(This letter, written Aug. 14 by an American doctor, came a long way to a friend in the U.S. and was passed on to TIME. The doctor, H--, is doing medical work with Chinese troops in India.--ED.)
Below the Green Ceiling
Dear D--:
The unit to which we are temporarily attached is working exclusively for the Chinese soldiers still coming out of Burma. At the moment I am with a small advanced party which has moved up into the hills. We are in a hillmen's village ... in the middle of a vast tropical jungle. We're staying in native huts in a little artificial clearing and when it is really clear we look across enormous distances to the glitter of snowcapped mountains far away to the N.E. The jungle is fantastic. . . . Here I have seen the fiercest struggle by the plants in their search for sun and air. We crawl along tiny footpaths far below the dark green ceiling of the treetops which almost shuts out the light. Sometimes this ceiling is almost complete and then perhaps a small break in it lets in enough light from the dark mist above to cast a faint clear shadow just as is thrown by pale moonlight.
Nature seems greedy and parts reluctantly with even the narrowest strip of pathway. One realizes that if this path were disused for even a few days it, and the scenes of stark horror which give it its present fearful fascination, would immediately be swallowed under the flood of green. Animal life is relatively inconspicuous. On a three-day trek further into the hills we saw gibbons, a glorious sight as they swing silently and majestically through the treetops. The only other mammals we saw were bats and several sorts of squirrel. Then there were snakes, lizards, scorpions, land crabs, enormous spiders. We saw practically no birds, but we did see gorgeous black and orange hornbills. They emit a deep croak and in flight the flapping of their wings is very loud. In a world where flowers are conspicuously few the most wonderful colors and combinations of colors are supplied by the most brilliant butterflies I have ever seen. They have unpleasant tastes. Once we came upon the remains of a Chinese soldier. There were no flowers by this dead hero, but nature had decked his body with bright butterflies. . . .
Here we have been privileged to see and to offer a little assistance to [the Chinese] engaged in the last act of a great drama. They have been walking for months through the mountains and overcoming every obstacle that a cruel tropical forest can devise for them, and many of them have come through unbeaten, smiling and carrying enormous loads.
We crossed a high ridge climbing an almost impossibly steep path covered with a thick layer of soft wet mud. The forest was soaking wet and the dripping mist in the treetops cast a sepulchral gloom over everything. Here we met a man, emaciated, filthy, saturated to the skin, staggering blindly forward, murmuring the word "Indoo," India, the goal to which he had been pressing literally for months. This Chinese soldier was alone, a thousand miles from home, and dying on his feet. Yet he was still going. The next man we came to was a sturdy young man, about 20, carrying two great loads at the ends of a pole. Each was more than I would choose to carry on a good road. He was nearing the top of a steep slope when we met him. I carried his load for the last lap of the climb and was glad when the ordeal was over. His luggage consisted of implements of war and the culinary art and my companion remarked that he seemed to "have everything except the kitchen stove.' He thanked me courteously, bowed stiffly from the waist and trudged down the awful mud slopes toward India.
Near the top of that hill we found a little hovel roofed by dripping banana leaves. Into this squalid hole two Chinese had crawled to die. One had already done so. I filled the dying man's rusty tin with water from a stream. He thanked me and fumbling feebly in his clothes offered me a battered cigaret. I did not accept it.
Some of the camps were absolute nightmares with living and decomposing bodies together in a gloomy and dripping atmosphere which would have been depressing by itself. We carried surgical dressings and we did what we could by binding up the appalling ulcers which most of these men have acquired as a result of leech bites, insect bites and so on. . . .
Here in the jungle we have a ward of patients who are too sick to go on and we run an outpatient department, where we have had nearly 100 cases in one day. I have counted over 40 large ulcers, as big as a shilling, on each of the legs of one man. The ulcers are deep and painful, penetrating to the muscles, and sometimes destroying 50% of the skin of calf and shin.
On a three-day trek into the regions beyond I personally got more than 100 leech bites--I counted them carefully--in spite of heavy army boots and gaiters, and in spite of constantly picking the vile creatures off my legs, arms and neck! One night we spent in a little shack which was so dirty and wet and crowded that we hardly slept at all. The sandflies were absolutely appalling. The next night we came rather unexpectedly to a clean, well-ordered Chinese camp. Here was a Chinese colonel, an interpreter who spoke Chinese, English, Urdu, Hindu, Bengali, Nepali and Assamese! and four Chinese medical officers. They had nearly 50 patients. They seemed delighted to see us and for vague promises of assistance in the future they were embarrassingly grateful. They showered the most lavish hospitality on us and produced something very like a slap-up Chinese feast out of army rations dropped from the air and from the produce of the savage hillmen's gardens. They are wonderful people, the Chinese. I take off my hat to them every time. Now I'm down with malaria and am having a few days' rest. When this work's over I'm looking forward to seeing you and China again.
