Very Funny
Sirs:
I shall now tell you something very funny.
After a while will come a night when those intelligences on other stars will turn away from their eyepieces with marked scientific pleasure and note down the coming of another Nova to this universe.
Down here, after the flash of light has passed and the wind that flattens the redwoods has swept by and the sound has burst off toward emptiness, the ether will stop swirling and crash back in its place again. Thomas Mann and Alfred Einstein and Robinson Jeffers and Harry Truman and you and I and the spotted deer will stop twitching and lie in obedient silence.
And then, out from under his top-turtle town car will crawl the sturdy manufacturer who registered and secured all rights to, and seven weeks after V-J day, advertised his Atomic Hair Restorer in the larger department stores. This gentleman will be modestly unaware that he is the final surviving symbol of several million "business-as-usual" mentalities, will shake his fist at the void and say: "Jeez! The dirty sons-a-bitches! Weren't we just right not to sign any of their tricky international agreements--by God! Don't this just prove it!!"
And then, even as you and I and the wild blue iris and the tall buildings, he will crumple slowly down across the body of his chauffeur.
A prosperous New Year!
DAVE HOTCHKISS Big Sur, Calif.
Great Times
Sirs:
Young Henry Adams, writing from London to his brother, had this to say:
"I tell you these are great times. Man has mounted Science and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, Science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.
"Not only shall we be able to cruise in space, but I see no reason why some future generation shouldn't walk off like a beetle with the world on its back, or give it another rotary motion so that every zone should receive in turn its due portion of heat and light."
The date was 1862. And incidentally, England was having a great to-do about her Navy, whether to scrap her wooden ships or not.
FRED L. ABBOTT Bonneville, Ore.
Katz v. Rats
Sirs:
Please pass on my humble congratulations to whoever did the piece on my book [The Liberal Tradition] in the current issue [TIME, Dec. 3]. The overtones ring so clear that even the clamorous silence of the opposition is broken. The real joke is to watch people reading and thinking What a clever parable! and then suddenly coming to and saying But yes, that really is what it will be like! I had often--in this environment--reflected on the Katzes, but I never thought of the ratzes--and yet, now I remember (and wish I hadn't) how they used to look at us, and wait for us, in the trenches in 1916!
W. A. ORTON
Northampton, Mass.
Sirs:
We aren't particularly interested in Mr. Orton's [book], but we ARE interested in your anonymous book critic's wonderful and incomplete saga of Angela and Carrie Chapman Katz. . . . We long to know more about Angela and her daughter . . . their lives previous to the universal demolition, a chronicle we hope will be salted with plenty of the gifted ladies' ideas and conversation. It isn't fair to give us just this tasty hors d'oeuvre. More! More!
MILDRED BALDWIN Warrenville, Ill.
Benton on Drinking
Sirs:
About that note in Dec. 10 issue: When I have a highball or two I tell the truth about things. The truth, as you continually show in your pages, is tough. It is not then so much my talk that is tough as the stuff it deals with. But I'm not the town drunk. With the reputation you give me I'll be expected to drink everybody in Kansas City under the table and I can't do it--not me.
THOMAS H. BENTON
Kansas City
P: I Said TIME: "Tom Benton, who does know how to drink. . . ." No town drunk does.--ED.
Overseas Graves
Sirs:
If the Government wishes to spend $200 million for the American dead who are buried overseas [TIME, Dec. 17], wouldn't it be more to the point to spend the money helping America's underprivileged children, who are very much alive? I feel certain that, if the wishes of these dead were known, they would prefer to have their remains left where they are and to have the money spent for the ideal they died for--the future generation.
(MRS.) KATHRYN C. CHERRY Bethesda, Md.
Sirs:
Adoption is the order of the day. Ruined towns are being adopted by those less damaged, villages by cities, cities by provinces, small countries by larger and richer ones. And the latest idea is the adoption of soldiers graves by people in the areas where they exist. . . .
The idea is that a Dutch family should take charge of a grave of an American soldier and put it and keep it in order, providing fresh flowers at regular intervals, seeing that it is kept free from weeds and dirt, and communicating with the family of the soldier in America in a friendly way, keeping them informed as to exactly where the grave is and in what condition. . . .
The adoption is gratis, and the provision of tombstones and permanent decoration is in the hands of a local committee who are in correspondence with the authorities and the families in America. . . .
