The Business of Killing
Sirs:
Lieut. General McNair's words*(TIME, Nov. 23) certainly hit the nail on the head. . . . The best way to attain the kind of world we are fighting for is to take up killing as a national pastime rather than just a nasty but necessary business.
In the biological world we find the first necessity is to develop an unalterable hate for guinea pigs, rabbits, and other animals which it is our business to kill.
PHILIP B. LORENZ Biology Dept. Princeton, NJ.
Sirs:
In regard to the speech of Lieut. General Lesley J. McNair . . . every Christian man and woman in our country ought to recognize that a man who holds such bloodthirsty and unchristian ideas is not morally fit to be a leader of American soldiers. We ought all, as I have, write to President Roosevelt requesting his immediate removal. . . .
ARLAN BAILLIE Minister
Mount Vernon Church Boston
British Candor
Sirs:
I guess I'm still an Anglophile but, like millions of others, my conscience cries out at the British lack of candor.
Will someone tell me just what Churchill means? In the Atlantic Charter he said ". . . they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them."
Last week he told Parliament, "We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."
Well, where does this leave India ?
MAC F. CAHAL Chicago
> Reader Cahal does not note the so-called "Churchill clause" of the Atlantic Charter, the phrase "with due respect for their existing obligations," which substantially modifies "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live. . . ." Mr. Churchill evidently considers India "an existing obligation."--ED.
Hollywood Notes
Sirs:
... It is, I suppose, your privilege to state that "wits" report the "Gentleman" was to be dropped from the title of the picture Gentleman Jim but you have done so at your own risk and prejudice. It is definitely not your privilege to say that I quit work at my studio. Such a statement reflects most seriously on my professional integrity and has done me great harm in the motion-picture industry and elsewhere. Nor, despite whatever pipe dream gave you the notion, was any plumber blown through my cellar door. Your most vicious slur was that "even escape into the anonymity of the Army is impossible--Flynn has 'athlete's heart.'''. . . My record for "escaping" is in the Army files....
ERROL FLYNN Hollywood
>Let Reader Flynn, who has had plenty of troubles, not read sneers into TIME'S account of them. TIME'S story did not reflect on his professional integrity; it intended to reflect sympathetically on the perils of an actor's life, from which even escape into anonymity of the Army is impossible. (TIME still understands that he is classed 4-F.) Nor did TIME invent the story of a plumber being blown through his cellar door, which came from press dispatches.--ED.
Plantation Plaint
Sirs:
Why is somebody always butting into somebody else's business?
I refer to ... Senator Alben Barkley and . . . Senator Pepper and their Communistic New York City fellow travelers' efforts to unconstitutionally set up voting requirements for eight of our States. . . .
The privilege of suffrage carries with it responsibilities, and no one interested enough to vote minds registering or minds paying a poll tax of $1 per year for that privilege.
In point of fact, if the poll tax was higher, we would get better government, less demagoguery, and not so many moronic buffoons in the Congress. . . .
Real American citizens endorse and encourage that courageous band of Senators in their filibuster fight to save our Republican form of Government, and bitterly resent such traitors to Democracy as Senators Barkley, Pepper, and their Communistic colleagues. They are the real impeders.
NELSON TRIMBLE LEVINGS Levingshire Plantation Moorhead, Miss.
>To vote in Mississippi, a citizen must have paid his poll taxes for two years preceding the election. The poll tax is a $2 flat rate, but since municipal poll taxes may be added to the basic rate, the maximum rate is $6. Mississippi's 1940 population: 2,183,796 persons. In 1940 only 175,824 Mississippians voted. Senator Theodore ("The Man") Bilbo's total vote in 1940: 143,341. He was elected by about one-fifteenth of the State's population, presumably including Reader Levings.--ED.
The Hopes of France
Sirs:
TIME'S account [Nov. 16] of Secretary Hull's fully justified policy with Vichy leads us to hope:
1) That Admiral Darlan will be used by the State Department temporarily and only because of his possible influence on the older generals, admirals and officers. . . .
