Ballots v. Bullets
Sirs:
Re "Battle of the Ballots" in your Aug. 12 issue.
I,agree with Abe Lincoln, whom you quote in this article, that "among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet. . . ." But desperate circumstance sometimes requires desperate remedy. All that the G.I.s of Athens, Tenn. wanted was a fair count of their votes. And, more power to them, that is what they got.
MEADE A. COLE Ajo, Ariz.
Sirs:
Abraham Lincoln's admonition . . . can properly be applied only against those who have lost an election and then attempt to reverse the decision by an appeal to force. That was not the case with the Athens veterans. ... It was the machine, not the veterans, who made the appeal to force. It was the veterans who were the forces of law and order. ... I think you owe it to the veterans to say so, and to quote the rest of Lincoln's fine statement with that point in mind. He said:
"It is now for them [our people] to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war. . . ."
H. VAN RENSSELAER WILSON
Brooklyn
Sirs:
. . . The G.I.s were precedent followers rather than setters. Quite gloriously (not ominously at all) the pattern was cut for them in '76. In this country, tyranny has found it tough going from way back. . . .
RUTH NUTTALL
Milwaukee
Extremely Popular
Sirs:
As one of the numerous and enthusiastic TIME readers in Holland, I wonder why the people of the U.S. appear to be so extremely popular with the greater part of my compatriots.
Is it because of the invaluable sacrifices your country made to restore our freedom or would it be for the grand way in which you have been helping us since V-day? . . .
ALPHONSE P. J. BOOM
Oegstgeest, Holland
More Men of Good Will
Sirs:
Being an enthusiastic reader of Jules Romains as well as of TIME, I take the opportunity of drawing your attention to a slight mistake. . .
Referring to Jules Romains' Men of Good Will [TIME, Aug. 5] your editor writes it "has reached its 13th and penultimate volume." In fact the Men of Good Will has just been finished, with 24 volumes, the last of which have been written in the States during the author's wartime exile. . . .
JEAN-FRANCOIS Roux
Paris
> Reader Roux must divide by two for the correct answer. Romains has written 26 volumes for publication in France. They have been consolidated into 13 volumes in the U.S. The 14th (Remains' 27th) is still to come.--ED.
Buttinsky Damyankees
Sirs:
The reason why we people of the North are so vitally--and at times vociferously--interested in Southern elections is because we are a part of the United States, and we realize that a cancer anywhere in the country affects the health of the entire nation.
Especially is this true when the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to any race or religion are in jeopardy. We hope that our Southern friends will turn the white light of publicity upon the men whom we nominate for high offices in the Government and be as unsparing in their criticism--if it is deserved--as we have been of Bilbo. .
PEARL H. CAMPBELL
Milwaukee
Sirs:
. . . When are we going to get over being so "techy" about Yankee interference that we let it throw us completely off guard against our own little ignoramuses, who push their way up by inviting criticism and then shoutting "Yankee interference"--who promote fear by shouting "white supremacy"?
I'm a Georgian and I know how Yankee criticism hurts. But if we ever hope to get away from it we've got to learn to think straight through it, and not let ignorant little men get our backs up. . . .
MARY JOHNSON
Sayville, N.Y.
No Pork Chops
Sirs:
As an American seaman [I get] the benefits of the new wage scale [TIME, June 17] Grateful as I am, I am sorry. It spells the doom of our Merchant Marine. Our Government will not support by subsidy a class of aristocratic bums touring the world. There are a few honest, sincere, loyal seamen, [but] most of them are a disgrace to our country.
One need only view the record of each ship as it leaves port--those left in jail, those who have run afoul of the law, those who have become diseased. . .
Aboard ship these same "bums" never deliver an honest day's work. They look upon their pay as a retainer, then pad up the "overtime account" to the limit. . . .
Very little of the pay is used for "pork chops." The most of it is used for booze and women, all in a loud, vulgar display that advertises the U.S. abroad most disgracefully.
I'm sorry, but the facts face us daily on cruise.
CARL SAMPSON
Rio de Janeiro
Badgered Atheist
Sirs:
TIME [Aug. 5] ... took notice of the Jury 19 decision of the Federal Communications Commission in the matter of my petition to revoke the licenses of certain San Francisco radio stations for making their facilities available for religious programs . . . against atheism, but refusing time for atheistic talks. You said ... I had "badgered those stations for an opportunity to air my atheism."
I did no "badgering."
As I told radio officials . . . my application for broadcasting time . . . was made solely from my desire to counteract, to some extent, the veritable flood of religious propaganda to which, for the last 15 years, the American people have been subjected. . . .
