Jinx
Sirs:
Is it carrying the TIME front-cover jinx too far to suggest that [the Gestapo's late Reinhard] Heydrich appeared very recently?
LIONEL W. NELSON Orlando, Fla.
> Just far enough.--ED.
Both Barrels
Sirs:
I have been in the U.S. Merchant Marine for over twelve years and had made plans to quit and go ashore this past March. The attack on Pearl Harbor ended all such pleasant thoughts for me.
Since then I have served, without complaint, in the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Pacific--wherever they chose to send me. I believe that it is my duty to serve my country in whatever capacity I am best suited and at present that is as second mate aboard this oil tanker. But, if some of these stupid politicians think that it is my duty to risk my life in order to fill the tanks of pleasure cars to the brim, they will have another think coming. I believe that they will soon find out that there are quite a few more seamen who feel this way. . . .
If oil rationing is neededQ+et's have it, with both barrels.
PAUL J. GENNUSA S.S. Herbert L. Pratt
Deliveries at Pearl Harbor
Sirs:
In your Letters column, April 13, a Mr. Daniels and a Mrs. Thomas complain of the current day-late deliveries of TIME in their particular sections. I am amused, and write not to complain but in hopes that Mr. Daniels and Mrs. Thomas may find some consolement in this: My four April issues of TIME were delivered on May 26 and they have been coming in this manner since December. Just keep throwing TIME in the mailbag each week and I'll thank you for it no matter when it finds its way to me.
R. E. BIRD, U.S.N. Pearl Harbor, T.H.
No Bitterness
Sirs:
As a supplement to the fine portrayal by word and picture of the man "with the tender eyes and jaw of iron" [Chiang Kaishek] in TIME, June 1, the following is quoted from one of the daily readings in our current quarterly. . . .
"A Red Cross official in China, who recently returned to the United States, tells of a visit he made to Chungking. . . . Seven times that day Japanese planes had raided the city and dropped bombs. The Generalissimo explained that they were trying to find out where he was staying. After a simple dinner the visitor was asked to remain for evening devotions. They knelt together, and first Madame Chiang offered a prayer, then the guest prayed, and finally the Generalissimo. He prayed for the American people to whom his guest was going, then for his own Chinese people, and finally for the Japanese people, whose representatives that day seven times --had tried to kill him. Here is a man in whose heart is no bitterness and no spirit of unforgiveness."
CHRISTINE H. KISTNER
Milton, Pa.
Sirs:
Congratulations on your China article of June 1. I hope that you will keep hammering home the China Question until the War and Navy Departments actively and efficiently aid the Chinese or until the American public demands that they do so. ...
MRS. CLIFTON COWAN Doddsville, Miss.
First for Once
Sirs: May I take exception to your opening sentence in your article "Anticipation at Madagascar," TIME, May 11. You state "For once the British made an effort to get there first." It is a common habit of the English to belittle their accomplishments and to exaggerate those of the enemies, but, we do not like to have our efforts the subject of derogatory comment by our neighbors. Surely the occupation of Iceland, Syria, Iraq, etc. should entitle us to a more complimentary opening passage. May I suggest that "Once again the British have beat the Axis to the punch," would have been a more appropriate expression, and also have helped the esprit de corps.
A. C. JENNING Montreal, Quebec
> Said Winston Churchill, without rancor, when he was broadcasting to the world on May 10: ". . . [it was important] for us to take Madagascar and forestall the Japanese--and be there 'first for once' as they said."--ED.
Buffoons, Timeservers, etc.
Sirs:
It is obvious that one of your prime objectives of late has been the castigation of Congress. The result of this type of criticism has been the spread of the belief that Congress is made up of a flock of jokers and buffoons who are incapable of any sensible action or decision. No one will deny that there is in Congress an overly large number of noisy timeservers, obstructionists and reactionaries, but the majority of our representatives are patriotic, hard-working men. . .. This unscrupulous criticism if carried to extremes will threaten Congress as an institution. Your purpose--that of improving the personnel of CongressQ+s an admirable one, but your methods are dangerous and distasteful. . . .
RALPH A. KOHN JR. Stanford University Palo Alto, Calif.
Sirs:
Being busy making a soldier, I do not have much time to read or write. But I do read TIME regularly. Your article on Congress and statesmanship so impressed me that I cannot fail to compliment you on it. It was excellent. Every Representative and Senator should read and reread it and awake to the task that lies before them. . . .
PRIVATE B. T. FLEETWOOD Fort Bragg, N.C.
Sirs:
When some of our national legislators faced about so completely after Pearl Harbor, I called them "weather vanes"; when they changed their votes on their pension bill, I thought they were "straws in the wind"; but when they ran back to exchange their X cards for some other type, they looked like "whirling dervishes." I'm dizzy from such leadership!
OLLIE E. HOFFMAN Bern, Kans.
Sirs:
TIME, May 25 quotes from the "pinko New Republic," lists a good many Congressmen whose utterances will not stand light of day at present. However, where is the New Republic's friend Marcantonio ? If I remember, he voted against everything in the way of preparation.
