The One Hundred Percenters
Sirs:
For months I have been reading in TIME, LIFE and other periodicals the sad plight of the 52-20 boys, the miserable scraping that the college-goers must do to stay in college, the horrible handicaps.of the amputees. But I have searched column after column ... for just one tiny mention of the one hundred percenters. Not one damned word have I found.
Who are one hundred percenters? They weren't hit by a bullet or a shell fragment. Instead they . . . were hit by a bug who took up living quarters in their lungs, making them 100% disability cases. Or they contracted heart ailments, arthritis, etc.
One hundred percenters have one thing in common. They are denied the satisfaction of good, clean, honest, hard work because of their service-connected disabilities. They are compensated by an income ($115 a month) which does not come anywhere near to supplying the bare, basic necessities of living in the U.S.
How do they live? . . . Either they sponge on their relatives for a rent-free back room and kick in what they can for food, as I do, or they sponge on the Government by lying to the U.S.E.S. about their state of health, thereby drawing the $20 a week of the 52-20 club.
I have not met one who wouldn't trade his enforced leisure for the chance to sweat at an honest job without the fear of losing what remains of his life.
JOHN A. FYNN
Elizabeth, NJ.
Brothers at St. Vincent's
Sirs:
In your article "The Black Monks" [TIME, Sept. 16], you say: "The community, which once numbered over 100, has dwindled to 25."
Your reporter has erred, as the Benedictines at St. Vincent's (Latrobe, Pa.) have not dwindled to 25 members, but have grown to 239 members. . . .
JOHN MUGGLI
Richardton, N. Dak.
P: To TIME's Religion researcher, for carelessness with facts & figures, a resounding rebuke. Thriving St. Vincent's actually has 242 priests, seminarists and lay brothers in its monastic community. It is the number of lay brothers that has dwindled from 100 to 25.--ED.
Credit Line
Sirs:
YOUR ARTICLE "DEATH IN THE FOG" SEPT. 30 ISSUE OMITS RECOGNITION U.S. COAST GUARD PARTICIPATION GANDER RESCUE. NATION'S PRESS, NEWS REELS AND RADIO BROADCASTS ALL GIVE PROPER CREDIT TO THIS SERVICE FOR FLYING OUT SURVIVORS IN COAST GUARD HELICOPTERS AND COAST GUARD PBYS. . . .
COMDR. S. F. GRAY
Chief Public Information Division U.S. Coast Guard
Washington, D.C.
P: To the U.S. Coast Guard, no longer under the control of the Navy but on its peacetime own again, a belated "Well done."--ED.
Harvard's President
Sirs:
Your article on President Conant of Harvard [TIME, Sept. 23] is the most encouraging political news in the period since the untimely death of our great leader Franklin D. Roosevelt. For an era in which the emphasis will be on science and statesmanship, James Bryant Conant represents the best which America can offer for its highest position.
I sincerely hope that . . . the] will be a candidate for the presidency in 1948. . . .
ALBERT S. TOMLINSON
Rochester, N.Y.
Sirs:
. . . Since, obviously, the future of America and the whole world hinges on the wisdom of our atomic policy, it becomes imperative to elect a President versed in atomic problems himself. . . .
I am for "Conant for President in 1948" on both party tickets.
CLAUS HALBERSTAEDTER
Richmond, Calif.
Sirs:
... I am for this man because of what he represents--truth and energy. . . . Here is our opportunity: a man with intelligence, sincerity, energy, and the brains of the country at his fingertips, but above all, without political obligations. . . .
R. I. STAFF
St. Petersburg, Fla.
P: TIME only noted that Washington associates of Dr. Conant are "quietly talking about his presidential potentialities." But college presidents have reached the White House before.--ED.
Golden Tablets
Sirs:
Your research regarding Joseph Smith and the "golden tablets later translated into the Book of Mormon" seems to have been very limited. Not only does Mormon history fail to corroborate your footnote [TIME, Sept. 9]--"Smith sternly refused to show the tablets, warned that a mere peep would cause instant death, himself examined them through 'magic spectacles' "--but on the contrary the testimony of eleven witnesses ... is printed on one of the first few pages of every Book of Mormon published. . . .
