Deplorable Alliance

Sirs:

When all arguments for and against various attempts at neutrality legislation are set aside, the unobscured fact remains that our great and not-always-so-good country is supplying the Japanese military machine with well over 50% of its war materials.

A further fact is that the American citizen does not like this. . . Is it not utterly ridiculous to consider any type of legislation whatsoever which will allow this deplorable alliance with Japan to continue? Why do not the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee make short work of each and every proposal which does not have the mechanism TO STOP THIS COUNTRY FROM ARMING JAPAN? . . . Despite public statements to the fact that we are no longer shipping bombing planes to Japan, informed persons know that other types of planes can be shipped, that airplane parts cross the Pacific, that the high octane gasolene which powers Japan's military planes comes exclusively from our country.

And down below Japan's fleets of bombers, American surgeons, supported by countless church missionary suppers, labor night and day removing the shrapnel which crashes into Chinese flesh almost directly from our own scrap-iron heaps. Their medical supplies diminish as Japan announces that these materials will no longer be admitted. . . .

Why do not the American people deluge such persons as Senators Nye and Borah with letters pleading that we take ourselves out of this unspeakable business? Why do we not keep our Congressmen awake nights by the continuous earnestness of our appeal?

L. R. SEVERINGHAUS

Department of English Haverford School

Haverford, Pa.

Welcome Diversion

Sirs:

Letters in recent issues of your lively magazine [TIME, April 24, et seq.] have protested against sending men under 40 or over 40 to fight in the next war, that there may be no dearth of fathers. Excellent! Let the next war be won by women past 45, that absolutely useless class! Having been for the last decade a widow in this group, fighting at the front would be a welcome diversion.

(MRS.) S. S. TERRY

Madison, Wis.

Long Legs

Sirs:

This protest [Julia M. Peck's letter, TIME, May 8: "I am disgusted. ... On p. 21 (TIME, April 17) you speak of Mrs. Roosevelt . . , whom we all respect and admire, as 'long-legged.' I am ashamed of you."--ED.] amazes me! I'm a sincere admirer of our admirable First Lady, who is exactly my height. I've always been vain of my long legs, pleased & flattered to hear them so referred to.

Now, writers on Japan agree that the most serious handicap to beauty, of the Japanese women, is their short legs. Good Mayor LaGuardia is similarly handicapped.

Jessie Matthews, colts, and other cute people have long legs. What can Miss Peck be thinking of, to consider the expression disgusting, and an uncomplimentary slur ?

GLADYS G. SCOTT

Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

Sirs:

Why not forward the attached picture [see cut) to Julia?

GLENDORA GREENE

Los Angeles, Calif.

Sirs:

Poor Julia M. Peck! Can it be that she doesn t know that a woman's legs either make or break her appearance? Has she ever attended a fashion show? There, she'll see nothing but long legs: it takes them to wear clothes well.

I just hope when I reach the age of Mrs. Roosevelt someone will say, "Doesn't she have long legs?" That will be compliment enough for me!

Hooray for Mrs. Roosevelt's legs! She knows what it means.

FLORENCE AYCOCK FLYNN

Harrisburg, Pa.

Din of Arms

Sirs:

It occurs to me that you might be interested in the following quotation taken from the preface of the book entitled, One Thousand Valuable Secrets, in the Elegant and Useful Arts, first American edition, Philadelphia, 1795:

"Whilst the inhabitants of Europe are distracted by the din of arms, and their principal employment is to contrive the most expeditious means of destroying one another, let the happy citizens of these infant States turn their attention to the useful and elegant arts of peace. . . ."

RICHARD S. WORMSER

Books

Rare--Out-of-Print

New York City

Dead-Earnest

Sirs:

I feel I must write you how we, in Germany, feel about our Fiihrer's reply to Roosevelt.

As it was done all over the Reich, the whole plant had laid down work and gathered at the radio at 12 o'clock noon.

Heavily interested, the workmen and employers and directors sat together and listened dead-earnest to the Fiihrer's report. Then, when Roosevelt was addressed, the men started smiling and finally I could not see but grinning faces.

General impression: Roosevelt got much, but even deserves more of a stern rebuke and lesson. He had better take up more geography and history.

Comment by one janitor of the mill: "If I were Roosevelt, I'd bury myself after this, right now."

As for myself, I feel ashamed for the American people to have been brought into this trouble by a too-ambitious President, and only hope that he'll mind his own business from now on. I wished your press was really "free" and not only in an anti-German way, so that the American people could read the unchanged Fiihrer's speech, and in full, by which, I am sure, we would come to a better understanding.