H--
Advanced Base, India
Reward
Sirs:
Do you not think the time to be quite opportune when a movement should be started looking towards an award of at least a million dollars in cash to anyone or any unit or group of our Expeditionary Force who will capture either Mr. Hitler or Mr. Hirohito?
I think this would be splendid and the least that we Americans could do to offer such an award and I should like to head the list.
I will either head a list of a million Americans who would contribute one dollar each, or I would head a list of 10,000 who would give $100 each, or I would head a list of 1,000 who would give $1,000 each, or I would head a list of 100,000 people who would give $10,000 each. . . .
In fact, let's make it a million dollars for each and we might throw in an additional $500,000 for Mr. Mussolini. I am sure this could be raised too, without much trouble
R. F. WILLIS Penn's Grove, N.J.
> No TIME editor would contribute a red centesimo ($.0005) for the capture of Mussolini.--ED.
A Time For Greatness
Sirs:
In your excellent review of Herbert Agar's book [TIME, Nov. 9] you say: A Time for Greatness suffers from the shortcomings of a sermon. Now just whataells wrong with a sermon ?
(REV.) FRED LUCHS Community Presbyterian Church Athens, Ohio
> One of the shortcomings of a sermon is that it generally undertakes to tell people what someone else thinks they ought to do.--ED.
Money For Nothing
Sirs:
In your issue of Nov. 9 you aim a number of shafts at the Treasury which are well deserved. It is correct, and it is important to realize, that borrowing from the banks is inflationary, that if we are to avoid inflation or serious trouble with price control we must obtain the funds for financing the war either from the proceeds of taxation or from the sale of bonds to income receivers who reduce their consumption to the extent of their bond purchases. . . .
You object that borrowing from the Reserve banks would be nearly equivalent to "outright greenback printing," and that both of these procedures would be very much worse than borrowing from the member banks. With this point of view I emphatically disagree. So far as inflation during the war is concerned, I can see no significant differences among these three possibilities of inflationary financing, but I can see a great deal of difference in their probable post-war effects.
If we borrow from the member banks, and if the Board of Governors progressively reduces the required reserve ratios in order that the banks may be able to make the necessary bond purchases, we shall face two difficulties after peace has returned. In the first place, the banks will have immense holdings of Government bonds, and the price of these bonds is likely to fall when the Treasury abandons its mistaken view that interest rates should be held down for Government borrowing; that is, as soon as the Treasury no longer finds it necessary to borrow. We shall then be confronted with the problem of preventing wholesale failures among the banks. . . .
The second, and more important, difficulty is that of causing fluctuations in the quantity of demand deposits to be even more violent than in the past. The banks create deposits when they make loans or buy bonds; but equally or more important, they destroy deposits when they contract loans or sell bonds. We all know the disastrous effects, on employment and output, of a contraction of the money supply.
Sales of bonds directly to the Reserve banks would increase the reserves of the member banks, and thus conditions would be created in which it would be possible to raise, rather than lower, required reserve ratios. If this procedure were followed, therefore, we would find ourselves in a much stronger position to avoid trouble after the close of the war. The member banks would not have so large a volume of Government bonds which would cause them trouble if and when bond prices began to decline; and their reserve ratios would be higher, thus reducing greatly the amplitude of fluctuations in their holdings of loans and bonds, and likewise, therefore, reducing the amplitude of fluctuations in the circulating medium in the form of demand deposits.
In addition to the above advantages bonds sold to the Reserve banks might legitimately carry a low, or even a zero, rate of interest. This undoubtedly would please the Secretary, and perhaps make him more willing greatly to increase the rate paid on bonds sold to the general public. . . . One of the persistent shortcomings of all Secretaries of the Treasury seems to be their preoccupation with low interest rates on Government borrowing, quite regardless of the monetary consequences of such a policy.
I am not, of course, defending bond sales to the Reserve banks as a really desirable means of financing the war. The war should be financed by means of taxation and bond sales to the public and nonbanking institutions. My contention is merely that bond sales to the Reserve banks is preferable, and much preferable, to bond sales to the member banks; and particularly so if the required reserve ratios of the banks were raised as the purchases by the Reserve banks increased to the amount of the member bank reserves.