2) That the State Department will not shelve General de Gaulle, nor forget that he alone was the nucleus of French resistance the organizer of the Fighting French Army and the man who turned over to the Allied nations the major part of the French colonial empire.
3) That our Washington officials are informed that over 95% of the entire French population are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to help the final push following the opening of the second front ...
4) That all these element hate and despise Darlan . . . and will never accept to serve under him. . . .
5) That America cannot ignore French sentiments, nor disregard the recent past of a man whose every action and word has aimed to defeat the cause of the United Nations.
The above remarks are those of a man who returned three months ago from France via Morocco, after a close and firsthand analysis of events and people in Vichyfrance since the armistice.
C. P. MERRY San Francisco
First Spanner
Sirs: You say (TIME, Nov. 16) that General Doolittle "was first to span the continent in a single day." Is that statement correct? ... I rely on memory alone; but it has been my understanding that about 20 years ago the feat credited to General Doolittle was accomplished by Earl Maughan. . . . Let credit be awarded to the one who earned it.
HENRY FARMER Springfield, Mass.
TIME correctly awarded credit: Lieut. (now Major General) Doolittle flew across the U.S. from Jacksonville, Fla. to San Diego, Calif., with one stop to refuel at Kelly Field, Tex., in 21 hours, 19 minutes, on Sept. 5, 1922. Lieut. (now Colonel) Russell Lowell Maughan made his dawn-to-dusk flight in New York to San Francisco in 21 hours, 48 1/2 minutes on June 23, 1924. --ED.
The Breed of Generals
Sirs:
In TIME, Nov. 23, p. 32, col. 3, you print, " . . their precious rubber boat capsized. Cried one: 'Damn the generals, save the boat.' "
In Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Vol. 2, p. 38, one may read: "A young brigadier with a small cavalry troop strayed into Confederate lines in Virginia and was captured. Receiving the report, Lincoln said he was sorry to lose the horses. "I can make a better brigadier any day, but those horses cost the government $125 a head."
Apparently the breed of general officer has been improved in the intervening years. . . .
WILLIAM ROY BEGG Yonkers, N.Y.
Man of the Year
Sirs: For Man of the Year--Draja Mihailovich, leader of the Yugoslav Chetniks!. . .
Politically and spiritually, his contribution to civilization in 1942 has been priceless.
In that dark corner of the Balkans, surrounded by vulture-like Hungary; by corrupt and degenerate Rumania; by venal Bulgaria and the contemptible Italian Blackshirts, he has kept liberty's torch flaring in the murderous Nazi night like a beacon on the Adriatic.
History has already marked him for all time among the great fighters for liberty. Wallace and Bruce from the Scottish moors; Alfred of England; Garibaldi, Bolivar, Kosciuszko, Washington (just try to find one German among them from the days of the Teutoburg barbarians to the Burning of the Books!)--all the great Liberators salute him. Our own "Swamp Fox" Marion of the Revolution would have delighted in this peerless guerrilla. Among the great mountain fighters for human dignity and freedom he has held the pass as surely as Leonidas did at Thermopylae. . . .
But if by such a recognition you run any chance whatsoever of anglicizing and softening him, withhold the award! The Chetnik's knife must remain keen and the Chetnik's arm like steel, when the day of reckoning comes with the unspeakable Nazi. . . .
DAVID S. LEVY Salt Lake City
Sirs:
... I urge the candidacy of Draja Mihailovich, because:
1) No other man has accomplished as much in 1942 for the Allied cause or for any one nation, as an individual.
2) His army is his own creation.
3) His army's exploits are his own.
4) He took to the field minus any promises from any Allied nation.
5) He has pinned down a sizable Axis force.
6) He is an effective symbol of the Allied cause.
7) He sets an example for guerrillas in other conquered countries--when opportunity permits them to operate.
8) His success develops double importance with our own forces now gathering to strike through the Balkans. (His troops one day will become an arm of an Allied nutcracker.)
