Man of the Year
Sirs:
WE ANTICIPATE WITH DREAD FOR ITS EFFECTS THE POSSIBLE SELECTION OF ADOLF HITLER AS TIME'S MAN OF THE YEAR. THE MAJORITY OF LETTERS NOMINATING HIM HAVE BEEN WHOLLY CONDEMNATORY. IF HIS PICTURE APPEARS ON YOUR COVER ONLY AS TIME'S MAN OF THE YEAR THE CONTROLLED PRESS OF FASCIST COUNTRIES AND THE UNINFORMED OF ALL NATIONS WILL HAIL THE SELECTION AS AN AWARD OF MERIT. WE ASK THAT YOU CONFIRM THE TRUST OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST DEMOCRACY BY REFRAINING FROM CONVEYING THIS TITLE AS AN HONOR UPON A MAN WHO HAS DOMINATED THIS YEAR'S HEADLINES WITH HIS CRIMES AGAINST CIVILIZATION.
DR. BRUNO FRANK, MELVYN DOUGLAS, HARLAN THOMPSON, FRANK TUTTLE, GROUCHO MARX, DONALD OGDEN STEWART, GALE SONDERGAARD, BORIS MORROS.
Hollywood, Calif.
Sirs:
If a low fellow burned one church or synagogue he'd likely be called a punk, among other things. Why should the burning of many such places make him be considered for the Man of the Year? If a punk, through brute force, made an old Jew scrub a street, he'd be called anything but Man of the Year, eh? Would he be any different because he'd done so to many a Jew? . . .
W. M. CHASE
Nashville, Tenn.
Sirs:
Your magizine is always printing letters condeming His Excelency Herr Hitler. I don't do much writing, but I could not help voicing my disagrement. I give great Hitler credit for doing what the Kaisar did not complete. Hitler has made himself the king of Europe by proving to the world that France and England are cowards. . . .
Another thing, why should the people of this country worry what goes on in Germany? It's none of there business. Herr Hitler does not tell us what we should do to the prisoners, so why should we tell him what to do to the Jews? . . .
Instead of condeming Hitler let us praise his efforts toward reconstructing Germany.
A READER Rockford, Ill.
>The telegram and letters above were received too late for inclusion in TIME'S Dec. 26 issue. For TIME'S answer, see TIME'S cover, TIME'S story, p. 11.--ED.
Potential Solution
Sirs:
I am hoping that the following potential solution to the Jewish Territorial problem will be aired through your columns. . . .
Has Lower California ever been considered ?
This area is about the size of Michigan, has a comfortable climate, yet has a population of less than 100,000. It is generally considered an arid country, yet our own government reports at least 5,000,000 acres of excellent farming land, with more available after suitable irrigation. There is excellent commercial fishing and some mining there also.
Since the U. S. is bound to figure financially in any Jewish territorial solution anyway, and since Mexico owes us a mounting debt for recent land confiscations, and since a good portion of Lower California is already owned by U. S. citizens (and therefore presumably confiscatable), therefore Mexico's debt might be applied against the purchase price of this territory which we could then present to the Jewish people.
A. HERB San Francisco, Calif.
Sorry, Girls
Sirs:
It is sometimes suggested naively, and not always by women, that the explanation of Hitler's harsh personality and policies is his bachelorhood--his indifference to the charm of women and the lack of children of his own. How much this theory smacks of the coo-and-goo philosophy which Hollywood gravely asks us to accept daily on our screens is apparent when we look for example at the private lives of Hitler's two "also-ran" fellow dictators. Mussolini is very much the family man, but there is no evidence that Signora Mussolini or the several little Mussolinis have had any softening effect on his political methods or tempered his jowly egotism with a sense of humor. The most power-crazy and pitiless of all the iron-chewers, Stalin, has taken time off from purging to marry twice and beget a daughter,* still in her teens, but if his love for her has made him go down on his hands and knees and say "Woof, woof!", we are not getting the straight dope from Russia these days.
There is no logical reason to believe that Hitler would act any differently if he were a happy husband and father, when the normal domestic claims have not taken the sting out of Papa Goebbels or made of Papa Goring the ideal Santa Claus for 1938. Sorry, girls, but when it comes to dictators, you just don't seem to make much headway. EDWARD T. MCNAMARA
Danbury, Conn.
Sickeningly Familiar
Sirs:
TIME'S reports of German "pogroms" have a sickeningly familiar ring. The atrocities of "the bully boys" certainly cannot compare in sheer brutality with the torture murders of Negroes in the fine old South and the collection of souvenirs of human skin by degenerate spectators.
For a parallel to the present state of mind it might be well to examine "the rape of Belgium.". . .
Anyone daring to suggest that the German army, perhaps the best disciplined in the world at that time, did not spend all its time committing atrocities was of course "pro-German." Such courageous men as Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, who tried to remain clear-sighted in the face of hysteria, who protested America's entry into the War, were, naturally, traitors--though history has proved them right and proved the rest of us a gullible group of limp-wits, victims of the most obvious propaganda.
Today the picture is but little changed. .
The parallelism even carries through to the Lindberghs. Now we are in the process of working up a hate for a citizen we have already badgered almost beyond human endurance, the son, curiously enough, of Representative Lindbergh! Jewish hate directed against Charles A. Lindbergh will probably have its way until his name is anathema-- simply because, like his father, he refuses to be stampeded by our chuckle-headedness.
I hold no brief for A. Hitler & Co., any more than I do for the mob lynchings and mob burnings of our chivalrous South, but I would like to suggest, before such a suggestion would land me in a concentration camp as a "pro-Nazi," that TIME keep its head until such time as a more pronounced government attitude makes propaganda safer than truth.
RONALD CRAIG
San Diego, Calif.
*And two sons.--En.
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