Everything Is in the Game
Sirs:
After five years in "murderer's canary cage" it is a great relief suddenly to see through open doors into a free world, and when one is trying to become re-orientated to the facts and problems of the western world, TIME is an excellent supplement to our daily newspapers (still rubbing their eyes).
But in one point I must object, feeling inclined to quote what an Army sergeant told you [TIME, Letters, Sept. 17]: ". . . So great a part of the world's future well-being depends on the amicability of Russian-American relations . . ." or your own caption on the cover, "One World or no World?" It is so, and whispering campaigns or press pinpricks may at length turn out to be dangerous. The Russians didn't do very much to create confidence; that seems not to be in their line, and some admit it, adding that other countries' openness was punished by fifth columns.
To me it seems a simple duty for all Westerners to meet them in a benevolent spirit, to try hard to understand their motives, and to decipher their words and deeds in the best sense we can. Very much is in the game for everybody, and for us in Europe, everything.
NIELS J. ALSTED
Copenhagen, Denmark
Atomic Specter
Sirs:
A specter is haunting this country--the specter of nuclear energy. As a scientist who worked on the atomic bomb, I am appalled that the public is so apathetic and so uninformed about the dangerous social consequences of our development. There is no secret of the atomic bomb. In my opinion, in two to five years other countries can also manufacture bombs, and bombs tens, hundreds, or even thousands of times more effective than those which produced such devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This country with its concentrated industrial centers is entirely vulnerable to such weapons; nor can we count on, or even expect, effective countermeasures. Unless strong action is taken within the near future toward a positive control, this country will be drawn into an armament race which will inevitably end in catastrophe for all participants. . . .
It is the responsibility of the press to stimulate public discussion on this vital matter and to educate the people as rapidly as possible. Where security permits, my colleagues are eager to help with scientific information. It was our hope in developing the bomb that it would be a great force for world cooperation and peace.
ROBERT R. WILSON
Los Alamos, N. Mex.
Who's Middle-Aged?
Sirs:
Just where is the dividing line between youth and middle age? In TIME [Sept. 17], Artist Artzybasheff was described as middle-aged (46) while Druggist Ruskin was said to be young (42). Perhaps such a decision largely depends upon the age of the author.
I agree that a person of 42 is still young, but our neighbor's daughter of 18 views such age with different eyes. Recently this girl's mother was telling her of a friend of 42 who had just had a serious operation, whereupon the girl remarked: "It doesn't particularly matter, mother, if she doesn't pull through, she's so old anyway."
HENRY W. DUNN
Boston
P: The "dividing line" keeps moving. As the Frenchman says: "Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age."--ED.
Drink It, Mrs. Spooner
Sirs:
I think Mrs. Kathleen Spooner [TIME, Letters, Oct. 1] has missed the Lend-Lease point, and if she boycotts our orange juice she is cutting off her children's noses to spite her own face. The stopping of Lend-Lease was not a blow at their socialist Government, but just the termination of a fictitious bookkeeping arrangement. It was predicated on a British promise to pay, but both the American people and the American Government knew the British Government never pays for anything. Why did they get it, then?
Not because of any sympathy we had for their Government. We distinguished between their Government and their people, which is what Mrs. Spooner should do with us. You can't help liking the British; you can't like Britain. . . .
The point is they got the food. The people got it, not their Government, and they got it from the American people, who were well satisfied to have it that way and damn the cost. The British people would do the same for us. . . .
Say I, let Mrs. Spooner drink all the orange juice she can, and, like the old Midwestern farmer, "praise God for small blessings, and large ones in proportion." Governments, she will have to learn, are just necessary evils.
JOHN R. REESE
Los Angeles
Sirs: A pat on the back for Kathleen Spooner. Many of us sympathize with the attitude of Mrs. Spooner. Moreover, we have not for gotten why we sent that food. It was because John Bull and Uncle Sam both had their backs to the wall fighting together, and it was John Bull who was holding the line until Sam could get his gun. . . .
LEWIS A. LINCOLN
Kansas City
Good for the Soul?
Sirs:
First, let us toss TIME a bouquet. We here in China look forward to the arrival of your Pony Edition as to nothing else unless it be mail from home, and deeply appreciate the broad coverage and careful interpretations which it brings us weekly.
Now for the gripe. In your issue of June 18 your correspondent in China reported: "A trip to Nanning is good for the soul." Until the lifting of censorship we were unable to state the authority upon which we feel compelled to brand that statement as the grossest misconception we have yet noted in a Stateside magazine. Our authority: We have been stationed in Nanning since shortly after the publication of that statement. We withheld severe judgment of the capacities of TIME'S correspondent, hoping that in due course we might also come to see the manifestations of Nanning's soul-building qualities. After careful observation and hours of meditation, however, we have concluded that, contrary to your report, Nanning is not good for the soul but is in reality one of the loneliest, most remote, worst supplied, and generally miserable bases in either hemisphere. . . .
