The Lonely Ones
Sirs:
A few of us guys have just finished reading your article (Jan. 22) concerning "The Lonely Ones" [girls who consorted with German prisoners of war in Owosso, Mich.].
First we read about the Japs revolting in their prisons. Why? Next the WACs help German prisoners to escape in Texas. How come? Then some poor Italian prisoner wants to get married. What's this? And now our women spend their lonely nights with German prisoners. Now a $64 question: Just what the hell are you people doing back there?
Are the Germans, Italians and Japs still our enemies, or are they just vacationing in the States ?
(Pfc.) W. A. CAMPBELL
(Signed by 32 other servicemen)
c/o Fleet Postmaster
San Francisco
Sirs:
How about a little head-shaving in Owosso?
(SK 2/c) THEODORE L. HUMINSKI
c/o Fleet Postmaster
San Francisco
Sirs:
One of our biggest wishes is that the girls of Owosso are not a true picture of "the girls we left behind." Of all morale-destroying episodes, that incident is the most devastating we have ever heard.
(RM 2/c) HAROLD P. LA BLANC
(RDM 2/c) WILLIAM M. FERGUSON
(S i/c) ROBERT E. LEWIS ] c/o Fleet Postmaster
San Francisco
Sirs:
My brother, in the Pacific area, [writes]:
"We are making fools of ourselves in the way we handle prisoners of war. I don't believe in browbeating them, but in most places they are getting luxurious treatment. . . . The Germans think it merely an indication of our weakness, and are planning to profit on it in the next war as soon as they are able to fight one. . . ."
This is not the expression of an inexperienced youngster, but of a man, one who is not given ordinarily to vehemence of expression--one who is well educated and balanced in personality--and he is undoubtedly expressing the opinion of his associates as well as his own.
As a young American mother, this kind of thing doesn't leave me with much incentive to raise a family only to have them sent into another war in a few more years. It's serious enough for civilians to be angered and worried by our "prisoner coddling," but when American boys have to tell us about it from the battlefronts, I think it is time we saw a little action. . . .
MRS. ROBERT F. LITTLE
Marcellus, N.Y.
"G.I. Joe's" Origin
Sirs:
There seems to be considerable comment these days for & against the term "G.I. Joe" as applied to our soldiers (TIME, Feb. 5). I would like to advance my claim to what I believe to be the origin of the term.
In June 1942 I was transferred to the newly organized staff of Yank, the Army weekly, and asked to do a cartoon feature similar to my Private Breger then appearing in the Saturday Evening Post. But, said the Yank authorities, the hero must have some other name than "Private Breger." After some thought, I decided on "G.I. Joe," the "G.I." because of its prevalence in Army talk . . . and the "Joe" for the alliterative effect. My cartoon hero's full name was "G.I. Joe Trooper".
In the first issue of Yank, June 17, 1942, the comic strip G.I. Joe made its debut. . . . If anyone can offer documentary evidence of publication of the term "G.I. Joe" before June 17, 1942 I will cheerfully withdraw my claim, and offer such person an inscribed original of G.I. Joe or Private Breger.
DAVE BREGER
Lieutenant, A.S.F.
The Stars & Stripes
New York City
What Is Americanism?
Sirs:
In reviewing Professor Ralph Barton Perry's Puritanism and Democracy (TIME, Jan. 22), you say: "The essential faith of America came into being in the cold, clearheaded, spacious world of Puritan New England."
Can you really believe that? I myself have always believed that Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry and James Monroe (Virginians all) had some small part in establishing "the essential faith of America." And the Jamaica-born bastard Alexander Hamilton of New York, the illiterate pirate Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, the ribald Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky and Illinois, the uncouth Walt Whitman of Brooklyn--did these have no part in the work? . . .
And are you aware that self-government by means of popularly chosen representatives had its beginnings in Virginia, under Governor Yeardley, in 1619, nearly two years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and eleven years before the Puritans arrived?
