Paper Warriors
Sirs:
On our fighting fronts the going has been tough, the course uncertain. In 1943, we are warned, the going will be tougher, the course more uncertain. I suggest that the bar-bound Greatbrains, the fireside Hotspurs let their pencils and diaphragms rest, consider this:
"Battles (as soldiers know, and newspaper editors do not) are usually fought, not as they ought to be fought, but as they can be fought; and while the literary man is laying down the law at his desk as to how many troops should be moved here, and what rivers should be crossed there, and where the cavalry should have been brought up, and when the flank should have been turned, the wretched man who has to do the work finds the matter settled for him by pestilence, want of shoes, empty stomachs, bad roads, heavy rains, hot suns, and a thousand other stern warriors who never show on paper."
Charles Kingsley wrote this in Westward Ho! His comments seem to be as much to the point now as in 1855.
DON BLANCHARD
Veterans Hospital
Rutland, Mass.
Dali and Obscenity
Sirs:
The article concerning one surrealist Dali, of your Dec. 28 issue, has spoiled the entire volume. . . . My first impulse was to rip the offending drivel from your pages.
Instead, I opened the barracks windows to let out the stench that permeated the temporary home of our aviation cadets. After watching plane after plane take off on training maneuvers I somehow felt wholesome again.
Yours--for more down-to-the-earth realism, and less lace-pantied surrealism.
2ND LIEUT. HERB RATHLEY
Ellington Field, Tex.
Sirs:
The article on Salvador Dali has aroused my ire, and how!
Imagine wasting over a full page on such arrant trash! Who in tarnation cares whether Senor Dali has a secret life or whether he has any life at all? ...
How do you suppose a man feels, after a tough day of training, when he finally gets a chance to lie down and rest ... to read an article about a dopey parasite, living in the lap of luxury, contributing nothing whatever to the betterment of mankind? . . .
CORPORAL *
Fort Knox, Ky.
Sirs: Too bad Dali's book comes out at a time when we are sick of waste, useless living, and grovelers for notoriety.
If the he-men in our Army wouldn't laugh their heads off, I would like to suggest that Dali be commissioned to run up and down between the tent-rows in Africa-- to scare away the scorpions and snakes, or bite the lizards and kangaroo rats.
Maybe someone should tell him that in America most of us like our men rugged.
MRS. PAULINE WHITE
Columbus, Ohio
Sirs:
I APPRECIATE GREATLY THAT NOT ONCE WAS THE WORD OBSCENE MENTIONED IN YOUR ARTICLE. EPITHET TOO EASILY USED WHICH ASSAILED UNANIMOUSLY THE APPEARANCE OF "INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS" BY FREUD, PSYCHOLOGIC DOCUMENT WHICH IS AND ALWAYS WILL REMAIN IN SPITE OF ALL THE MOST IMPORTANT AND SENSATIONAL OF OUR EPOCH.
SALVADOR DALI
Carmel, Calif.
The Power of an Idea
Sirs:
In making the first citizen of Russia Man of the Year, TIME pays a rightful tribute to the mighty leader of a mighty people. . . . Never was seen a more inspiring example of a people infused with the power of an idea. The power of this idea is the one thing that the master mind of the master race did not reckon with; and it is the one thing that can lick him.
But Russia has one ally to whom this idea is by no means a stranger. Like the U.S.S.R., she owes her birth in freedom to a revolution rooted in an incorrigible belief in the brotherhood of man; like her, she was born into a hostile world which watched her unfolding experiment with alternating contempt and fear. To the extent that this nation is true to herself, she will understand Russia.
MARGARET LEE SOUTHARD
Hingham, Mass.
> But the American and Russian Revolutions were not fought for the same idea.--ED.
The Sadly Abused G.O.P.
Sirs:
Your Jan. 4 issue carries quite a complete discussion on Wendell Willkie. ... Do you think the time will ever come when the Republican Party will give their sadly abused adherents the man they want? We know that it was public demand that forced them to nominate him last time, and that he gave the best political personality of our time a run for his money. Unfortunately, from a political viewpoint, he is an honest man. But isn't it possible, that even an honest man might be elected by an enlightened public?
Dewey and Vandenberg, Taft and Bricker, old-line Republicans . . . Dewey young, but only physically. ... All wanting to go back to '29. Not one of them realizing what even the most stupid man in the street knows: that these are new times, enlightened times, progressive times. Not one of them with even a visible shred of social consciousness.
If you will examine the record, you will see that Willkie is no blind follower of Roosevelt. ... It would be more fitting to say, on foreign issues, that Roosevelt tardily followed Willkie.
And, finally, what better recommendation can a man have than that Colonel McCormick, of Chicago and the Tribune, does not like him? . . .
The Republican Party can continue without Willkie, but it is certain that it can't continue to be a force with the reactionary old maids now determining party policy. And I'm a Republican ! I would like to see the party go on.
WILLIAM GAULT
Milwaukee, Wis.
Sirs:
Mr. Wendell Willkie, by repudiating personal and party advantage to be gained at the expense of his country's cause, may have lost control of the Republican machine, but has earned the respect and gratitude of the millions of Americans who put our country above any party.
H. V. KNIGHT
Starke, Fla.
"God Will Avenge"
Sirs:
The article "Jewish Army: Pro & Con" in the issue of Dec. 28 is a very touchy subject.