FRANK T. BERTSCHE
Upper Montclair, N.J.
> Congressman Vito Marcantonio of New York, no special friend of the New Republic nowadays, reversed his isolationist stand after Germany attacked Russia, thus got the jump on the other isolationists who maintained their positions right up to Pearl Harbor.
Last week the local Republican organization announced that the Republican Party has "no room for Communists," would not endorse him for re-election this year. And the conservative wing of the American Labor Party also wants to deny him renomination.--ED.
Speed Merchant
Sirs:
Mr. Kane's letter [TIME, May 25] expresses surprise that The Case of the Drowning Duck, written by my uncle, Erie Stanley Gardner, took less than five months from inspiration to advance copy. I can only think that Uncle Erie must have dawdled.
I was visiting in his home when he wrote the first of the Perry Mason series, The Case of the Velvet Claws. He worked in an upstairs study, with doors and windows tightly shut and the furnace set at about 90DEG. (He is a devotee of the Great Outdoors, but he wants it to stay outdoors.) He used a dictaphone, into which he talked almost steadily from 5 in the morning until midnight for three days, his voice monotonously audible throughout the house, while members of the family went around glassy-eyed, hands clutching their aching heads. At noon on the fourth day the first, and final, draft of the book was finished.
MARIAN SNYDER Oakland, Calif.
SPDRAB
Sirs:
When you are supposed to be so alert and up on things, it is discouraging to find that you waste space (TIME, June 1) to reprint a bit of malicious verse about Brooklyn, There is no such thing as Brooklynese.
It is about time that weird impressions about the borough of Brooklyn and its residents were debunked. If you fellows are really well informed, then you know darn well that the average Brooklynite does not talk out of the side of his mouth, speaks no more slang or colloquialisms than the average citizen and resents insinuations that he is not as astute as the next fellow.
We expect an apology or TIME goes on our boycott list and, boy, we're 18,000 loyal members.
SIDNEY H. ASCHER Society for the Prevention of Disparaging Remarks about Brooklyn "We Love People Who Love Brooklyn" Brooklyn, N.Y.
> TIME neither hates nor loves Brooklyn, fears no bercott.--ED.
Hot Spotters
Sirs:
So now, according to TIME, the Army is going to replace amateur observers with trained, paid WAACs!
The 50-odd volunteer observers of this coastal observation post were "amateurs" that Sunday afternoon when the radio announced the Pearl Harbor attack. Nearly six months have passed. Whoever says we are still amateurs is crazy. Most of our volunteers have now served over 150 hours each--at shifts averaging three hours, 24 hours a day. They can spot a plane, a blimp, a ship or submarine without field glasses far more quickly than can the average Army officer with glasses. That's experience. . .
If ever there was a trained, efficient group of reliable men & women, this and hundreds of other similar posts has them. . . .
WHIT WELLMAN Chief Observer
Yankee Point Observation Post Carmel, Calif.
More Good Neighbors
Sirs:
It may interest you to know that our Good Neighbors include not only the white populations of the southern republics, but also the Indians.
On the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Andes where my wife and I are making anthropological studies of the Aymara Indians, we had occasion to attend one of their ceremonies which was designed to placate an important spirit. In deference to our presence, the Indian medicine men made additional offerings to this deity "so that no harm will befall the United States, and so that she may triumph over her enemies."
Even though the Indians don't know where the U.S. is, I suppose that it does not do any harm to have a few additional supernaturals on our side.
HARRY TSCHOPIK JR. Puno, Peru
A Statesman Explains
> TIME, June 1, published a brief story about a letter from a New Jersey woman to Senator W. Warren Barbour, upbraiding him for obtaining an X card for unlimited gasoline, to which the Senator replied by wire: APPRECIATE THOUGHTS GAS RATIONING. SOLUTION DUE SHORTLY TRANSPORTATION PIPE LINES. The Senator followed up his wire with a letter of explanation . . . part of which follows.--ED.
Dear Mrs. ------:
. . . You received a telegram from me relative to the gasoline-rationing question rather than a direct reply to the thoughts contained in your letter.
This certainly was not done deliberately as at that particular time we received between 500 and 600 letters which spoke about a possible solution to the gasoline rationing in the Eastern States, and undoubtedly your letter, through an error of one of the clerks in the office, was placed in that file. It would have been physically impossible for me to answer every one of those letters personally, and as they were all on the same subject, naturally I wired what I felt was taking place here in Washington to relieve the gasoline situation.
Very frankly, I received an X gasoline-rationing card from my local rationing board in New Jersey where I had filed my application for the card. In applying for this card it was necessary for me to keep in mind that I represented four and one half million constituents in New Jersey. If my car is used at all, it is used approximately 95% of the time in behalf of my constituents in trying to be of service to them. . . .
I have an X card and I am not ashamed of having asked for one and I do believe, and I say this humbly, that by far and large the people of New Jersey have sufficient confidence in me to know that I am not going to abuse a privilege which I obtained only for one purpose, and that was to be able to continue my services to them at this time of grave emergency.
W. WARREN BARBOUR U.S. Senate Washington, D.C.
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