Time to Change?

Sirs:

Patriotism has become a devil in disguise. We find ourselves talking glibly of re-educating the Germans and the Japanese. Isn't it time to change a few of our own time-worn conceptions?

We have been taught that next to God our loyalty belongs to our country. It is just such intense nationalistic feeling that causes wars. Such fervor caused the Nazis to try for world domination. Extreme nationalism is making us fear the Russians. It is making many men die on the battlefields for mistaken ideals.

Isn't our first loyalty and patriotism due to the world? The very existence of our country will depend on whether we can foster this belief in every citizen's heart and mind. Let us begin now before it is too late.

MRS. PAUL KROESEN Glendale, Calif.

Military Businessmen?

Sirs:

How natural that the war-hating military leaders, lauded in TIME (June 25), should advocate peacetime military training. Having willingly chosen soldiering for their life's work it is reasonable to suppose that they enjoy military life.

While it is all right for them to gallop through the countryside trying to drum up future business by interesting Sunday-school kids in war, I do think they have a lot of brass to insist that every man, whether he is built that way or not, be forced to spend a year of his life learning their trade.

Imagine how that guy Patton would have squawked if he had been forced by a bunch of clergymen to spend his 18th year in a theological school.

ROBERT BRAUN Holliston, Mass.

Brass

Sirs:

The time has come, I think, for someone to launch a vigorous protest against the use of "brass hats" in the derogatory way it is usually employed in your magazine. You always seem to imply that all "brass hats" are pompous, narrow-minded obstructionists and that the war would get on much better if they were all somehow done away with. Your articles so often evoke a picture of some comparatively junior officer knocking down rows of admirals or generals and literally pounding a new idea into their heads, and your writers seem to think that nothing progressive is ever done in the service departments except by this method.

Do you think that when a man reaches senior rank his mind automatically shuts? Such a generalization is ridiculous. Of course, there are some brass hats who are stuffed shirts. There are also countless numbers of them who are alert, open-minded men spending every ounce of thought, knowledge and energy they possess (and that is a lot) in running the Army and Navy with little glory and certainly not much understanding and appreciation to help them. . . .

MRS. L. V. HONSINGER Newport News, Va.

P:As Reader Honsinger says, some brass hats (like some bigwigs) are stuffed shirts. But in using such a useful common. term, TIME intends no derogation to the alert and able officers who boss the U.S. war machine.--ED.

Hoot for Hooton

Sirs:

Anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton and his views on women [TIME, June 25] will be most highly resented by women serving in the armed forces. Very few of them consider that they have sacrificed their individuality because they are wearing clothes identical with thousands of other women's. Our physical training programs improve posture and gait without depriving us of personality.

The presence of women in the armed forces has caused some sweeping reforms in those tradition-bound organizations, such as the fact that Navy dungarees are now built with fullness in the derriere. The Navy seems to have accepted the fact that it is more graceful to bow to the inevitable than to try the impossible--that is, to change the natural shape of things by mere exercise.

Dr. Hooton is probably the only man in the world to deplore those "peculiarly localized fatty deposits" which seem to improve the morale of our fighting men by their presence in pin-up pictures.

SP (X) 2/c SUZANNE MAURER U.S.N.R. (W.R.) Memphis

The Shape They're in

Sirs: Just a few pertinent comments on your article [TIME, June 18] on "The Shape We're In." The composite figure shown as a pictorialization of how the average American girl looks with her clothes off is, I regret to say, too, too, true. . . . The daily press releases from home show that the average American shape, distaff, definitely lacks something.

The run-of-the-mill G.I. can be depended upon, I believe, to judge the relative merits of anything pertaining to the female of the species. Therefore, let me give you, briefly, the average G.I.'s reaction to femininity, overseas style:

England : kinda weatherbeaten lot, no shape, fair personality, style consciousness absolutely zero ; but something to be endured in the interim. Normandy: chubby, healthy-looking frails, but decidedly not the type the average G.I. associated with France.

Alsace-Lorraine: rural, albeit earthly-wise, natural type; not the type for a casual affair; eminently wholesome but, withal, drab. Luxembourg: a puzzle. With all the outward appurtenances of modernity they still are, well, provincial. Belgium: a decided improvement (especially in the Arlon-Bastogne sector). The female form begins to show signs of having been groomed for its primary purpose.

Germany: let it be said at the start trial I make every effort to comply with the non-fraternization policy, but I have never anywhere in all my days seen a more comely, well-dressed, well-developed lot of female pulchritude than exists and bouncily roams the streets here in Germany. . . .

My guess is that the American girl, being a very wise creature, will reconcile herself to the trend of G.I. thought and blossom out in all the natural God-given beauty that she inherently has--but has for too long hidden under a mask of artificiality. Let us, at least, hope so!

(Sgt.) JAY G. BUNDENTHAL

% Postmaster New York City

Shipyard Worker Talks Back

Sirs:

Re TIME [June 4] "West Coast shipyard workers quit their jobs in droves." One reason is because an overzealous press scares the shipyard worker with its unnecessary stories about what is going to happen to shipyards and shipyard workers.

Shipyards are crowded with substantial bond buyers, parents of living and dead veterans, well informed men & women of all walks of life, quiet men & women who work hard and spend from one to four hours a day commuting (for which they receive no pay); people with better jobs waiting, ready at any moment to turn over their job to any returned war vet; people who, in order to help in war plants of all kinds, must pay dues and fines for the privilege of helping win the war and thus bring their sons, daughters, husbands and fathers home from the battlefield; people who are good and big enough to deserve constructive rather than a constant bombardment of destructive criticism from a well-deserving but often dangerous press. . . .

With sons under, on and over the sea, a daughter spending nine months a year in college and the summer months in the yards, my wife and I now in the yards for three years, I feel qualified to express my opinion.

MARK DELLER Portland

Men of Distinction

Sirs:

I clipped this little gem out of a magazine and thought you ought to see it:

"Two girls riding on a Connecticut-bound train were overheard discussing their respective fiances. The first girl was saying, 'But the thing I like about him best is he's so mature. You know, real wrinkled.'

"'What d'ya mean--wrinkled?' asked her friend.

"The first girl chewed her lip and looked out the window thoughtfully. 'We-l-l,' she said presently, 'I mean like those men on the cover of TIME.' "

PHILIP RUBENSTIEN Roxbury, Mass.

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