The essential faith of America? There are a dozen essential faiths. From New England may have come our faith in good morals; but New York gave us our tolerance, Pennsylvania our faith in justice, the South our proud independence, the Middle West our practical realism, the Far West our belief in the impossible. Spice all this with a flavor of cynicism and humanitarianism from the Jews, humor and hotheadedness from the Irish, sex and sophistication from the French and sentimentality and love of comfort from the old-fashioned Germans, and you have a rough outline of essential Americanism. It is a lot bigger than anything that ever happened in poor little New England.
GEORGE GUION WILLIAMS
Rice Institute Houston
P: All thanks to Reader Williams for a spirited contribution to the timeless debate on the nature of the American Faith. But Alexander Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis, not Jamaica; Andrew Jackson was neither illiterate nor a pirate.--ED.
Schmalz
Sirs:
In your Jan. 22 issue . . . you use the word "schmalz" in connection with Enrico Caruso Jr. We are sorry to say we do not understand the expression. . . .
MARY BACH
Buffalo
P: Schmalz, a Yiddish word widely applied on Broadway to a certain type of singing and acting, means literally "rich fat." Get it now?--ED.
Milton Unloved
Sirs:
Your review of my Wife to Mr. Milton (TIME, Nov. 27) has just arrived, with reviews from other leading U.S. literary journals.
I write history disguised as fiction, not fiction disguised as history. My Mr. Milton, allowing for Marie Powell's natural bias against the man who defrauded her mother of her "widow's thirds," is precisely the later renegade Milton--not the earlier orthodox Milton of the Minor Poems--who takes shape as one ploughs through the enormous mass of contemporary evidence provided by his Latin and English works, and by the more scholarly modern studies of his life and times.
I should have rejoiced to make him appear a less disagreeable character, but, paradoxically, a Puritan conscience has prevented me. No British critic has succeeded in proving that I have tampered with any historical fact, or falsified either Milton's literary style or his point of view; and I trust that no American critic will, either. To have represented Milton as spouting beautiful poetry and doing beautiful deeds would have been a lie; throughout his life with Marie Powell he did not write a single memorable poem, or, so far as we know, perform a single generous deed. And nobody can love the Milton of the pamphlets.
Though not claiming to have got everything right, I have historical justification for my guesses as well as my facts: for example, the marriage-night fiasco can be deduced positively from a variety of lesser sources and negatively from the ideal account of Adam and Eve's honeymoon in Paradise Lost.
ROBERT GRAVES
Galmpton-Brixham, England
P: TIME'S editors will continue to read Author Graves's historical deductions with pleasure & profit.--ED.
Snow Static
Sirs:
The electrified snowflakes mentioned in your issue of Jan. 22 and supposedly discovered by Dr. Caldwell would come as no surprise to any airline pilot. The phenomenon of radio static caused by snow or other precipitation is observed thousands of times every year by pilots flying under bad weather conditions.
Navigational radio . . . is usually equipped with a shielded loop-type antenna to cope with just such static.
GERALD H. SLUSSER
Dallas
P: Says Dr. Caldwell: anyway, he was the first to see electrified snowflakes on a television screen.--ED.
Farley's Ambition
Sirs:
In your story on the sale of the New York Yankees (Feb. 5), you number Jim Farley among the bidders who "halfheartedly" tried to buy the club.
When the Yankee empire was first thrown on the market for $6 million, Jim Farley told me that he would rather be president of the Yanks than President of the U.S. Jim failed in his attempt to buy the property, but it was not because of any halfhearted effort on his part.
If MacPhail and associates bought all the baseball property listed in your story for approximately $3 million, they have made the biggest "steal" in the history of baseball.
WALLY PIPP
(Former first baseman, New York Yankees)
Grand Rapids, Mich.
P: Ex-Yankee Pipp, Lou Gehrig's slugging predecessor at first base, is off base. Farley never quite brought himself to back his ambition with cash.--ED.
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