Letters, Oct. 5, 1942

Teddy in Reverse

Sirs:

Everything in TIME was worth reading Sept. 7—a splendid number. Only one little criticism: In your Knox write-up you say: “Like Teddy Roosevelt, he believes in strong talk and the Big Stick.”

I think you will find that Teddy said: “Speak softly but carry a Big Stick,” which is almost the reverse; but your version is still much better than to speak boastfully and carry no stick at all.

JOHN SLAVENS Phoenix, Ariz.

Teddy Roosevelt’s strong talk was likewise the reverse.—ED.

Pity

Sirs:

Have just been reading in my April 13 TIME letters from some of your readers complaining about TIME being a day or two late —poor souls!

C. EVERLY TERRY C.Y., U.S.N. U.S.S. Rigel

Milk & Romance

Sirs:

Milk in the afternoon and pretty milkmaids to serve it, “THAT’S THE LIFE.” What would these pampered pansies of Paterson’s NJ. plant of Wright Aeronautical Corp. (TIME, Aug. 24) do on a diet of cocoa and flies in the afternoon? NO MILK, NO BUTTER, NO POTATOES, NO FLOUR, NO COFFEE is what we have and as for MILKMAIDS—anything white, single and under 60 would cause a riot, not a STRIKE in these parts. Is it for these milk-sipping and milkmaid-ogling PATRIOTS that we are sweating in B.C. to produce their essential “BAUXITE”?

JERRY MASON Mackenzie, British Guiana

Worse Than Tanks

Sirs:

I believe your reports on the political news of our country the most levelheaded of any magazine. All this griping of “stupid politics” on the part of citizens seems to me the most stupid of all. People should understand that politics play as much part in the war as the tanks rolling around the battlefields. If we don’t take an interest in just who leads our Government we’ll find worse things than tanks rolling around the home front. News that deviates a little from “sunk,” “killed in action,” and “taken” is most welcome these days and I don’t consider that being an escapist!

AUDREY ANIS New York City

Citadel Undermanned

Sirs:

Somervell’s words, “Every classroom is a citadel,” sound good as a battle cry. But where are the schools to get teachers to train youth, to say nothing of the impossibility of supplying all schools with the equipment necessary to teach specialized classes for industrial workers, Army Air Force flyers and ground men?

TIME, Sept. 7 says: The Government asks “hard drill in every school on mathematics and physics.” Do these Government men also realize that most math and science teachers are men; that, in comparison, few women are trained to teach these subjects and other special subjects that would make our classroom citadels? Already our schools are in desperate need because we have lost so many men teachers to the armed forces and to industry. Our high school is beginning the school year without a teacher to fill the place of a math and engineering man who has gone into war industry. Every agency to which we appeal tells us that it has hundreds of calls for such teachers which it cannot fill. The lack of men teachers in high school is already serious and will grow worse unless those who have the authority to do so say, “Stay with the schools.” The teachers will not ask to be deferred. They are as anxious as any men to serve their country where they are most needed. The Government must decide where that place is. …

R. VERNON HAYS

Principal

Killingly High School Danielson, Conn.

Football Forecast

Sirs:

Referring to your statement in your issue of TIME, Sept. 7, concerning the Institute of Education and the War recently held in Washington. “One thing the colleges did learn definitely: after this season, intercollegiate football is out for the duration.”

Are you guessing?

J. F. McKALE Director of Athletics University of Arizona Tucson, Ariz.

> No.—ED.

To Whom It May Concern

Sirs:

You are incorrect in saying that Oscar Serlin once rejected Room Service.

Serlin and I were quite friendly at the time Room Service was being written and I handed him an early rough copy for his comments. . . .

He thought it was terrible. It was, however, no rejection—as at no time was he regarded by either Murray or myself as a potential producer for the play.

In due justice to Serlin and the authors this should be clear as though anybody is interested.

ALLEN BORETZ (Coauthor of Room Service) Los Angeles, Calif.

Anonymous Heroes

Sirs:

… I am an officer in the American Merchant Marine. I have followed this profession for the past ten years, I am following it now and have done so since the inception of active hostilities involving the U.S. If the fates permit, I intend to follow this honorable profession when hostilities have ceased. It is a profession which has taken my active years to date and one which I hope will permit me to sail into the westering sun of their decline still engaged in the service of my country. For we in the merchant service feel, even in peace, that we are engaged in our country’s service, even though we be paid by private enterprise.

In the past decade, the merchant service has been, through its own acts, largely suspect in the eyes of a great many of our citizenry. That the antics of some portion of the maritime labor group have warranted this suspicion I would be the last to deny, but I feel free to voice my belief that the clamor for better conditions, higher wages, etc. was not the sole foundation of these antics. In our United States, the men who follow the sea are regarded askance by the staid burghers of the land, since in the latter’s eyes the sea is but the refuge of beaten men ashore and is not regarded as an honorable profession for men of courage and initiative. Therefore we have acquired an inferiority complex unique among craftsmen, and perhaps this fact has had a deal to do with the upsets that have rent our profession. Qién sabe? That the merchant service has been “the idiot stepchild of American economy” seems obvious to me, yet I would not exchange my service for any of the more glittering prospects that might appear on my horizon, even including the one -f braid & buttons in our military or naval services now before me. . . .

