Two-Sided Sponsors
Sirs:
Because of the recent publicity given the gifts of the sponsors of wartime ships [TIME, Sept. 23], it seems only fair that someone should mention that the giving was not entirely one-sided.
Many of these women . . . gave to these ships such things as athletic equipment, ship's libraries, silver pitchers and trays, deck chairs, radios, victrolas, etc., and we hope that they are still giving pleasure to the men on board the ships today.
GEORGINA HICKS MAGE Pasadena
Sirs:
My husband was in the Army 18 months, twelve of which were spent overseas. My pay, for myself and two children, was $20.12 short of what the taxpayers so generously gave Mrs. James F. Byrnes in the form of a tray. I am proud that my husband fought for his generous country but many times in that year and a half I could have swallowed my pride for an extra ten bucks.
MRS. LUCILLE M. NELSON Sandy, Utah
Vanity & Conceit
Sirs:
"Though I am not conceited," writes [James Montgomery] Flagg [TIME, Sept. 30], "I am a vain creature." What does he mean by the distinction?
The distinction is this: "To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself." Max Beerbohm is quoted, from Quid Imperfectum.
J. R. GOODYKOONTZ Lieutenant, U.S.N. Norfolk, Va.
This Great Endeavor
Sirs:
Your article "This Great Endeavor" [TIME, Sept. 30] was unfair to Henry Wallace as well as to the American public. . . .
Henry Wallace made it clear that he opposes the present American policy towards Russia because this policy pursues a course marked by the interests of the British Empire.
Henry Wallace called for a firm, independent American foreign policy; a policy independent of Britain and Russia as well; a policy that will convince the world of our honest and uncorrupt desire to achieve world peace.
N. REIGROD
Cincinnati
Sirs:
. . . Have you ever sincerely tried to answer Wallace's question: "How would we feel if Russia possessed the atomic bomb and we didn't; if Russia possessed thousands of planes, and we but few; if Russia possessed bases within a thousand miles of both our coasts?"
SAMUEL B. MAYO Minneapolis
Sirs:
Wallace does not propose that we placate the Russians by acquiescing in their every whim--but he is envisioned enough to recall that Franklin Roosevelt's key to peace was the dissociation of our foreign policy with , that of the United Kingdom.
Only a few months ago, Winston Churchill shocked America and the world by proposing the formation of an Anglo-American bloc predicated on singular hostility toward the Soviet Union. Churchill must be more than gratified today to find Jimmy Byrnes, the little man's little man, securely entrenched in Ernie Bevin's ample vest pocket.
CPL. THOM GEPHARDT Camp Lee, Va.
Sirs:
Because you do not agree with Wallace is the poorest reason to say: "He has sincerity without principle." What proves more plainly the man's principle than the fact that he has ruined long ago, and is now obliterating, his chances to succeed politically, by being completely open in the expression of his opinion ?
Such lack of guile is so rare in a man of public service that people can't seem to believe it when it does occur; we are used to the subtlety and deceit of "party politics." One expects a more adult approach to the subject of Wallace, however, than the face-making technique employed by TIME.
JOAN GYORGY
New Kensington, Pa.
Sirs:
Your desperate attempt to picture Wallace as an idealistic interloper in foreign affairs is belied by his own actions and writings both previous to and after his resignation.
As organizer and chairman of Iowa Roosevelt Clubs in 1932, I came in close contact with Wallace, and could not help but admire and respect his viewpoint both on national and international affairs. As a veteran of World War II, I agree with you: Americans must choose. My choice is the Wallace philosophy.
Bring on your red herrings.
S. M. AMY
San Pablo, Calif.
Sirs:
It is disconcerting to have a magazine of your caliber imply that those who disagree with our foreign policy are either isolationists, leftists, or communists. There are many Americans who simply are fed up with the double standard of our State Department that apparently expects more democracy from Communist Russia than from the democracies themselves.
The maintenance of policy regimes by military might is equally deplorable whether by the Russians in Poland, the British in Greece, or even our own country in China. We do not object to a firm foreign policy as long as it is not confined only to Russia.
We expect our foreign policy to be consistent and to fight with equal vigor for liberty and justice in all portions of the world.
JOSEPH L. SHOLKIN Newton Highlands, Mass.
Sirs:
Every night when we 140,000,000 American citizens hit the sack, we should all pray and thank our Lord for one thing: that Henry A. Wallace didn't get in for a second term as our Vice President in 1944. We Kansans are having enough trouble right now trying to keep the Woodring-Pendergast-Truman machine out of the State House at Topeka, so please keep Agard away from us as far as possible.
CLARK COAN
Lawrence, Kans.