G. S. YORKE Los Angeles
Sirs:
... A man, who, in my humble opinion, will go down in the annals of historic achievement as one of the most remarkable characters, and perhaps one of the greatest patriots of Allied Nations embroiled in World War II. I refer to General Draja Mihailovich, Minister of War to the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile. . . . This little man with an iron will whose unsung praises will one day be heralded to a people victoriously released from the yoke of our common enemy. . . .
E. H. KEATE Indianapolis
Sirs:
Greatness in a man is too often measured by the amount of publicity he received. Many a man has had to wait until the hand of death opened the eyes of the world to the greatness of him who had passed. ...
I would like to present for your consideration as TIME'S Man of the Year . . . the one-man Blitzkrieg of Yugoslavia, General Draja Mihailovich.
Here is a man who doesn't know the definition of the word "defeat." . .
A man, too--mark you--from whom much will be heard during and after the final victorious peace!
I salute the glorious Chetniks!--and give you their supreme commander, Generalissimo Draja Mihailovich!
ALBERT E. FOWLER Newburyport, Mass.
Sirs:
I offer the one man who really stands out in this warring world: General Draja Mihailovich, who in his own way is raising more hell with Hitler than all the rest of us put together. . . .
Not only as a fighting man, but as a symbol of smoldering, starving Europe, General Mihailovich alone deserves the title.
TED SMILEY
Jacksonville
Sirs:
. . . Draja Mihailovich as the Man of the Year. . . . Every citizen of freedom-loving countries throughout the world should literally take off their hats to him. .
BERNIE HEAD
Tampa
Sirs:
. . . General Draja Mihailovich . . . whose feats fire the imagination as did Lawrence of Arabia in World War I.
HARRY REMINGTON
Chicago
Sirs:
. . . Draja Mihailovich. . .
WALLY ALLEN
Pittsburgh
Sirs:
One vote for Draja Mihailovich. . . .
NED ALVORD Rock Island, Ill.
Sirs:
. . . General Draja Mihailovich. . . .
SPENCE PIERCE Atlanta
Sirs:
. . . Draja Mihailovich. . . .
Z. M. HARRIS
New York City
Sirs:
May I request you select Westbrook Pegler as your Man of the Year. . . . His clear thinking and his old-fashioned Americanism and patriotism make him the greatest force for good in the country today.
KENNETH T. HOWE Boston
Sirs:
. . . For his colossal courage, I nominate Westbrook Pegler. . . .
RAY W. IRVIN Gates Mills, Ohio
Sirs:
. . . Consider Westbrook Pegler. . . .
KENNETH W. AKERS Cleveland
Sirs:
STALIN. .
ERNEST DUDLEY CHASE Boston Sirs:
. . . Joseph Stalin of Russia. . . .
JAMES J. BAHR Wilmington, N.C.
Sirs:
A Russian soldier.
F. J. CRUMLEY
Amarillo, Tex.
Sirs:
I wish to nominate for Man of the Year the Russian people. . . .
MARGARET W. NASH Wilmington, N.C. .
Sirs:
Is any one more worthy . . . than Ivan Ivanovich ?
MRS. ARTHUR R. BAER Chicago
Sirs:
Re TIME'S Man of the Year--by all odds Marshal Timoshenko. STAFF SERGEANT MELVIN SCHIFTER New Orleans
Sirs:
... I renominate Wendell Willkie, who, by free speech ("I say what I damn please"), has catapulted the complacent United Nations out of their deep, defensive sleep and started offensives throughout the world. .
HAROLD BAXTER
Los Angeles
Sirs:
My nomination for Man of the Year: The U.S. fighting men of World War II.
BARRY WOOD New York City > Nominations are open. --ED.
*Said General McNair: "We must hate with every fiber . . . We must lust for battle; our object in life must be to kill; we must scheme and plan night and day to kill. There need be no pangs of conscience, for our enemles have lighted the way to faster, surer, crueler killing . . . "
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.