Organized religion in the United States has never, in this present century, been so powerful; and this power it has acquired almost solely because of its virtually unopposed use of American radio stations and networks during the last 15 years and more. The July 19 ruling of the FCC was designed to put an end to this highly dangerous misuse of radio.
ROBERT HAROLD SCOTT
Palo Alto, Calif.
Armenian Refuge
Sirs:
I cannot tell you how happy it made me to see the smiling faces of singing Armenian young women in TIME [Aug. 12].
For the past 50 years, all pictures I have seen of Armenian girls have been either starving skeletons, or of those unfortunates being dragged by the hair into Turkish harems.
I am glad to learn that at long last some of the half million Armenian exiles scattered all over the world are finding refuge in Soviet Armenia. But Soviet Armenia is only 10% of the Armenian homeland. Everyone knows that from Bible times till World War I, Mt. Ararat, Kars, Ardahan, Van, Bitlis, Erzerum, Harpoot and Diarbekir have been the home of the Armenian people. In the province of Diarbekir alone there were more than 50,000 Armenians before World War I. I know. I was born there and saw the Massacres of 1895. . . .
The Armenian homeland is now almost uninhabited. Every Armenian in the world is hoping and praying that the time may soon come when more than half a million exiles can return peacefully to their native land. . . .
JOSEPH KAFAFIAN THOMSON
President, Board of Aldermen
Paterson, N.J.
Sirs:
Permit me to say that I have enjoyed the realistic editorial . . . concerning the new Turkish elections and our relations with the Armenian-Soviet Republic.
As for the so-called immigration of the 40,000 Turks of Armenian origin, there can be no more significant answer than repeating a statement of our former Premier Suekrue Saracoglu.
"Some time ago we heard a story to the effect that some Armenians in Turkey were applying to a foreign Consulate to express a desire to emigrate from Turkey. This we looked upon [more] as a rumor than a probability. Nevertheless, we announced that if there were any who wished to go, the Government would accord them every facility. Many weeks went by, but there were no applicants for passports."
It looks as if the rest of the Armenians in Turkey prefer to live in a western kind of democratic Turkey, than to go and live in an eastern kind of democratic Armenian Republic of the Soviet Union.
MUSTAFA TUGRUL UeKE New York City
Sad Sacks
Sirs:
Hooray for Drs. Maskin and Uhler ! [TIME, Aug. 12]. To other adjectives describing many Army psychiatrists they might well have added smug, arrogant, bigoted, vindictive and sadistic. . . .
The ordinary G.I.s had no protection from faulty technique. They suffered neglect, abuse and indignities in silence, because to complain meant having yet another psychiatric term added to an already lopsided medical chart.
During my term of service as a chaplain in the Southwest Pacific I met only one soldier who thought he had been helped by a psychiatrist, but I ministered to many who had been tragically crippled mentally by psychiatric technique that was geared out of all proportion. . . .
BERTRAM CROCKER
Massena, N.Y.
Sirs:
Extremely happy to see your item about the Sad Sacks. I have spent some time around mental hospitals and prisons where I "accidentally" had access to files of psychiatric diagnosis. Uhler's note on the "Army's evasive psychiatric procedures by which a precise diagnosis was avoided in favor of mere description and paraphrase" would be a kind way to state the chaotic, uncritical "diagnosis" of psychiatrists in general. . . .
GEORGE Q. DAVIDSON
Wichita
Sirs:
. . . Take my case: the Army held me down to a gruesome job for four years until I ended up in the neuropsychiatric ward. I rested up for seven weeks and they promptly gave me a discharge. Then the Veterans Administration put me in the hands of a psychiatrist who psychoanalyzed me.
This cured me of: sinus, headaches, constipation, insomnia, dizziness, indigestion, nervousness, poor appetite, palsy of the larynx, sore eyes, nervous perspiration, chronic depression and strained human relations, to mention a few of my former disorders. But, during those four years as a psycho, I did as good a job as anyone.
H. F. LUNDGREN
Brooklyn
Literary Jewel
Sirs:
Your story "Decision" under the heading "Heroes" [TIME, July 22] is an absolute masterpiece of literary art: "Veteran Loos, like the other tourists, had a moment for decision. He made it. . . ." and ". . . Then Orville Loos and the boy who was his friend for a few seconds were dead in the whirlpool below."
This literary jewel should be ... sent to the main educational publishers and become part of the class reading books of the grammar schools of all nations, especially in Germany, where new school books are being compiled. . . .
DR. WALTER FUCHS
Shanghai
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.