Sirs:
Your cover has presented world heroes and criminals; Republicans, Democrats and Communists ; men of science, literature and all the rest, but your cover of Sept. 30 would better have been left off the magazine.
This man was an American and a member of our First Team. He threw a block on the teammate whose signal was called to carry the ball for us. Cover the news if you will but don't flaunt this man's picture. . . .
WM. ENO DE BUYS Baltimore
The Abbey
Sirs:
Orchids to Mr. Simon Elwes and TIME. Elwes' dream [TIME, Sept. .30], in which he saw Fountains Abbey restored to its ancient greatness and religious peerage, was not merely the dream of a single man, but perhaps the ardent wish of many. In the desire to rebuild and reconsecrate these ruins we may recognize the faint beginning of the spiritual restoration and religious quickening of "modern" man. . . .
So, orchids to all those who do not think it to be shameful or unfashionable to openly proclaim their faith while their voices are being obscured by the hysterical cries and denunciations of the atheists and materialists.
HANS H. KRETSCHMER Appleton, Wis.
Sirs:
TIME should give a stinging rebuke to coarse-jowled, evil-faced Roman Catholic fanatic, Simon Elwes, for his libel of the U.S. when he called it "a Catholic nation." God forbid that success ever should attend the never-ending efforts of that "little political State," the Vatican, to take from us our heritage of freedom from one of the most horrible tyrannies the world ever has known, the Roman Catholic Church. God help poor old England if, added to her other troubles, she finds herself again "a Catholic nation" and, therefore, a vassalage of that self-perpetuating little group of men whose ambition always has been and always will be, dominion over the whole world by one little kingdom whose record of cruelty and debauchery is without parallel. . . .
ELIZABETH EMMETT Peace Dale, R.I.
Oldster
Sirs:
In your recent article on the Chicago convention of the Student Federalist organization [TIME, Sept. 16], can you have been so dazzled by the youth of the student delegates that everybody else present seemed doddering by comparison? I refer particularly to "64-year-old Thomas K. Finletter," whom I met on a Long Island Railroad platform one morning recently. Among other grizzled commuters he looked considerably less than 64. In fact, on direct cross-examination he admitted to being only 52. May your own editors, when they hit the wrong side of 50, continue to look as youthful as Finletter.
MAITLAND A. EDEY Glen Head, N.Y.
P:I Amen to Reader Edey; apologies to young Speaker Finletter.--ED.
Ask a Martian
Sirs:
I read [TIME, Sept. 30]: "The only reliable meson generators are the mysterious cosmic rays from outer space, which spend most of their force inconveniently high in the atmosphere."
Inconvenient, perhaps from the nuclear scientist's point of view, but certainly contributing to a more comfortable world. . . .
Without a ray-absorbing atmosphere to protect us, we would undoubtedly be living in caves. Ask anyone from Mars.
JAMES M. W. FIELD Boston
The Rail & the Bull
Sirs:
The article and photograph of Delvaux' Temptation in the Sept. 30 issue of TIME calls back the good old days when the W.C.T.U. succeeded in getting a section of broken rail fence put on the Bull Durham signboards, to protect the moral integrity of someone. It always seemed to me very unfortunate that the good Lord didn't have the opportunity to confer with the W.C.T.U. before He created the bull.
GEO. P. WEBSTER Cleveland
Cats & Rats
Sirs:
Your experience with cats, old & young, must have been sparse. You state [TIME, Sept. 30] that Esso Junior, three months old, killed a large, fat rat. My dear sir, it ain't possible. I was raised with rats and cats on the farm and let me assure you that only a large, skinny, hungry, and valorous tomcat will willingly attack a rat. ...
Your little three-months-old kitty would be no match for any rat that was not in the last stages of pulmonarv pneumonia.
R. S. WILLIAMS Chicago
P: Tomcat Esso Junior, through his spokesman Janitor Frank Hatch of the Esso plant at Bayonne, N.J., sticks to his story.--ED.
Nonstop
Sirs:
Your article on Athlete Matsumoto [TIME, Sept. 30] was most stimulating. . . . But, something in the story has given me no end of mental exercise. Would you please end that exercise by telling me how he could run 117 miles nonstop, and wear out four pairs of sandals? The weird pictures that have come to my mind as I try to conceive of how he changed sandals while running are somewhat disquieting. Is this some Oriental mystic trick? . . .
R. S. LEDERMAN
Naperville, 111.
Sirs:
I tried changing sandals while running, but I fell on my face every time.
R. J. SMALL
Minneapolis t| TIME'S Foreign News researchers are working on the problem, get the same result.--ED.
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