A Home for UNO
Sirs:
UNO, as much as I can gather about them in the papers and your magazine, seems to more interested in finding a central recreation spot than in mending the world's problems. . . . Why not set up a Quonset hut for them with hard chairs and with windows overlooking one of the cemeteries of Iwo Jima? Maybe they'd forget their country clubs and get down to business. . . .
Vic KASPER
Astoria, Ore.
UNO v. UNOW
Sirs:
TIME and the world generally seem to have tacitly accepted the abbreviation UNO . . . definitely negative and defeatist. In other words--United NO.
. . . I should like to suggest that the United Nations drop the word "organization'' and formally and officially choose the name "United Nations of the World": . . . UNOW --United NOW! . . .
BEN WEINBACH
St. Louis
Taking Plenty for Granted
Sirs:
. . . Anonymous tips tell us either to sell immediately or to hold our stock, or grain, or poultry for a higher price. Everyone screams at us to "farm conservatively.". . . And the world is starving.
If we continue to behave this way, we shall have another war on our hands, just as sure as God made little apples. As a matter of fact, very few of us want to be gluttons; we are just dumb, and take our plenty for granted. So how about a little enlightenment, before it is too late?
(MRS.) CAROL TILDEN MORRIS
Evansville, Ind.
The Roxas Riddle
Sirs:
Your assertion in the Feb. 4 issue of TIME that Manuel Roxas is pro-American was as fantastic as Lieut. General Masaharu Homma's swearing that he is a humanitarian.
Roxas and Jose Laurel wrote and signed the Philippine puppet constitution, which with the organization of the puppet republic constituted an act of rebellion against the U.S.
Roxas also swore allegiance to Laurel's puppet government, and agreed to the treaty of mutual alliance with Japan and the declaration of war by the puppet republic against the U.S.
During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, Roxas had many intimate friends among the Japanese, including General Wachi, former "Director General" of the Jap administration in the Philippines. General Tojo himself sent three top Jap army medical corps men from Japan to attend to his friend Roxas.
Roxas would not claim that he is a pro-American today if the Japs were still in the Philippines. Renegades like Roxas who collaborated with the Japs now proclaim they were pro-Americans. As Orientals they worship the victor.
TOMAS CONFESOR
Chief Philippine Delegate
Far Eastern Commission
c/o Fleet Post Office
San Francisco
P: To intrepid Guerrilla and able Administrator Confesor, TIME'S thanks for an honest opinion. But the definitive ruling on Roxas' much-disputed role in the Jap occupation must come from the Philippine people, who will decide April 23 whether they want him or Sergio Osmena for their first President under independence.--ED.
Boyish Proxies
Sirs:
Before the ink dries on TIME [Feb. 25], I hasten to answer my great & good friend Monte Sohn.
He screams that labor is pummeling small shareholders. Let him remember that the s.s. has too long loved laissez faire, too dutifully sent boyish proxies to do a man's job, too complacently made a religion of benignity.
The Autocrats of the Directors' Tables have traditionally got theirs. . . . Labor didn't sit on its tail--its mouth watering for he boss's yachts and first editions--and bamboozle itself that some day, somehow, a goose would automatically lay golden eggs. . . .
TOM PAYNE
Wilmette, Ill.
No Oversights
Sirs:
Just finished reading your write-up of the T.P. & W.R.R. affair in the Feb. 18 issue. A few things you overlook.
That railroad belongs to Mr. McNear. It is his property, just as your firm owns typewriters and office equipment. He can do what he likes with it. If he chooses to run a train that he owns on tracks that he owns--that is his business and not the business of anyone else.
When, those agitators ran their autos beside the train they were asking for trouble. They got it. They have only themselves to thank for it. There is no doubt that if the auto drivers could have drawn their guns more quickly, they would have fired. The train crew fired to protect themselves, and in doing that were perfectly justified. . . .
JOHN KELLOGG
Oak Park, Ill.
P: And if TIME, annoyed by one of its critics, dropped a typewriter on him from the 29th floor and killed him . . .?--ED.
Unique Island
Sirs:
The article relative to King John of Kusaie Island in the Feb. 18 issue of TIME brings to mind the fact that those people are now governing themselves for the first time in 70 years or more.
