Letters, Aug. 26, 1940

Plank

Sirs:

“TIME does not favor U. S. entrance into the war . . . there are some circumstances in which the defense of the primary interests of the U. S. may require going to war” (TIME, July 22).

TIME keeps good company. Its foreign policy plank is just about as clear-cut as those of the G. O. P. and the Democratic Party, as nicely calculated to appeal to both interventionist and isolationist customers. I trust it didn’t take as long to write.

DAN ROSS Clarksville, Tenn.

Sirs:

. . . Would the editor please list the possible circumstances and the primary interests, the defense of which may require war? It is necessary for your readers to know just how you stand on this in order to understand your way of reporting the news. Just what are our primary interests, anyhow?

CATHERINE BAYS PARRISH Flint, Mich.

> To Reader Parrish a dunce cap for shallow cynicism. The primary interests of the U. S. are things on which all citizens agree: national independence, a chance to live in peace and prosperity, above all, government of the people, by the people, for the people. More than a dozen nations have recently lost these things, each under somewhat different circumstances. TIME’S stand is clear: TIME is for serious study of the political and military weapons by which democracies are being overcome. TIME is against trusting blindness—that wishful refusal to believe that new dangers are real—which has kept other democracies from protecting themselves while there was time.—ED.

Personally Produced

Sirs:

YOU ARE USUALLY SO ACCURATE THEREFORE WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE YOUR SETTING RECORD STRAIGHT REGARDING “PASTOR HALL” ARTICLE ISSUE AUG. 12 REFERRING “POT O’ GOLD” AS BEING PRODUCED BY QUICKIE-EXPERT SAMUEL BRONSTON. BRONSTON NOT CONNECTED IN ANY WAY WITH “POT O’ GOLD,” IT BEING PRODUCED PERSONALLY AND SOLELY BY MYSELF. PRODUCTION WILL BE TOP “A” WITH GEORGE MARSHALL DIRECTING AND HARRY TUGEND WRITING SCRIPT. . . .

JAMES ROOSEVELT Hollywood, Calif.

Bigger Stick

Sirs:

Hitler said to Rauschning: “America is constantly on the verge of revolution. It will not be hard for me to foment trouble and upheavals there. I can occupy the American people sufficiently with their own internal difficulties to keep them from meddling in Europe.” Up to now Hitler has fulfilled almost to the letter everything he said he would accomplish, including “occupying the American people with their own difficulties.” We are playing into his hands in a fashion even he probably never expected by our bickerings about our duty to our country. . . . For the next year or so (possibly) it might be easier for our young men to stay at home, many of them on relief, and many of them with nothing better to do than ride around in broken down jalopies to the danger of themselves and everyone on the road. But if Hitler wins this war there won’t be time to ask them whether they wish to defend our way of life, and before they have a chance to wake up their days of freedom will be gone forever.

If Hitler wins this war and starts his insidious work in this hemisphere, even if he does not come with an army, he will dominate us just the same and then our young men won’t be asked what they are willing to do but they will do what they are told—OR ELSE.

The only way in which we can avoid war, or worse still, loss of freedom, is to have a bigger stick than Hitler and the only way to accomplish this is to have conscription now. . . .

BETTY KRAUSE Pasadena, Calif.

Sirs:

I wonder if it has occurred to our patriotic Congressmen that a minimum of $75 to $100 as basic Army pay would draw perhaps 1,500,000 into the Army?

Did it ever occur to these Congressmen that a decent rate of pay for the man that does the dying and fighting would indicate the calibre of democracy we are defending?

Do we have a $21 democracy or a $100 democracy?

HENRY S. SMITH Colton, Calif.

Sirs:

Why not tell all that is going on in Washington at the Congressional hearings on the draft bill? Why not disclose that Army leaders admit they have been getting more than their quota on a voluntary three-year enlistment and have a waiting list? Why not tell that the compromise suggests instead the proposal to give young men a chance to volunteer on a one-year basis at $30 a month instead of the present $21 and three-year enlistment? Why not bring out that the Gallup Poll, which you use as an argument for conscription, did not get the poll on the present Burke-Wadsworth Bill. . . . Give us facts! And all of them !

JAMES P. PARTINGTON New York City

> The regular Army is currently filling its recruiting quotas, but the rate of recruiting is not nearly high enough to provide 375,000 or more men for emergency training in any reasonable time. In the hearings that Reader Partington cites, the Secretary of War and Chief of Staff repeatedly testified that neither proposed pay increases nor other inducements, but only conscription would produce the number of men needed. Although the Gallup Polls did not mention the Burke-Wadsworth Bill, the poll majority favoring conscription for one year’s service increased significantly after the bill was introduced in Congress.—”Eo.

Downtown Hospital

Sirs:

The executive committee of the board of directors of The Downtown Hospital has been very much upset by the article entitled “Downtown for Tommies” in the July 8 issue of TIME. . . .

The statement that the hospital is “rickety” is untrue. The hospital is a modern structure of brick and steel construction and is in good physical condition.

