For All Americans
Sirs:
For the benefit of other civilians, I forward a message to us all from a letter written by an A.A.F. captain now flying a Liberator in the Central Pacific; he wears the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster:
"I want to tell you what a group of us officers and enlisted men have been talking about tonight.
"Though we have done a good job of killing the enemy, I find no sign of an organized hate in any of our men. . . . Our men come closer to hating those at home who break faith with us at the fronts--the shirkers, the profiteers, those who bicker in Washington over our rights. If the powers that be in America deny us in the service the right to an easy, practical way of voting, they will live to regret it. And to the last man our group js not in accord with What some people in the states are trying to do with some American citizens, namely the Jap citizens. We say, if they step out of the line of faithfulness to our country, punish them severely. But don't touch one of them just because he has Japanese blood. They are American citizens. We are fighting for all American citizens, and when we die for them we don't stop to ask what kind of blood they have. We are fighting for the sacred rights of man; we don't want them toyed with behind our backs."
DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE Santa Barbara, Calif.
Our Mistake
Sirs:
In TIME (March 20) you state that "the New Republic, non-interventionist until a few months before Pearl Harbor, shifted to reflect the views of its owner, Mrs. Leonard K. Elmhirst. U.S.-born, she has become a British citizen. . ."
This statement is not true. The New Republic's action in demanding that the U.S. enter the war was solely the work of its editors. We believed that Hitler intended to conquer the world; that as matters stood ... he had a good chance of succeeding, and that the U.S. ought to get into the conflict before Great Britain was knocked out. . ...We think now that we were absolutely right in our decision.
Numerous other magazines and newspapers came out in favor of entering the war just before or just after we did so. Does TIME believe that in all those cases there was improper pressure to force them to do so ?
Mrs. Leonard Elmhirst is not the owner of the New Republic. Ownership was transferred a number of years ago from the editors to Editorial Publications, Inc., a New York corporation. During the whole history of the magazine no attempt has ever been made by its financial sponsors to influence the editors. When we make mistakes, as we are perfectly capable of doing, they are our own mistakes.
BRUCE BLIVEN
President New Republic New York City
P:TIME, which sometimes makes mistakes too, erred in implying that Mrs. Elmhirst, who established the trust funds which largely meet the paper's deficit, controls the New Republic's editorial policy.--ED.
The Eyes of History Sirs: TIME (March 20) under Cinema, With the Marines at Tarawa: a profound piece of writing. In your review of this film some truly great sentences reveal the hidden iron within so many men fighting on our fronts. As an infantryman, I understand the "quality of loneliness in the midst of action with which no loneliness of peace is comparable." The battle-weary soldier, job done, does look into the eyes of history, generally without knowing it.
(Pvx.) CHARLES W. HILL Fort Meade, Md.
Sad
Sirs:
. . . Studying the last issue (March 20), I found three persons defined by the same adjective:
1) Sad-eyed Ambassador Bowers
2) Sad-eyed Rabbi Silver
3) Sad-eyed Samuel M. Levitas Unfortunately, some TIME readers might get
the impression that the magazine's store of adjectives is about to be exhausted and that, to be thrifty, it now has to use one and the same adjective for numerous persons. ... I would like to suggest that in the future TIME doesn't select adjectives to fit persons, but persons to fit adjectives that happen to be in TIME's possession. . . .
ALFRED POLGAR New York City
"I'll Be Danged!"
Sirs:
My late father was among the first half-dozen Ontario County farmers to engage in commercial (carlot) cabbage growing in Western New York. That was just over 50 years ago. ... I once knew a few pretty tall stories about cabbage growers' achievements. But I'll be danged if I ever heard one to compare with that cabbage yarn from Texas (TIME, March 13). So "Farmer Felix Burns figured he had turned under 5 1/2 million heads of cabbage on the 75 acres he had planted." Well, well! . . . Let's see now: about the closest that most varieties of cabbage can be set (for a good crop) is in rows 3 to 3 1/2 ft. apart; and the plants are usually spaced from 2 to 2 1/2 ft. apart in the row. Call it 7 sq. ft. to the plant. So what do we get? Well, both by arithmetic and memory, it's not far from 6,000 plants per acre set out--which, for 75 acres in New York State, would call for about 450,000 plants.
. . . Must be they've bred some sort of a hydra-headed variety down there that our growers up here don't know. Fact is, I'm mighty glad my father wasn't using such a variety when he sent me out to make the last cultivation of his cabbage crop, back some years ago. It was a long field, and I had the team and cultivator right in the middle of it when a warm rain began to fall. It rained pretty hard, and pretty soon those heads began to swell and crack. In a minute the air was full of cabbage-flak. A few minutes more and those cabbage heads had swelled until we couldn't move: my horses' legs were held as though in a vice. In fact, it took six men with sharp axes to chop us loose. Pappy, pass the coleslaw, won't you, please?
MARVIN T. FORSTER Rochester, N.Y.
--which, arithmetically, is 5,250,000 cabbages for 75 acres. That's Texas. --ED.
For Ten-Year-Olds
Sirs:
Your article concerning the movies for men overseas (TIME, March 6) hit the nail right on the head. The pictures we've had here, for the most part, would suit the taste of a ten-year-old, or would fit in beautifully in some home for the aged.
What we want out here are musicals, preferably in prewar settings, because it gripes us no end to see some dashing young bum in an Army uniform surrounded by beauteous blondes, fighting the battle of "Celluloid."
The first question heard in our quarters after we knock off work is, "What's the movie tonight?"and usually,the reply is: "It stinks." If we don't go to the movies, we just sit around and go "hut-crazy," so we really appreciated TIME giving us a swell plug. . . .
(SK2/c) PAUL E. KING c/o Postmaster San Francisco
Sirs:
TIME's story, "Better Movies Overseas," was encouraging to read. . . . After being without movies for several weeks we tied up at a Pacific island. ... I found myself sitting through pictures that I'd walked out in the middle of five years ago. ... I was convinced that instead of swapping films with other ships, as is the custom, we were bartering with the natives for ones they had produced themselves. . . .
(RDM 2/c) GEORGE PLIMPTON c/o Postmaster San Francisco
Polygamy at Short Creek
Sirs:
The recent fuss made by FBI and local agencies in rounding up the polygamists of Short Creek, Ariz, and sundry other points in these parts seems out of proportion with the evil done by these biologically overproductive ladies and gentlemen.
In general these people lead a hard life at Short Creek. . . . Frequent flights over . . . their arid and unproductive farms leave me with the conviction that any man who keeps even one family from starving under those conditions would not have the energy to be sexually acrobatic.
To the credit of these people it should be said that they are generally sincere even though misguided; they are not offensive; they are generally honest . . . self-respecting and respectable in all but the sex angle of the word. Certainly they are no worse than the numerous unorganized sexually promiscuous persons that are to be found in any cross section of our population.
It seems that those who would heckle these people could Letter apply their energy in smoking out the rats who stroll forth under the cloak of church or civic respectability and copulate freely on a clandestine basis.
M.J. Miles
St. George, Utah
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.