Monday, Aug. 26, 1946

Showman AND Musician

Sirs:

I hope it won't be too much of a shock to Personality "Cugie" [TIME, July 29] to know that I go to hear Iturbi because he's a fine musician!

MRS. PAUL E. SAYLOR Los Angeles

P: Cugie has been informed; he is bearing up.--ED.

Terribly Gay at Tegernsee

Sirs:

I read with interest your Aug. 5 column of social notes from Tegernsee. Two summers ago, our outfit [A-Co., 141st Inf., 36th Div.] was entertained briefly on the shores of the lovely "indigo" lake--a"small, intimate affair sponsored by a group of 55 troopers, and watched by about 5,000 Wehrmacht convalescent wounded.

It was terribly gay--the hosts had prepared a delightful little ambush for us on the edge of town. . . . The town was decorated with white flags and all the houses had red crosses painted on the roofs--an open city in the best Geneva Convention style.

We only lost a few men (who overindulged themselves in mortar fragments). We started to level the town with artillery fire, but the Wehrmacht hospital Kommandant and the Buergermeister finally convinced the 55 that nothing could be gained by further resistance--beyond the possible execution of a few thousand bedridden German wounded.

We walked through town without a fight the next day. Two days later the war was over. . . .

In a way, it's a shame we couldn't have stayed longer. I understood that the next attack was to have featured a saturation bombing. Emmy and Edda would have been thrilled.

R.E. DOUGHERTY Syracuse, N.Y.

Sirs:

Yesterday I read an Associated Press cable: "Footsore and shabby, the once haughty Emmy Goring walked and hitchhiked to Nuernberg jail and pleaded tearfully to see the former Reich Marshal 'just once more.' She was turned down."

So this is Fate, I said to myself.

Today I read in TIME: "Handsome Emmy Goering and her plump, delightful daughter Edda have been much in evidence. Emmy planned to keep her life simple this summer, but she has relented sufficiently to give many an intimate, dazzling dinner party for visiting officers."

So this is TIME, I said to myself.

RICHARD HERTZ Dubuque, Iowa

P: Let Reader Hertz not confuse exActress Emmy Goering's Nuernberg stage effects with reality at Tegernsee.--ED.

Crespi's Carrot

Sirs:

If ... Professor Leo P. Crespi thinks, as his letter (TIME, Aug. 5) seems to indicate, that the human animal differs from other animals, notably the donkey, because of $50,000-a-year businessmen who become $15,000-a-year college presidents, then no donkey need suffer an inferiority complex. I've met a few college presidents in my day; and all those who were, or ever could be, $50,000-a-year businessmen, you could list on the end of a carrot--the small end.

DONALD FRENCH Kansas City, Mo.

Might to Assert Right?

Sirs:

Because of Jewish terrorism "world sympathy for Zionism . . . was beginning to crumble" (TIME, Aug. 5). ...

Jewish terrorism today is the result and not the cause of declining world sympathy. . . . The state of world sympathy is such that might is the only way to assert right.

DON PATINKIN Chicago

Sirs:

I did not fight to make the world safe for such tyranny as the British practice in Palestine--they send people to rot in concentration camps without trial or even charge, confiscate, search and loot without process of law. Americans once revolted for less. . . .

S/SGT. WM. FLYNN Battle Creek, Mich.

Sirs:

. . . The King David Hotel, as TIME neglects to mention, was not an ordinary hotel, but the headquarters of the British Army and Administration in Palestine--whose policies and methods have driven the Jews (who were England's staunchest ally in the Middle Eastern War Zone) to just such acts of desperation. . . .

Is it a wonder then that the Jews of Palestine realize for the first time in 2,000 years the wisdom of their ancient saying: "If I am not for myself, then who is? And if not now--when?"

ELI RAKOWITZKY Brooklyn

Architect to Archimedes

Sirs:

I wish to call your attention to the fact that the portrait of Archimedes (TIME, July 22) is not a portrait of Archimedes but a well-known painting by Rembrandt, called The Architect, No. 224 in the catalogue of 1888 of the Staatl. Gemaeldegalerie at Kassel, Hesse, Germany.

CURT B. LOEWENBAUM New Orleans

P: Reader Loewenbaum's sharp eyes failed to detect the faint signature, "C. Glinzer, 1867." The painting is a copy of Rembrandt's The Architect, and Copyist Glinzer chose to call it Archimedes (who was no mean architect).--ED.

From Gnats to Dope

Sirs:

I was worried to learn from your issue of Aug. 5 that the Federal Communications Commission has given the "greenish light" to Robert Harold Scott, by expressing the opinion that atheists are entitled to express their disbeliefs.

The FCC strains at such gnats as "hell" and "damn" but is willing to swallow the camel of antireligion. The only trouble with religion in Russia is that the Russian constitution permits freedom of religion, but in the same breath guarantees freedom of antireligion. . . . Atheists should have no more freedom in the sale of their wares than dope peddlers, and for the same reason.

GEORGE D. SHEEHAN Yonkers, N.Y.

Boom & Bedlam

Sirs:

In regard to your airline article "Boom & Bedlam" (TIME, Aug. 5), might it not be pertinent to mention:

1) The terrific "no-show" problem which has had considerable to do with the difficulty in making reservations. In many cases, by the time it is apparent that a passenger will "no-show" a "go-show" is the only passenger who can be contacted before flight departure time.

2) The heroic efforts of veteran airline employes in handling an unprecedented volume of business with inadequate facilities, and at the same time training new personnel in a detailed and exacting job.

3) The fact that the airline industry has no monopoly on confusion in this postwar world.

HOLLIS B. TULLEY Boise, Idaho

The Aristocratic Spirit

Sirs:

Re: the review of The Condemned Playground by Cyril Connolly [TIME, July 29]. The reason Connolly did not include U.S. literature is obvious; U.S. literature, with the sole exception of Joseph Hergesheimer (as far as I know), reflects the Industrial Revolution. . . .

The trend, all during the laissez-faire era of said revolution, has been against the aristocratic spirit. And the aristocratic spirit is the spirit that moves Connolly.

The Western Europe of the classical tradition, the one which Connolly and I and others grew up in and loved and were a part of, is dead. Another one will arise, the child of Soviet Russia. . . .

JEANNE DE CHALOM Morro Bay, Calif.

"I Wanna Go Home"

Sirs:

Lest General Eichelberger convince himself, through his fourth-dimensional processes of rationalization, that the "I wanna go home" campaign was unjustified [TIME, Aug. 5], let him be advised that:

Good conditions two months ago could not have produced satisfaction ten months ago;

Fine hotels, golf courses, stadia, movies are no substitute for home, family, American women, freedom from Army caste;

The so-called "crying attitude" was the natural reaction to misguided Army paternalism;

Although Japan may be a soldiers' paradise, the men who wanted and want to go home are not soldiers, but are civilians in uniform.

MALCOLM MOSESSON Hartford, Conn.

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