The statement that the new directors “chipped in $50,000 to keep it going” is inaccurate. Certain people did lend $50,000, but that was before the new directors were elected. . . .

The statement “still the bills piled up” is untrue. The meaning of that paragraph (by innuendo) is that the change of name and reorganization were useless—that insolvency continues, which is entirely untrue. The hospital is on a cash basis, meeting all bills as presented. It is not “impoverished,” but in fact is in very good financial condition. . . .

WALTER H. MENDE Secretary The Downtown Hospital New York City

> To The Downtown Hospital TIME’S apologies for any errors in its story. However, most of the statements TIME made were checked before publication with an official of the hospital itself.—ED.

Barrier

Sirs:

Defense we must have, but there is no reason for TIME to goas hysterical as the rest of the mob. Someone—and why not TIME? —should point out that we are neither England nor Norway, that even if the Atlantic has been flown over it is still a barrier to conquest, that Sims said he would be happy to defend our shores with a fleet half the size of any attacker, that every single expert knows Japan neither can nor will attack the U. S.

EMIL A. ERICKSON

Berkeley, Calif.

> TIME quite agrees that there should be no hysteria, but TIME cannot point out that the Atlantic “is still a barrier to conquest.” It never has been. In colonial times it was crossed by British and French Armies. In 1814-15 a British expedition took Washington, fought in Louisiana. In 1863 a French Army entered Mexico City, set up an empire. In 1917-18 a U. S. Army crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction. The only barrier there has ever been in the Atlantic has been a fleet that could control the ocean (and nowadays an adequate air force).—ED.

Chinese Allegory?

Sirs:

Julean Arnold . . . might easily be indulging in a bit of Chinese allegory in his recipe [TIME, Aug. 5]. …

The “six newly born mice, with eyes still closed and nice and pink” might refer to two sets of three blind mice: Great Britain, France and the U. S. and Germany, Italy and Russia, who in Asiatic eyes are newly born countries, blind to realities staring them in the face where Japan is concerned. . . .

“Hold each by the tail while stirring in rich batter, then fry. . . .” The Japs firmly believe that they have the world by the tail, especially when smearing on the rich batter of trade promises to stir up appeasement talk and dangling mythical profits from war materials as bait which we have swallowed hook-line-and-sinker for nine years, “. . . then fry.”

“While piping hot dip in cold honey until completely covered. . . .” When we got hot over the blitzkrieg that swept 13 nations out of sight, the Japs began to pour the cold honey. . . . Every contemptible compromise of principle was proposed so that Japan could: “. . insert entire morsel in mouth and leisurely devour. . . .”

HENRY S. EVANS Executive Secretary Stop Arming Japan Committee Kansas City, Mo.

Photographs

Sirs:

Though I loathe and despise anything German, I can’t help but compare the photographs of the German General Staff, p. 25 of your July 29 issue, with our General Staff, p. 30 of the same issue. I would like to ask your readers which General Staff would they feel could lead them to a victorious war. I think that this question about covers all that can be said.

LOUISE E. CLARK Carmel, Calif.

> Shame on Reader Clark for admiring militaristic mugs more than homely U. S. faces. If better-than-Nazi brains are not in the heads of the present U. S. general staff, they will be found in other equally American craniums.—ED.

Evaluation

Sirs:

Since Winston Churchill is definitely newsworthy at the present time I thought you might be interested in the seemingly prophetic evaluation of the man as made by a Harold Nicolson in an article appearing in the Vanity Fair Book of 1931.

“He is a man who leads forlorn hopes, and when the hopes of England become forlorn, he will again be summoned to leadership.”

DAVID M. BANEN, M.D. U. S. Quarantine Station Curtis Bay, Md.

> Prophet Nicolson, diplomat, author and longtime Churchill disciple, is now Parliamentary Secretary to the British Ministry of Information.—ED.

Foreboding

Sirs:

I have been reading TIME and other U. S. periodicals on the entry of Italy into the war. … I confess it gave me a shudder of foreboding regarding my own beloved U. S. Could it possibly be that she, in the world’s eyes, will seem to follow an equally contemptible course?

Fascist Italy believed exactly like Nazi Germany, yet for nine months she sat on the sidelines, while Germany ran the risks, did the fighting and sacrificing, shed the blood. Italy came in so late that to the world it seemed “coming in only at the kill.”

America believes exactly the same as Great Britain about Freedom, Justice, Tolerance, Democracy, and about International Gangsterdom. Yet she, too, sits on the sidelines a nonbelligerent, reaping where she will not sow, safe behind the protecting British Navy.

. . . Two months have glided by since the Nazi pulverizing of Holland proved that this was no phony European war, but a world threat instead. How much longer will the U. S. bask painlessly in the western sun, while the blood, toil, tears and sweat are borne by the cousins overseas?

“With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.”

MARCUS A. SPENCER, MINISTER (An American citizen acting as a voluntary Air Raid Warden in London)

St. John’s Presbyterian Church Kensington, London