(CPL.) JOHN R. GILLESPIE
& FRIENDS
% Postmaster
New York City
P: Says TIME Correspondent Teddy White: "I was the first correspondent into Nanning after the Jap evacuation. It was just the damnedest satisfying thing to find out that the Japanese had got nothing out of their occupation, that Nanning was practically intact, that their entire conquest had been a mockery. In this sense it was good for the soul. But my heartfelt sympathy to any G.I.s stationed there now: no Coca-Cola, no beers, no white women, only Chinese food, and a secondary base."--ED.
No Decency Left?
Sirs:
Have TIME and the citizens of the U.S.A. no decency? Why don't you tell the truth about radar? In your issue of Aug. 20 you make it appear as if the British just gave a hand in the evolution of radar, and I guess you have or will do the same thing with the atomic bomb! . . .
It's about time you pulled down that statue to "Liberty" at the entrance to the still second largest city in the world and put one up to cheap notoriety.
CHARLES R. HENZELL
British Subject
Sao Salvador, Bahia
Brazil
Wanted: One Time
Sirs:
In this home town we have lived by Central Standard Time, Eastern Standard Time, Eastern Daylight Saving Time, returned to Eastern Standard Time, then Eastern War Time, and now will return to Eastern Standard Time. We may know whether we are going or coming, but we don't know when! To obviate change and confusion, suppose the U.S. (and the world) adopt a permanent single time zone based upon noon at Greenwich, and a change of calendar date every time the sun crosses the 180th meridian.
And to further simplify the time problem in these and future days of rapid, long-range communication and transportation, suppose we adopt a 24-hour clock face and employ military terminology, thereby eliminating the confusion of "a.m." and "p.m." and blackface type on time tables.
GIDGE GANDY
St. Petersburg, Fla.
Aaron Burr v. Harvey
Sirs:
It was with profound sorrow that I read of the passing of my old headmaster, John Gale Hun, of Princeton, N.J. [TIME, Sept. 24].
I believe that I am speaking for many hundreds of graduates of the Hun School when I say that Mr. Hun had something more than a "cram" system of education. . . .
Through his unique academic approach and the brilliance of his teaching staff (one member, John Harvey, attained the highest average at Princeton University since Aaron Burr), John Hun gave many a young boy a new and promising educational start.
HOWARD L. McVITTY
Garden City, N.Y.
P: Tradition notwithstanding, ill-fated Aaron Burr won no honors at Princeton. John I. Harvey, Phi Beta Kappa and Latin Salutatorian of his class ('25), ranked fourth among 219 B.A. graduates, is now head of research for Newark, N.J.'s L. Bamberger & Co. department stores.--ED.
15,988 Days AWOL
Sirs:
Sorry to spoil your yarn about the AWOL "champion" in TIME [Sept. 24], but I have personal knowledge of a case which beats it hands down.
In August 1942, while I was file clerk of the 726th M.P. Battalion, Camp Beauregard, La., I handled the papers of a recruit who was grey-haired and well over 60 years of age. He had 15,988 days "bad time" (AWOL) and a year and a half unexpired term of a three-year enlistment remaining to be served.
He told me that he had enlisted for the Spanish-American War and that, at its conclusion, the Army's discharge system was not functioning rapidly enough to suit him or any of the other soldiers in his outfit (where have I heard that before?). . . . He packed up and went home, like the others, without a discharge.
In civilian life he served as postmaster in various small Texas towns, and it always bothered his conscience, in filling out the Civil Service forms, when he came to the line reserved for military history, for he had to claim no service or honorable discharge if he hoped to qualify for the job.
In 1918 he registered for the draft and was not called. By the time World War II rolled around, his conscience finally won the battle and he walked into the post at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., and turned himself in as a deserter, to the first 2nd lieutenant he met. The lieutenant was astounded at his story and took him to his captain who took him to the major, who, etc. etc. By nightfall Donovan was in tow of a full colonel, making the rounds of the officers' club and post cocktail parties, on exhibition as a very conscientious guy.
The Army decided to allow him to finish his three-year hitch, of which about a year and a half remained. He was a good soldier when I knew him and, so far as I know, is now drawing the pension and benefits to which an honorably discharged veteran of the Spanish-American War is entitled.
JNO. G. STEELE
Schenectady, N.Y.
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