Pan-American Brigade?

Sirs:

Among the thousands of Latin Americans residing in the U.S., there are many willing to fight the Axis. However, the armed forces of this country will not give us a chance because we are not citizens of the U.S.

My country, for instance, is technically and legally at war with the Axis and de facto an ally of the U.S.; nevertheless, the U.S. Army does not accept me in spite of my desire and training because I am a Nicaraguan citizen. . . .

The formation and recognition of a Pan-American Brigade, a division of Latin American soldiers in the regular U.S. Army, would be the best demonstration of the solidarity and unity of the Americas.

J. L. SANDINO

Hollywood, Calif.

Hangman Heydrich

Sirs:

It is impossible for any intelligent human being to have read your article on Hitler's chief hangman Heydrich without wanting to do all he possibly can do to defeat the Nazi regime. I was already shocked when I saw Heydrich's brutal face and the typical ears of that born criminal on the cover of TIME of Feb. 23. Now, on March 12, it will be exactly seven years when I had the misfortune to fall into his hands.

At that day Swiss, Dutch, French and English newspapers published the following item: "Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner, ex-legal adviser of the pre-Hitler Prussian State Police Administration was executed by a firing squad of the Nazi Secret Police (Gestapo) as an enemy of the Hitler Regime." He actually had caught me, but after three weeks of the third degree, friends succeeded in getting my release and I could escape death. Himmler's and Heydrich's police machinery is terrible but can be smashed easier than most people think!

R. M. W. KEMPNER

University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pa.

Mr. Bullitt & Bomber

Sirs:

In TIME [Feb. 9] ... it was stated that I refused to allow Mr. Larry Allen, Associated Press Correspondent with the British Mediterranean Fleet, permission to ride on an American bomber in which I traveled from Cairo to the U.S. on the grounds that there was no room. . . .

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Allen until I reached Accra on the Gold Coast of Africa. . . . Mr. Allen, furthermore, did not ask me for permission to ride in the plane. He addressed himself to General E. E. Adler in charge of the U.S. Bomber Ferry Command Service. ... I did not have any jurisdiction whatsoever over this plane. I was merely a passenger.

At Khartoum where Mr. Allen had previously traveled, Mr. Offie endeavored to persuade a British R.A.F. officer who was riding in the plane to West Africa to get off and allow Mr. Allen to ride with us in exchange for a later Pan American passage from Khartoum to Accra which Mr. Allen would purchase for him. This the British R.A.F. officer decided not to do.

Fortunately for Mr. Allen, necessary repairs to the bomber caused a 24-hour stayover at Accra and he was able to catch up with us traveling by regular Pan American service. It was at Accra that Mr. Allen asked permission to ride to Washington of Colonel Truesdale, of the U.S. Army Corps, who was in command of our plane. Colonel Truesdale wanted to take Mr. Allen but hesitated to do so without authority. He asked my view in the matter and I told him that since there was room in the plane (we had discharged three U.S. Army officers at Accra), I saw no reason why he should fear getting into trouble by taking an American newspaperman to the U.S. Colonel Truesdale then invited Mr. Allen to board the plane. . . .

WILLIAM C. BULLITT

Washington, D.C.

>-- TIME'S account of Hitchhiker Allen's bomber ride was based on an interview with him sent out by the Associated Press. His reply to Mr. Bullitt's letter: "I got my first opportunity to talk to Bullitt direct in Accra, but I fail to see how he could have missed knowing that I tried to get aboard both at Cairo and Khartoum, since I appealed to [ex-Minister to Bulgaria George H.] Earle, also Bullitt's secretary, to use influence to have Bullitt take me."-ED.

"Frantic and Fanatical"

Sirs:

The story about me in TIME Feb. 16, starts out with a misstatement of fact in the first line. "Most inopportune book of the month is The Dry Season. . . ." The Dry Season is not a book of the month or even a book of the year; it was published on Dec. 10, 1941. . . .

The TIME story deals with two poems, one written in 1935 and the other in 1937. By taking both out of their context in the book, and by taking a few lines out of their context in the poems, it makes them mean exactly what they do not mean when read as a whole.

Thus, "The Last International" is a poem about all the millions of people who died in the unsuccessful revolutions that followed the first World War. It describes a nightmare, a fantastic parade of the dead of all nations. . . .

Shot down in Florisdorf or Chapei Road And now released from prison graveyards,

piled

So high with sorrows that they overflowed. The scene of the poem might be Paris, with its boulevards and iron-shuttered windows; it might be Berlin or Budapest or Shanghai (the fact happens to be that I wrote it after reading Malraux's novel, Man's Fate, about the Shanghai rebellion of 1927). There are some American details, but the scene was not meant to be and could not have been the United States. Thank God, there hasn't been a revolution here, or the sacrifice of millions of lives. No blood has flowed at home, only printer's ink.