H. ANTCLIFFE The Hague, Netherlands
Relief for Europe
Sirs:
... I am convinced that most of the nation's important men, of all government branches read TIME; and if you could print a portion or all of the following, I could be sure that it would receive attention:
Open Letter to My Government Gentlemen:
In the name of Humanity, do something for the needy people of Europe! We, the American people, have gone on record repeatedly as believing in the Brotherhood of Man, in man's right to Freedom from Want--remember? . . .
We should be embarrassed to have other nations hear that our food rationing is over. I know I speak for thousands of fellow Americans, and I hope for millions, when I say that I am ashamed of the stacks of food at the corner grocery, and feel guilty to be able to buy freely of them.
We can spare much, much more. . . .
There is a larger issue at stake--if anything can be a larger issue than saving the lives of human beings. If a world organization of nations, with mutual trust and cooperation, is ever to become a reality, the U.S. must lead the way. . . .
MARY IDA BURNITE
Pittsburgh
Food--a Weapon?
Sirs:
I was appalled by the announcement that food rationing is to be abandoned in the U.S. and that current stocks will allow three pounds of meat to each person per week. This is even harder for a friend of Americans to explain than the dollar diplomacy of Lend-Lease, and gives cause for suspicion in some quarters that food--or the lack of it--is being used as a weapon in the American bid for world supremacy in everything.
Remembering the generosity of the States ... I can only surmise that they don't know what's going on in Europe. If they did, their vast meals would choke them.
Thirty cents' worth of meat and endless queueing in Britain is bad enough, but conditions here are luscious compared to those on the Continent.
(SIGNALMAN) D. JOHNSON
Royal Signals London
Force
Sirs:
Hats off to Simone Weil for writing and to TIME'S editors for the insight which led them to reprint at length [TIME, Dec. 17] her remarkable essay on force. . . .
The force that does not kill but deadens is the essential subject matter of The Education of Henry Adams; the force which redeems is as vividly symbolized--as Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov--in The Brothers Karamazov as it is in the Bible.
In connection with The Brothers Karamazov, it should be remembered that Dostoevski placed in inspired contrast the spirits of totalitarianism and Christianity. . . . Ivan would save the world--as his fascinating fable told to wide-eyed Alexey in a tavern shows--by renouncing Christ and thoroughgoing ministration to man's physical-material wants, with liberal portions of spirit-crushing opiates thrown in. Alexey did save his immediate world with love and suffering.
SYLVESTER PETRO Chicago
Sirs:
Thanks for discovering and transmitting that truly rare bit of writing, The Iliad, or The Poem of Force, by Simone Weil. Though dead, Simone Weil calls in clarion tones to every Christian's soul to ". . . recover that simplicity that renders so poignant every sentence in the story of the Passion."
LOUIE D. NEWTON Atlanta
Who Is Guiltless?
Sirs:
Having spent a year in various P.O.W. camps in Germany, including two months in the civil prison in Budapest, I think I know as much about war crimes as most Americans.
They aren't particularly pleasant, particularly when you are on the receiving end of a beating, which hurts your dignity a good deal more than it does your body, regardless of how severe it may be.
The current War Crimes Trials in Nuernberg, however, seem to me to be a peculiar way of improving the world. The long list of indictments against the various defendants, most of which seem well grounded, are a pretty severe accusation against any man's right to continue living. The only difficulty is that I can discover no indictment which could not be turned, with equal justice, against one or all of the victorious accusers. In fact, many of the United Nations are committing the same sorts of outrages against weaker nations right now, without even a war to justify their actions. . . .
[AIR FORCE LIEUTENANT'S NAME WITHHELD ] Alexandria, Va.
Open Books
Sirs:
. . . TIME [Dec. 3] reports that General Motors' Vice President Harry Anderson . . . said that G.M. did not even open its books to its 426,000 stockholders.
As a law student I was particularly intrigued by Mr. Anderson's statement, for the general rule of law in the U.S., unless the corporate charter specifically provides to the contrary, is that any stockholder, though he be a holder of but one share, has the right to examine the books and papers of the corporation so long as he does it for an honest purpose and in good faith. He is, of course, subject to reasonable regulations as to place, time, and method, so that his inspection will not disrupt the business, but the right is there nonetheless. . . .
EDWARD JACOBSON Tucson, Ariz.
P: From G.M.'s Certificate of Incorporation (Delaware): "... No stockholder shall have any right to inspect any account or book or document of the Corporation, except as conferred by statute or authorized by the Board of Directors or by a resolution of the stockholders. . . ." This practice is common to most large corporations which number their stockholders in the hundreds of thousands.--ED.
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