Letters, Sep. 4, 1939

“Vicious Circle”Sirs: . . . There are certain facts at considerable variance with declarations which were presented in TIME, July 17 article on “How to be Neutral. . . .” May I call attention first to the following contention. . . .

“Meanwhile the Nye committee pumped J. P. Morgan, Thomas Lament and their partners, trying to prove that they had helped to grease the skids that plunged the U. S. into war. There was no evidence that they had tried to. It could not even be proved that they had done so unwittingly.” Very definite is the evidence recorded by the Committee that the Morgan firm did operate in a way to circumvent American neutrality and steps that were intended to help us keep out of Europe’s war.

For example: In November of 1916 the Federal Reserve Board warned American investors against taking the unsecured paper obligations of foreign governments. Virtually the only governments whose paper of that kind was involved were England and France, whose American agent, in their pay, was J. P. Morgan & Co. … It was Morgan & Co. who suggested the way to destroy it [the warning] was for England to threaten to cease purchasing American goods. . . .

In our examination of the J. P. Morgan & Co., purchasing agents of Great Britain during the World War, we developed documentary evidence which explains the in evitable cablegram of Ambassador Page of March 5, 1917, which stated that “. . . I think that the pressure of this approaching crisis has gone beyond the ability of the Morgan financial agency for the British and French governments. Perhaps our going to war is the only way in which our present prominent trade position can be maintained and panic averted.” Documents that explain why our Ambassador in London was placed in the position of extending that advice to our President, will be found in Report 944, part 6, of the Special Committee on Investigation of Muni tions Industry, U. S. Senate, issued June 16, 1936. That evidence fortified the conclusions drawn on p. 96 of that report, namely, that the bankers were inextricably tied up in a vicious circle that included the British gov ernment, the rifle industry in the U. S. and the American Banking organization. . . .

The documentary evidence gathered and reported by the Senate Investigating Com mittee was evidently considered sufficiently convincing by Congress for beginning with the Neutrality Law of 1936, there has been adopted a ban on loans and credits to nations at war. There has been no move whatsoever to eliminate that provision from any neutrality legislation since 1936.

There ought to be less discounting of the part which American bankers played in helping America along that road to war preceding 1917. . .

GERALD P. NYE U. S. Senate Washington, D. C.

> For 20 years, U. S. politicians and publicists have agitated the question of War Guilt. Who is “to blame” for taking “us” to war? No more than anyone else does TIME know the “true” answer to such a loaded question. But to TIME the following is the beginning of sense: the U. S. people went to war because, after more than two years of intense public discussion, the U. S. Government, duly and recently elected by the U. S. people, decided to declare war. Many and complex were the causes leading to this decision made by the President and Congress. To hang any large part of the “blame” on J. P. Morgan & Co. seems to TIME to be first-class politics and third-rate history. TIME, Aug. 14, made a point of the fact that before the U. S. entered the War the House of Morgan was sentimentally and financially interested in helping the Allies to obtain loans and buy war supplies in the U. S. This is the gist of what the Nye committee established. But between this fact and the conclusion that the House of Morgan got Woodrow Wilson and Congress to declare war, there is a big hiatus of logic and of evidence.—ED.

Persecution in Mexico

Sirs: As one of the mentioned “Prelates in Mufti” (TIME, Aug. 14, p. 60) you will per mit me to make some observations on your story. I liked your appropriation of Mr.

Lunn’s “selective indignation” phrase to de scribe the attitude of many people towards the persecution of religion in Mexico. Religion continues to be persecuted most cruelly by the Mexican Government and a few “licensed” churches do not disprove this assertion. The official educational policy of Mexico is as atheistic as Soviet Russia’s. It is a positive anti-God policy, not merely anti-Catholic. . . .

The persecution against the Catholic Church is as relentless and vicious as any persecution in history. But the Marxist liberals have sold Mexico to the world as a great democracy. Has it not a Constitution and dont the people vote? Democracies do not persecute religion or the Church Therefore, everything must be fine in Mexico for it’s a democracy—like Russia!

I wish particularly to suggest a revision of certain statements in your article You write that “the U. S. prelates found the seminary [Las Vegas, N. Mex.] with its 66 students going well enough.” The seminary has nearly 500 students representing every state of Mexico.

And this correction. There is no 500 peso fine for wearing clerical garb in the U. S., thank God! The gracious and pious Mr. Daniels, Ambassador of the U. S. in Mexico, honored and received us at the Embassy as churchmen, i.e., sans mufti!

MICHAEL J. READY General Secretary

National Catholic Welfare Conference Washington, D. C.

Senatorial Ornithology

Sirs:

At the top of p. 12, TIME, Aug. 14, there appears this simile:

“Around his desk, like hawks hovering over a sidehill cornfield, were some 30 Senators. . . .”

Your reporter is evidently not a close student of ornithology. Whoever heard of a flock of 30 hawks over a cornfield? Does the reporter think that the solitary, carnivorous hawk travels in flocks and feeds on corn? Did he not have crows in mind instead of hawks? W. C. COTHRAN Greenville, S. C.

> There were 30 hawks in Senator Adams’ cornfield.—ED.

The American Language

Sirs:

Generally the grammar is pretty good, but, in the issue of TIME, July 24, under Transport, occurs this sentence: “[Mrs. Clara Adams] . . . broadcasted over a Honolulu-San Francisco radio hook-up.”

Maybe I am behind the times, for I have been in England for the past six months and have not been able to keep up with the changes being made in the American language. Is it now correct to added to form the past tense of the verbs put, cut, burst, and cast?

THERON E. COFFIN East Orange, N. J.

> In the American language busted has generally replaced bursted.—ED.

San

Sirs:

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”

Similarly, if TIME insists that the Japanese call their mountain “Mr. Fuji” [TIME, Aug. 21], it might as well say that the Japanese call “God” “paper” and “paper” “God” simply because the two words are homonyms (along with the word for hair—all being transliterated as kami).

True, the Japanese refer to Fujiyama as Fujisan; but san in this case means mountain (as does yama) and is written with a character quite different from the san meaning Mr., Mrs. or Miss.

Here they are, though I fear your typesetter may not find them in his font.

san (mountain) san (suffix)

BRADFORD SMITH Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y. — Smith-san right. TIME so sorry—ED.

Thanksgiving

Sirs: It has occurred to me that President Roosevelt should have advanced Thanksgiving Day to his birthday, January 30. The nation could then really give proper thanks for this glorious thing that has happened.

HOWARD H. MOORE Honolulu, T.H.

Earlier Men Sirs: Most people have felt the urge to write their Congressmen or a “Voice of the People” to comment on passing events. What more apt writers of another day might have said today is pleasant conjecture.

I believe there would be interest in a short feature of quotations of those earlier men with a simple salutation to the individual concerned, as: To-Bob Pastor: He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day; But he who is in battle slain, Can never rise to fight again.

Oliver Goldsmith To Adolf Hitler:

The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on.

William Shakespeare To the G.O.P. Depressionists:

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce? Ralph Waldo Emerson

EVAN MCDONALD Oshkosh, Wis.

Obituary

Sirs: Among the letters in TIME, Aug. 21 was one from my cousin, Charles A. Storms, on the subject of cancer patients. You may be interested to learn that he died on August 22.

GEORGE S. NEWTON Superior, Wis.