City
Portland
Sirs:
400 RETAILERS COMPRISING THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE PORTLAND RETAIL TRADE BUREAU VEHEMENTLY PROTEST MAP APPEARING YOUR ISSUE OF MAY 21 SHOWING PACIFIC COAST PORTS, ELIMINATING PORTLAND, WHICH IS CHIEF RUSSIAN LEND-LEASE PORT, AS WELL AS ONE OF MAJOR WORLD PORTS. THIS IS TERMINUS OF UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD WITH THREE OTHER TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROADS MAKING PORT OF PORTLAND. UNITED AIRLINES MUST COME TO PORTLAND BEFORE PROCEEDING TO SEATTLE. . . .
PORTLAND RETAIL TRADE BUREAU
Portland
P: TIME'S map showed the three "primary" Pacific Coast ports chosen, not by TIME, but by the U.S. Army as its major ports of embarkation for the Pacific Theater. Portland and other so-called "sub-ports" will continue to move their big share of war traffic.--ED.
The Capitalist Boikos
Sirs:
We read TIME'S review [May 28] of These Are the Russians with great interest, especially the part: "The secret of Russian victory is plain in Lauterbach's accounts of such simple individuals as the truck driver Ivan Boiko and his 26-year-old wife Alexandra. With money made working overtime these two managed to buy a tank . . . wangled permission to join the Army together and take their weapon to the front."
Did you know that an American Sherman tank costs around $50,000 and this is not the de luxe model either and doesn't include spare parts?
Some of the boys here at the Chrysler Tank Arsenal figure that Ivan was doing all right for a "simple individual," or maybe Russian workers get better overtime than we do--or maybe somebody was spoofing.
MICHAEL KEYES
Detroit
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