"Tomorrow Morning," first published in 1937, is obviously a poem about the civil war in Spain-that explains "the Central Committee" and "the labor unions," occurring in the same stanza with "the broad dim plaza" and "the bull ring by the river." But in terms of the Spanish civil war, I was trying to say something about the frantic and fanatical preoccupation with the future that characterized the 19305 and that cost so many thousands of lives all over the world. "Remember us," the poem saysand the "us" plainly does not apply to Americans. . . remember us who died At Badajoz, like beasts in the arena, At Canton, cornered in an alleyway. Remember us, the martyrs and the traitors. . . .

"Tomorrow Morning" is not even a political poem, let alone being a revolutionary poem. It is a lament for all the brave and cowardly who died in vain. . . .

Both poems occur in a section called "The City in the Sea"-which, if you remember your Poe, was a city of the dead, and which was also the world of the 19305. It is only by desperate juggling that the poems can be torn from their context in a book, that half a dozen lines can be torn from their context in the two poems and given a political meaning they do not possess, and that the whole discussion can be moved forward seventy-five pages in the magazine, from the book section, where it belongs, to the Washington section -where, presumably, it goes to prove that the country all of us love is in grave danger of being overthrown by a determined rabble of poets and literary editors. The country has graver dangers, this year.

MALCOLM COWLEY

Washington, D.C.

-- TIME cheerfully concedes that ex-Literary Editor Malcolm Cowley is no danger to the country.-ED.

Hobson Missed

Sirs:

TIME, Feb. 23: ... the brilliant Japan number of FORTUNE, chiefly written and edited by [OFFicer-Poet Archibald] Mac-Leish. . . ."

Almost half of FORTUNE'S Japan number, which was indeed brilliant, was written by Wilder Hobson, whose name I now spy in TIME'S masthead. I believe he wrote at least two of the main articles: Gentlemen of Japan and Men, Yen and Machines. . . .

WINTHROP KENNEDY

New York City

-- TIME'S hand to TIME'S Hobson.-ED.

Nisei's Duty

Sirs:

Upon reading your article on "The People" (TIME, Feb. 23) I was finally convinced that it was more than reasonable that we American citizens of Japanese parentage on the West Coast should be ordered to evacuate to the inland by the Army.

It was certainly an eye-opener for us, for until then I always thought that this demand to oust us from the sunny Southern California was nothing but a dirty scheme by some of our local politicians. But I now realize the awful necessity of us getting out of the coast as soon as possible and I do believe that it is our duty to move inland so that we may relieve the Army the burden of keeping watch over us when it must concentrate its full power on guarding the important coast. This is a fight to finish and our fate is in the balance. Then we should not be in a way of the Army when it needs every ounce of manpower to prevent more break-through of the enemy on far distant front lines, and we, as loyal citizens of this country, can better serve the nation by working on inland farms instead of remaining here to increase the worry and anxiety of our fellow Caucasian citizens on the coast. . . .

Whatever our fellow Japanese-Americans might have done in Hawaii at the time of Pearl Harbor attack, we Nisei on the California coast certainly do not wish to be looked upon as potential saboteurs or fifth columnists. Neither do we have any desire to be charged responsible if and when any single bomb is dropped here, for it is quite certain that enraged public will look for a scapegoat in us on such event. . . .

DAVID AKIRA ITAMI

Assistant Editor

Japanese Language Section

Japan-California News

Los Angeles, Calif.

Sirs:

. . . The demand for indiscriminate expulsion of first and second generation Japanese in California did not come from the masses of the people. Even when Californians were still stunned by the sudden attack on Pearl Harbor, there was great sympathy for the Isei and Nisei [alien and citizen Japs] placed in this tragic position through no fault of their own. Most Californians were content to let the FBI weed out the undesirables.

The wild screaming came, rather, from three general sources: 1) the same unthinking people who join in every race-baiting campaign, 2) the group of Congressmen who characteristically hate everyone not quite like themselves, and 3) some of the local white produce growers and marketers. . . .

I just don't believe we should expel all the Japanese aliens or Japanese-Americans because some of their number are disloyal any more than we should intern all those of German parentage because a portion of them belong to the Bund. I see no reason for falling victim to the racist doctrines of the fascists. From the observations I've made, I'm scarcely alone in taking this attitude. I can confidently say that there is no great cry for martial law on the West Coast. . . .

TERRY L. BAUM

Beverly Hills, Calif.

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