On Jan. 9, I withdrew all Naval Military Government personnel from the island, after . . . the first election held in 35 years and the first in the history of the island in which woman suffrage was allowed. . . .
Kusaie is the only place in the world that I know of where the people are so honest you can allow the candidates to count the votes . . . and be sure of a square count.
JAMES T. WELSH
Lieutenant, U.S.N.R.
Former Naval Military
Government Officer
Kusaie Island
Steubenville, Ohio
Sacks & Doodles
Sirs:
. . . In TIME's Feb. 25 issue the art editor does a bang-up job of Hearst-style reporting. I refer to the article on the Chicago Art Institute and Manhattan Metropolitan Museum shows of drawings . . . in which your editor proceeds to dish out . . . "a Picasso drawing of two nudes which looked like sacks of coal (and another which might have been a doodle of Raphael).". . . All very funny as reporting, but more accuracy and intelligent comparisons, rather than clever verbalisms, would be more fitting to TIME's reputation. . . .
DAVID GREEN
Altadena, Calif.
P: Can TIME'S readers supply better comparisons? Gratefully received.--ED.
Of Ugliness & Henry Miller
Sirs:
For an American living in France since seven years, the most interesting fact in your review of Henry Miller's book about the States, An Air-Conditioned Nightmare [TIME, Dec. 24], is the lightly touched point that Author Miller left Europe as soon as the going grew hard in 1940. As he had been settled in Paris since ten years "to study vice," while he "worked at panhandling and slept on park benches," we wish only that he had stayed in Europe for five years more. . . .
When we read; for instance, that he thought Boston "a vast jumbled waste created by prehuman or subhuman monsters in a delirium of greed," we wonder what possibilities of contrast are left him if he should describe Europe's real "jumbled waste" cities. . . . For us, this "largest force lately to appear on the horizon of American letters" is a man to amuse a very prosperous culture which can still permit itself the undermining, disheartening, demoralizing effect of his kind of literature.
For let anyone . . . try to survive and keep his family alive, to furnish a pleasant place to live with bits of this and that, to manage eggs from wrongly fed and badly housed chickens, to scrape and tan animal furs for family use, to wash and spin wool, with homemade soap and homemade spinning wheel, to finish the winter evenings by the light of a potato-lamp (with its improvised wick set in melted fat in a hollowed-out potato!). The effort is sure to leave him with the greatest indifference toward the "literature of despair.". . .
(MME.) MARTHA DEWEESE IVALDY
La Ferte-Bernard
France
Thankless OPAsters
Sirs:
We who work with Chester Bowles and know the difficulty of his task were surprised and pleased to find TIME so ably presenting both sides of the story of inflation in your March 4 issue.
First inspired by the need for a job to be done in price control and rationing, later inspired by the magnificent job that Bowles does in handling men and situations, we try awkwardly to carry the ball as he calls the signals. . . .
It is a difficult job, it is distasteful, it is thankless. But in that job many people find as I did a new sense of community responsibility. . . .
RAE E. WALTERS
Sixth OPA Region Administrator
Chicago
Are G.I.S Prejudiced?
Sirs:
Why all this fuss about the results of that poll taken among "typical" G.I.S in Germany [TIME, Feb. 4]?
What do you think the Army does--make broadminded zealots out of small-town Bilbo fans? Or educators for democracy out of kids brought up under Tammany's protective wings? . . . Prejudiced? Hell, yes, they're prejudiced. They learned it at home. . . .
ROGER H. DENNETT
Torrington, Conn.
The Yanks Have It
Sirs:
Re: G.I.S and British brides, the following excerpt is taken from a letter which I recently received from Miss Edna Scotchmer of London, who was my secretary in London during 1943 when I was employed there as a civilian:
"In some ways I envy the girls who are just now getting ready to make the first 'G.I. Brides' trip to America. . . . My sister and I have often wondered just what it is that the Americans have, and we have come to the conclusion that it's not only their long legs and slim hips and good teeth, but their kindness. On the whole, Englishmen are not kind."
(SGT.) DEAN A. DRAPER
Fort MacArthur, Calif.
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