I, as an American-born Jew, feel that the present time ... is not the proper one to form a Jewish Army. . . .
In order to achieve anything as a unit, we must have a coordinated army (air, tank, infantry, etc.). This formation would take at least twelve months to form into a battle unit. At that time we would have to transport them to the field of action before the music would start. ...
Let us as Jews forget the whole affair, and get behind the individual governments that we are now serving as true citizens. We have now approximately 8% of our population in the service in these United States, and every single one of us is ready to go the limit as good Americans and spill our blood for those ideals that we above all other people cherish most.
This is my country. I am part of the melting pot. I was born here, and I want to die here, and every drop of my blood will be spilt to protect those I cherish on this American soil. I am an American first, last and always, and the American freedom shall be ours forever.
God alone will avenge our Jewish people, and history will write the curse that will befall our persecutors.
HARRY SHRIBER
Pittsburgh
Sirs:
TIME has a fair and a friendly account of the Committee for a Jewish Army and its many distinguished Christian adherents. Next, however, it characterizes the so-called "opposition" to Zionism and the Army within Jewry. Is TIME so innocent--innocence is hardly its "note"--so simpleheartedly unaware of the quality of men and events as to use the adjectives "potent" and "sturdy" in this connection without its tongue in its cheek? Does TIME really not know that Rabbi Wolsey and his fellows represent a negligible minority within our honorably and stanchly Zionist Reform rabbinate? Is TIME so guileless that it does not recognize the intellectual quality of Rabbi Goldenson's words: "Zionists and the pleaders for a Jewish Army indirectly play into the hands of the anti-Semites?" Is TIME unaware of the century and a quarter of Jewish history during which Western Jewry did everything not to play into the hands of the anti-Semites, and of the supremely tragic and shameful results of that policy ? There are always appeasers, the servants and the fools of perished fallacies. Let TIME not stamp the Jewish people of today with the cowardice and treachery born of fear of a few impotent and feeble men. The act of expiation and redemption which Christendom owes Israel is Palestine, the whole of Palestine, and an army to defend it and a place at the peace table as a government-in-exile.
LUDWIG LEWISOHN
Tucson, Ariz.
Challenge
Sirs:
I think the article "Business in 1942" in the Dec. 28 issue of TIME is the clearest exposition of business principles I have ever read. It is a direct challenge to the statesmanship of American business men.
E. E. WILSON President
United Aircraft Corp.
East Hartford, Conn.
MOT's Marines
Sirs:
I've just seen the MARCH OF TIME picture, We are the Marines, at the Globe Theater. My first reaction was to want to get out of the Air Force uniform (proud of it though I am), and try to get into the fighting outfit you've pictured.
Outside of that, the only other thing I can hope for is the not-too-distant date--I hope--when the Marines and I, side by side, will be knocking at Tokyo's golden gates.
This is to let you and the MARCH OF TIME know that not only the reviewers and the Marines, but men in the other branches of service, think your picture superspecial.
MICHAEL FROME
New York City
Stag Door Canteen
Sirs:
. . . There are a number like myself whose potential service has been cut with the lowering of the draft age. My group (now truly the lost generation) I suggest be used as "hosts" to the WAACs and the WAVES.
It was found essential to set up the hostess system. It seems that an almost equal need now exists for the host system. What could my fellows and I do? We could act as safety valves. With people like myself available there would be little likelihood that enlistees would desert to nightclub choruses, etc.
All kidding aside, what is being done to assure a modicum of male association for these girls and women? Most girls' colleges provide some masculine contact. An even more pressing need may exist in our feminine forces.
LOUIS SALBITANO
Utica, N. Y.
> What does Reader Salbitano mean by "all kidding aside?"--ED.
"Rolling In Dough"
Sirs:
Re: Poor Rich Farmers, TIME, Dec. 21.
To farmers your continued assertions that they are "rolling in dough" sounds like insane mockery--much as it would sound to the Greeks" if you stood on the housetops of Athens and kept shouting that they are dying of gluttony.
If so much money is being made from farming, why the specter of food shortage? Labor shortage, eh? Well then, why do not the farmers offer as big wages as the other war industries, as Mr. McNutt suggested? Are they too shortsighted and miserly to protect their own investments?
Why all the flocking away from the farms, and no flocking to them?
If you believe the statistics and charts you so blithely present, why don't you come out and farm and "roll in dough?" You can buy any kind of farming setup you fancy in any locality you may choose for a fraction of what has been invested.
Come on out and bring the bureaucrats that know much money is to be made in farming and fetch a million of the unessential, underpaid Government employes. . . . Aw, shucks! . . .
J. D. OLIVER
McNeal, Ariz.
Sirs:
We are so glad to see the figures put out by the Government (or the Administration) on farmers' incomes.
Now we know that the farmers are making money and that we are going to get lots of butter, milk and beef as soon as the news gets to the farmers.
Where I have my farm the berry growers have quit on account of price ceiling on jams and syrups--which would not pay wages for next year.
On my farm I got a little more for nuts--about 2-c- a pound, but I paid 4-c- instead of 2 for picking, and twice as much for cultivation. . . .
People are selling cows. Hay is high, wages way up, repairs hard to get or impossible. Even nails are out in country towns, or were when I tried two towns to buy a pound.
It's just too bad, you know, that farmers cannot pay wages with those statistics you published. We sure would be on our way.
CARROLL D. BUSH
Allyn, Wash.
Name withheld by request.
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