LLOYD W. MINTS Associate Professor of Economics University of Chicago Chicago
New Guinea History
Sirs:
On the origin of the name of Owen Stanley Range, New Guinea:
The Owen Stanley for whom the Pacific's wildest mountains are named was a captain of the Royal Navy who, in H.M.S. Rattlesnake, a frigate, surveyed Torres Straits, the channel between the Great Barrier Reef and the Australian mainland and the southeast coasts of New Guinea and the Louisiades.
The New Guinea surveys appear to have been completed in 1849. Captain Stanley died the next year and probably at that time his name was first attached to the mountains.
Owen Stanley . . . produced the first (and probably only) theatrical performance ever seen in Northwestern Australia. This was a play acted by naval personnel for the entertainment of the ship's company of the Beagle which called at Port Essington in 1839. Aboard the Beagle was Charles Darwin who gave his name to another United Nations outpost.
The Owen Stanleys have been called at various times and at different parts of the main range, the Hornby Range, the Stirling Range, the Albert Victor Range, the Sir Arthur Gordon Range, and the Star Mountains. None of the names appear to do justice to these impressive formations but it is nevertheless pleasant to note that they are not likely to be subject to revised nomenclature by the poetic Japanese.
DAVID W. BAILEY Director Australian News and Information Bureau New York City
Man Overboard
Sirs:
Rarely does your movie critic go overboard about a movie star. But in the case of Rita Hayworth--wow! It has sort of puzzled me. . . . Miss Hayworth is surely anything but beautiful. She has a mouth nearly as big as that of Martha Raye and legs almost as long as those of Charlotte Greenwood. She has never displayed any great dancing ability and comes far from being the graceful and adept dancing partner which Fred Astaire had in Ginger Rogers. And nobody--not even your movie critic--would accuse Miss Hayworth of being able to act. . . .
Why does Miss Hayworth rate all this attention from your movie critic? . . .
E. MAXWELL BENTON Denver
> Why does she rate so much attention from Reader Benton?--ED.
Tax Beating?
Sirs:
. . . Almost every day we read breast-thumping speeches about how the "morale" (whatever that is) of the worker must be protected at all costs by raises in pay, improved working conditions and double time on Sunday so that they can take Monday off for free.
Labor may need this encouragement to save their country and if so it should be done, but how about the morale of business executives? They were already taking the worst tax-beating and character-smearing in history before the $25,000 limit was put on. . . .
As a $35-a-week secretary, salary limitation couldn't make much difference to me, but I have seen these so-called economic parasites --big businessmen--day after day, putting in twelve hours of mental strain that would have the average factory worker or labor leader cutting out paper dolls in the insane asylum within a week.
How many men can run a 100 yards in ten seconds? How many men can bat over 300? How many men can make over $67,200? God seems to have a habit of keeping the number pretty small, but the ones that can do these things make track meets, baseball and business efficiency possible. . .
CLAIRE BACK New York City
The Indestructible Mr. Fish
Sirs:
Many patriotic Americans are mystified at the re-election of Hamilton Fish. . . .
What induced the voters to endorse him? Are they pro-Nazi or unpatriotic or Roosevelt-haters or hidebound partisans or isolationists or ignorant of his past activities?
K. E. WISE Los Angeles
> Probable explanation: many a voter in New York's 26th District did not vote so much for the indescribable, indestructible Mr. Fish as against their neighbor, F. D. Roosevelt.--ED.
Post-Mortem
Sirs:
Vice President Wallace said the reason for Republican gains in the election this week is that an abnormally large proportion of voters were people who are well to do, hence are more likely to be Republicans. This coming from a man of intelligence is hardly believable. Intelligent Democrats might consider that this was a protest vote, which could be corrected before 1944.
GLADYS J. BEER Mansfield, Ohio
Sirs:
Of all the reasons given for the Republican victories in last Tuesday's election, that one of Vice President Wallace's is the silliest, and is about what would be expected of a politician of his caliber. . . .
The truth is in plain old Texas language that the American people finally, and definitely, have their bellies full of this New Deal Communist conglomeration and all their whang-brained fanatical fancies.
The American people, although belatedly, have determined to do some straight thinking, straight talking and straight acting. . . .
H. T. MCCANN Houston
Sirs:
In all the rejoicing over the American invasion of North Africa, one important point may be overlooked. If the invasion had been undertaken a week earlier, it would radically have altered the course of the American elections (for there can be little doubt that the large Republican vote was primarily a protest against sluggish prosecution of the war).
All honor, then, to President Roosevelt for refusing to play politics with victory!
K. G. STERNE Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
> TIME readers generally gave: to Mr. Wallace, lumps; to Mr. Roosevelt, laurels. -- ED.
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