FRITZ FESSMANN

Bamberg, Germany

Greatest Salesman

Sirs:

Your article TIME, May i, p. 72, on Mr. Whalen is very good. The writer is, however, in error when he describes Whalen as the greatest salesman alive today, a preeminence that belongs to George Bernard Shaw. Fortunately for other salesmen he sells one article only: G. B. Shaw. This leaves all other commodities open to competitors.

FRANK FOSTER

Seattle, Wash.

Incoherent Rot

Sirs:

I have just given careful attention to your comprehensive review (TIME, May 8) of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and if it contains the incoherent, unintelligible rot your reviewer states, I fail to find the slightest justification for the space you have given it in your Books section and the prominence you have accorded its author on the front cover of TIME. The sooner the lunatic fringe of our literature and art, i.e., the Gertrude Steins, the James Joyces and Salvador Dalis, is ignored by reputable critics, the sooner our literature and art will be purged of their loathesome stench.

I'll wager that I could take a good stenographer and spend a little time around the more violent psychopathic wards of our better mental institutions and pick up far less unintelligible and less incoherent copy than anything in Finnegans Wake. .

It appears to me that it is high time such literary excrement be branded for what it is and relegated to the oblivion it deserves.

JOSEPH. R. LAFFERTY

Cave City, Ky.

Sirs:

May I offer a correction or rather completion to your seven columns on James Joyce? Miss Sylvia Beach not only "began publishing Ulysses" (TIME, May 8, p. 82), she brought out eleven ediUons of Ulysses, published Joyces Pomes Penyeach, as well as a sym-n(TM),,(TM) (TM) Work in Progress called Our ExagYour scant two lines not only minimize the achievement of this intrepid and tireless American, but actually create the false impression of a task begun but not completed.

J. S. VAN METER HINMAN

Columbia, Mo.

M Day

Sirs:

Re: "Swingle's Defenseless Feeling" and your reply thereto--TIME, May 8, p. 2

Believe that a check with the War Department will show that Mr Swingle is nearer correct than you are.

1) It will take at least five days to physically examine the National Guard and check equipment.

2) The National Guard is authorized at 210,000 but only about 80% would be available, a potential strength of 168,000. The regular Army authorized at 165,000, making 333,000. This figure does not contemplate any deductions of personnel for service commands, coast defenses, the Canal Zone, stations outside of Continental U. S. A. and other uses. _

So, on M Day you would have approximately 333,000 soldiers from Alaska to Panama to Puerto Rico who could be called into service.

If you would amend your reply by stating that Uncle Sam could have possibly 250,000 available for service in from sM to loM you would be doing the country a real service. Nothing personal in this, but the Americans are too prone to exaggerate and forget facts and the facts are bad enough.

(MAJOR) WILLIAM L. BARNUM

Los Angeles, Calif.

-- Too quick on the trigger was TIME in saying: "When M (Mobilization) Day comes, the U. S. can throw 1,000,000 men into the field within 48 hours." On rechecking the facts, TIME thinks even Major Barnum has underestimated the time necessary for putting 250,000 troops "into the field."--ED.

"Drinkers' Lives"

Sirs:

With reference to your item in the department Letters in the issue of May 22 entitled "Drinkers' Lives," it seemed to me that a comment made by one of my friends, who shall be nameless, is worthy of consideration.

Without the use of guinea pigs, or without any resort to actuarial tables, my friend figured through a simple calculation of the number of drinks that he has had, that, according to the estimates of Dr. Arthur Hunter (that every drink costs the moderate drinker 25 minutes of life), there has been a grave error in that his birth should not have been recorded before Jan. 19, 1954. In other words, he is at the present time minus 14 years and 7 months old, and steadily going backward.

FRANCIS W. DUNN

Attorney at Law

Boston, Mass.

Ohio's Seven

Sirs:

In your May 15 issue of TIME you stated that OHIO has produced seven out of our country's 32 Presidents. I think that TIME has made one of its few errors in making this statement. Try as I will, I can find only the following six occupants of the White House originating in Ohio. They are, in order of their administrations: Wm. H. Harrison, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, William H. Taft and Warren G. Harding.

Would TIME be so kind as to name the seventh ?

HOWARD WM. ROSEMA

Spring Lake, Mich.

> William Henry Harrison (ninth President) was a Virginian; Reader Rosema meant Benjamin Harrison (23rd). Overlooked: Ulysses Simpson Grant, born in a cabin at Point Pleasant, 22 miles up the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Reader Rosema will find the cabin, restored, a part of Grant Memorial Park.--ED.

Crocodile Tears

Sirs:

I like TIME, it sheds no crocodile tears, they scald the eyeballs.

JOHN N. JAMES

Phoenix, Ariz.

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