CHESTER J. PETERSON
New York City
P: The account of the witnesses: "... They [the plates] have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. . . . And we declare that an Angel of God came down from Heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes that we beheld and saw the plates and the engravings thereon. . . ."--ED.
Not So New
Sirs:
TIME states [Sept. 23]: ". . . In the ruins of Berlin's Russian sector there appeared last week a large neat sign" carrying a quotation from Stalin. . . .
This same sign was displayed on many Berlin street corners when I was there in mid-July, 1945. The Russians (who got there first) had set it up in what were to become the American and British sectors as well as in their own. British military police were busy tearing down this and similar Russian signs in the British sector. The official explanation (given, deadpan, by a British Army Public Relations officer): "Conservation of lumber."
TOM DRIBERG, M.P.
New Orleans
P: To Laborite Driberg, now visiting in the U.S., thanks for a footnote to a footnote of history.--ED.
Bare Pin
Sirs:
TIME says [Sept. 23] that Rachele Mussolini "pedals away on her sewing machine."
Who said Rachele was working? My machine uses thread when it sews. Otherwise I, too, just pedal away. Teh, tch, TIME!
MRS. W. T. MALONE
Atlanta
P: To sharp-eyed Reader Malone, a salute for seeing what TIME's picture editor (and apparently TIME's readers generally) failed to notice: Rachele's Singer has no spool on the spool pin.--ED.
Who Was First?
Sirs:
In TIME [Aug 26] appears this astonishing statement: "Samuel Pierpont Langley . . . worked out the principles of the airplane before the Wright brothers made one that would fly."
As you doubtless know, Langley never worked out the principles of the airplane. He tried to, but his calculations were so wrong that every time he tried to launch his plane it collapsed. The Smithsonian Institution, in a public statement issued in October 1942, withdrew all claim that the Langley plane was ever proved capable of flight; and the Institution apologized for its former false statements.
FRED C. KELLY
Peninsula, Ohio
P: Scientist Langley had worked out the principles of powered heavier-than-air flight with sufficient thoroughness to fly a steam-powered, pilotless model more than half a mile in 1896. The Wright brothers, working independently of him, were the first to reduce theory to actuality, flew the first man-carrying airplane in 1903.--ED.
What Is a Lie?
Sirs:
You state [TIME, Sept. 23] that Mr. Truman told a lie when he tried to answer to questions about America's foreign policy as expressed by Mr. Wallace.
After all, Mr. Truman is the President of the United States and will be for more than two years to come. There is such a thing as respect for authority and tradition to the highest office in the land.
ROBERT W. MCINTOSH
East Lansing, Mich.
Sirs:
... TO LIE THERE MUST BE INTENT. TO ACCUSE THE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. OF A LIE [TIME, SEPT. 23], THERE SHOULD BE NO ROOM FOR ANY DOUBT CONCERNING HIS INTENTION. THE SLIGHTEST DOUBT SHOULD BE CAUSE ENOUGH TO REFRAIN FROM CALLING THE PRESIDENT A LIAR. TO ME HE IS STILL A BLUNDERER BUT NOT A LIAR. . . .
DANIEL WISHNACK
Paterson, NJ.
Sirs:
. . . You are not helping an obviously weak President, nor his Secretary of State, nor your country.
HENRY L. WADE
Chicago
Sirs:
Thank you for calling Truman's statement on the Wallace speech just what it evidently was--a clumsy lie. That is being curt, clear, and complete with a vengeance. ... It is also the kind of reporting that may eventually make this a well-governed nation.
DAVID J. DORAN
Springfield, Ore.
The Freshman
Sirs:
Horace Heidt may be a smart business man [TIME, Sept. 16], but he did not break his back in the Rose Bowl in 1922; he didn't play in that game where California and W&J played a 0-0 tie. . . .
Heidt, in fact, never played in the Rose Bowl, never was on the varsity squad at California a sufficient time to earn a letter. He played guard on a freshman team in 1920. That's about as close to All-America guard as 2,000 other freshman guards are each year.
STANLEY N. BARNES
California '22
Los Angeles
P: At onetime Freshman Guard Heidt, who broke his back in the 1921 season, a wagging finger. His explanation of the Rose Bowl fiction: a Pittsburgh radio editor made it up, told it so persistently that Promoter Heidt almost came to believe it himself, told it as history.--ED.
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