Patton's Prayer
Sir:
A man's prayers are something between himself and his God, and nobody else's business.
If General Patton had the effrontery to say to the Almighty (who has handed down the commandment "Thou shalt not kill") give me good weather "so that I can annihilate the whole German army with one stroke as a birthday present for Your Prince of Peace" [TIME, Jan. 10], he at least should not have had the vanity and bad taste to ... write it down so somebody else could publish it later . . .
(MRS.) RAY S. ALEXANDER Denver, Colo.
Sir:
. . . Surely Dean Anderberg, Swedish army chaplain, cannot believe that General Patton was praying for himself . . . His prayer was said for the preservation of freedom . . .
REV. D. D. DRISCOLL St. Paul's Polish National Catholic Church Newark, NJ.
Sir:
You should never have classified the Patton article as Religion. It is pure, unadulterated blasphemy . . .
A. WARD APPLEGATE Society of Friends Wilmington, Ohio
Sir:
. . . Patton believed in God . . . [His] style was rough, but he combined idealism and realism. He talked to God as if he admired Him. He let God into his inmost secret heart, and recognized his own human frailty . . .
Here we have a great man who wanted God to help him preserve and protect civilization from something evil. The church is not accustomed to handling men of such power and masculinity.
Patton got his clear weather. He won his fight . . .
REV. GEO. H. MACNISH St. James' Episcopal Church Cleveland, N.Y.
Sir:
I have just sent your article, "Patton Talking," to a friend in Uppsala, Sweden, asking him to show it to the clergy there . . . The sacrilegious story . . . was pure fiction . . .
After what my husband did for America, I am amazed and deeply hurt that you should publish such an article about an honorable Christian gentleman who can no longer speak for himself . . .
BEATRICE AYER PATTON South Hamilton, Mass.
P: TIME intended no disrespect to General Patton. It assumes that the Swedish Life Guard Grenadiers' regimental journal, from which it quoted, also intended no hurt to the memory of a great soldier. General Patton's own book, War As I Knew It, edited by Mrs. Patton, quotes him as saying, when the weather cleared after he had ordered Chaplain O'Neill to pray: "God damn! Look at the weather. That O'Neill sure did some potent praying . . ."--ED.
Whose Plague?
Sir:
Apparently some things have not changed in 450 years. In "Whose Flu?" you report that the French call the current epidemic la grippe Italienne, while Italians retort by calling it influenza Francese [TIME, Jan. 17].
In 1498 a plague sweeping Europe was dubbed by Italians the French sickness; by the French, the Italian sickness; by the Poles, the German sickness; by the Muscovites, the Polish sickness; and by the Turks, the Christian sickness . . .
REV. GARRETT C. ROORDA Mohawk, N.Y.
Economic Motives
Sir:
Your Jan. 3 article on the Dutch attack on the Indonesian Republic comes as a shock even to one accustomed to your confused brand of conservatism. Instead of condemning this flagrant violation of a U.N. decision, this unprovoked aggression against an almost defenseless people, you seem to applaud [it] . . .
You concede that the motive for the Dutch attack is of an economic nature, except that you try to justify it by the mere mention of Communism . . . You might as well advocate atomic war on Russia now--having deprived yourself of what little moral and political ammunition you had left.
FRANK DIAMOND New York City
Sir:
Your article on Indonesia seemed to me the only sane or realistic view . . .
When the Japanese were driven out, we could have claimed the islands by right of-conquest, but we do not take other people's property. Then these nationalist "leaders," seeing a wonderful opportunity, set up a so-called Republic, and the Dutch, the British and the American owners of all the billions of dollars' worth of developed and undeveloped resources could just jump in the lake . . .
Why we should be so sensitive to hypocritical Russian criticism is beyond me. They want the Dutch out of there, for perfectly plain reasons; so that they can move in and get all those things they need: tin, rubber, oil ... I am glad the Dutch have courage and sense enough to go in and reclaim their property , . .
H. N.SPOFFORD Shreveport, La.
Sleepy-Town Strings
Sir:
The article on TV puppetry in your Jan. 17 issue . . . overlooked our marionettes.
For this I cannot blame you, because very little news leaks out of sleepy old Baltimore. However, you might be interested to know that we were the first marionette company ever to perform over television: Nov. 6, 1931 over Jenkins TV Station W3XK at Wheaton, Md.
When WBAL-TV started in operation last year, we began a series of marionette plays twice a week, and have continued up to the present time. Our shows are different from any others appearing on TV today in that we present plays, fairy tales, Arabian Nights, Aesop's Fables and original stories, with all the lines spoken by the marionette operators. . .
BERNARD H. PAUL Linthicum Heights, Md.
Good Gourd!
Sir:
Let your Latin America editor drink a few thousand mates with the hospitable Argentine people and he would never call a bombilla a gourd [TIME, Jan. 10]. The bombilla (diminutive for "pump") is the metal tube through which the delicious brew is sucked. The gourd is the mate, although the herb and also the drink itself have come to be known as mate . . .
GERALD O. LYNN Burbank, Calif.
Sir:
. . . You say that Oliva Paz presented President Harry Truman, on behalf of Peron, with a bombilla . .
If Peron sent a gourd, there might be international complications--at least laughter in L.A. Calabaza in Spanish is a gourd or a stupid, ignorant person. To give the gourd (dar la calabaza) is to give someone the gate or the air.
C. B. MclNTOSH Associate Professor Spanish and Portuguese Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Va.
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