Spanish Lesson
Sirs:
The other day in Mexico City, I stopped on Avenida Insurgentes (pronounced,my Spanish phrase book says, "Ah-ve-nee-da In-soor-hen-tess") to enquire of a policeman how to proceed to Avenida Hidalgo (pronounced, according to the book, "Ee-dahl-go"). A Mexican gentleman with glasses and a professorial black coat was boarding a streetcar near me, and as he stepped up on to the car, he dropped a folded paper. I opened the paper, thinking it might bear some forwarding address. My ears pricked as I read the contents of the paper. Remembering that in Mexico, the letter "j" is pronounced "h," and that "i" is pronounced as a long "e," and that many words we would begin with "s" are in Spanish begun with "es," the professor's paper becomes understandable and genial:
Traduccion figurada de la letra del Himno Americano:
STAR SPANGLED BANNER Oh sai ken yu sai bai di dons er li lait, Juat so proud li ui jeld at di tuai lais
last glimming, Jus estraips end brait estars tru da
per il us fait, Or di ram parts ui uach uer so ga lant
li strim ming--And di ra quets red gler, bams berst
ting in er,
Gev pruf tru da nait dat aour flag uas estil der.
Coro. Oh sai dos dat estar espang gald ba ner
yat ueif
Or da land of di fri end di jom of di breiv.
BELLA FLIGELMAN Helena, Mont.
The Pride of South Dakota
Sirs:
South Dakota really "made" your Feb. 8 issue, with pictures of Brigadier General La Verne Saunders of Aberdeen and Captain Joe Foss of Sioux Falls. However, no one except South Dakotans would know it because the words "South Dakota" were missing, as usual. . . .
We in South Dakota are pretty proud of the men who, as boys, learned the meaning of freedom from the spaciousness of their own state--these sons of the prairie who played Indian, swam in the "cricks," tramped the fields, and hunted for ducks and pheasants as soon as they were strong enough to hold a gun. . . .
General Saunders and Captain Foss are far from alone. Another squadron leader named John C. Waldron made history at Midway. Remember? And a young lieut. commander, John H. Morrill, took his men from the Philippines to Australia in a PT boat. And the McNickle twins are flying bombers over Europe. And there's "Duke" Hedman, the Flying Tiger who was personally decorated by Madame Chiang Kai-shek--and Warren Evans, chosen the typical American Ranger--and Don Smith who was decorated after flying with Doolittle over Tokyo. . . . Their deeds are first of all American, I grant you, but they are also Dakotan. . . .
Won't you give us credit for our heroes? KATHLEEN NAGLE Brookings, S.Dak.
Sirs:
. . . Brigadier General La Verne Saunders and Captain Joe Foss ... are graduates of a small State university--the University of South Dakota. . . .
South Dakota has turned out many more of the same. . . .
Read TIME to learn of achievements of Lieut. Colonel Harry G. Armstrong, who received the John Jeffries award for 1941, and the Collier award in 1939 for the outstanding achievement of the year in aviation medicine. . . .
Read FORTUNE'S article on Eugene Vidal famed for his "cooking" process for making plywood more durable than metal for airplane parts. . . .
These men are graduates of the University of South Dakota. . . .
G. RUSSELL BAUER
University of South Dakota Vermillion, S.Dak.
Sirs:
. . . During the "dust bowl" era, South Dakota had so much adverse publicity that some of us developed quite an inferiority complex. To top it all off, the First Lady, in her numerous jaunts about the country omitted us entirely in her itineraries. . . . Then the dust storms subsided and the grass commenced growing again. We began to throw out our chests. Among other things, South Dakota has one of the largest gold-producing mines in the world, some of the best agricultural land in the country and without a doubt the best pheasant and waterfowl hunting anywhere. ... We feel that we can walk shoulder to shoulder with any other state in the Union. . . .
HANS SEEMANN Aberdeen, S.Dak.
Russian Generals
Sirs:
. . . Your story [TIME, Feb. 8] on Russia's "Men of War": one of its stars is Master of the Don, Colonel General Rokossovsky--50 and a major in the Czarist Army. Ralph Parker, the New York Timesman in Moscow . . . reported on Feb. 1 that Rokossovsky is 38. This would make spectacular Konstantin a major at 9 and a Red Army fighter at 12. ...
Take another general -- Tulienev. You describe him as bemoustached, fun-loving, expert on mountain warfare and fond of skiing to the front lines. Can it be that the first two items were imagined by your editors after a look at his photograph (after all, a grinning man might be fun-loving) ? Can it also be that your editors have missed that issue of the Times which reported it's been raining in the Caucasus all through the current campaign, and that the Red troops have been slogging through the mud? Would that not make it difficult for the ski-loving general to ski down the mountains to the front?
Tsk, tsk, to your Russexperts.
SALLY FRANCIS
New York City
> Rokossovsky, 50, was a major for the Czar in World War I. Said he to a correspondent: "I fought the fathers and now I am fighting the sons. You will think I am being sentimental about the good old days, but I honestly think the fathers were better soldiers."
Tulienev, sometimes pictured on skis, is fun-loving. So are most Russians.
The Caucasus battle started much farther south in the mountains, where there was plenty of snow. . . . Tsk, tsk, to suspicious Reader Francis.--ED.
Beyond Rifle Range
Sirs:
As a longtime reader of TIME, may I add a word of thanks to the many you must be receiving these days from soldiers, sailors and marines in the field on foreign service. . . .
TIME has always been important to many of us ... but never before have we found it so essential to a comprehensive and complete picture of a world at war. Without the kind of reporting that TIME gives us, the machine gunner's vision of the world is limited to his sector of fire; the pilot's to his operating radius; and the rifleman's to the extreme limit of his own eyesight. . . .
We know, from firsthand experience that your reporting is amazingly accurate.
Keep up the good work. Let those who criticize your format and style, your human shortcomings and falls from grace, take the word of American servicemen that TIME IS undoubtedly the most sought-after publication in the combat zones.
CAPTAIN DONALD L. JACKSON U.S. M.C.R.
On foreign station
Sirs:
Just received your Nov. 23 issue. . . .
It is more informative to read a three-month-old TIME than to listen to current broadcasts here.
LIEUT. CHARLES
M. FULMER
U.S.M.C.
North Africa
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