Can we in the merchant service not be granted some form of campaign ribbon peculiarly our own? Some tangible evidence in later years that we, too, served our country who only went to sea. . . . Let this mark of service we request be known far & wide for what it is, that the men who have left the tankers, who have fought the long, hard trail to Murmansk, who have seen their messmates fight the oil slicks in all the seven seas may have their service known and recognized by all who care to see. Is this much to ask? W. H. HUTCHINSON At Sea

> A few merchant seamen have already received pins (an ^ e with wings forming a V) from the U.S. Maritime Commission; it promises eventually to get around to everybody. Meanwhile totally lacking is any insignia of distinguished service wherewith the U.S. may pay tribute to the many heroisms of its Merchant Marine.—ED.

Look Out!

Sirs:

Last night we had our first blackout and all I can say is Hirohitler & Co. had better look out, for we’re getting real mad. It made me proud & happy to see how quickly the peaceful & quiet Distrito Federal took to this wartime measure.

On Sunday we had our first dose of obligatory military instruction for all able-bodied men from 18 to 45. Many past that age and even one 13-year-old lad in my neighborhood marched. . . .

The Axis should realize that we’ll surrender, yes, we will, over our dead bodies.

JORGE RIOSECO Mexico, D.F.

Tips for Scrap

Sirs:

. . . While returning from San Antonio to Houston I noticed hundreds of highway billboard signs. Most of these were small and were held in place by a long iron or steel pipe. The thought came to me that there must be hundreds of thousands of these signs over the country with thousands of tons of scrap available that could be salvaged. As far as the signs are concerned they will be seen less and less as time goes by, what with all the tire and gasoline rationing. . . .

D. L. ECHOLS Captain, U.S.A.A.F. Ellington Field, Tex.

Sirs:

Steel streetcar rails, thousands of tons of them, are hidden under a few inches of asphalt in nearly every town and hamlet in this country.

Here is a source of high-grade steel almost untouched. A patriotic campaign started now could make every municipality ashamed of its hidden treasure. . . .

(REV.) H. FAIRFIELD BUTT III Sea Bright, N.J.

Hunky-Dory

Sirs:

In your recent article on “Harvests without Harvesters” [TIME, Sept. 14], you state that Maine potatoes are near to spoiling on account of a labor shortage. At a time when there is so much depressing and alarming news I would like to do my bit by setting you straight on the Maine “spud” situation. Labor is far from plentiful, but with the aid of hundreds of women and children not one acre of Maine potatoes will go unharvested this fall. Our season is a few days earlier than usual and the weather so far has been very favorable for harvesting. In short, barring unseasonable snow or rain which might occur any year, everything will be “hunky-dory.”

ROGER W. SMITH Presque Isle, Me.

— To Farmer Smith, thanks for a sunny weather report.—ED.

The Price of Hogs

Sirs:

In TIME, Aug. 24, you state that corn brings over $2.50 per bu. when resold ^ the form of pork. I will pay $100 for you. -or-mula. Further, I herewith offer to eat all the corn you can stretch from 85^ to $2.50 per bu., without mustard or butter, at high noon, in the middle of Rockefeller Center, while standing on my head and singing praise to the fabulous and inspired genius who concocted those astonishing figures.

Why do bankers and industrialists bother dickering around with their infinitesimal 8% and 10% interest, etc. if all they have to do is buy corn for 85¢ and watch it multiply itself three times?

According to your figures I have made a little over seven and a half million dollars on hogs in the past quarter century. Living costs were kept at a minimum—say around a million and a half, just for the bare luxuries of farm life, and that should leave me approximately six million dollars. Oh, I sort of forget where all that money went.

How typical that weird statement is!— and yet, I doubt that even the wildest inflationary dreams of the most madcap Washington genius could possibly fertilize 85¢ so that it would grow to $2.50. . . .

JOSEPH IFFERT Delhi, Minn.

> Farmer Iffert should have paid closer attention. TIME’S statement explained: the figure $2.50 per bu. is 1) gross, i.e., did not include labor costs, risks, etc.; 2) contingent on scientific feeding. The main point: better farm management beats bigger farm blocs.—ED.

Them Again

Sirs:

Your article on gremlins in the issue of Sept. 14 is very interesting, especially to Air Forces officers; and your research man shows evidence of having been informed by people who are intimately acquainted with these little folk. I am enclosing a poem that appeared in the May issue of the Air Forces News Letter on gremlins.

TALE OF THE GREMLINS

This is the tale of the Gremlins

Told by the P.R.U.

The incredible tale of the Gremlins

But believe me, you slobs, it’s true.

When you’re seven miles up in the heavens

(That’s a hell of a lonely spot)

And it’s fifty degrees below zero

Which isn’t exactly hot. . . .

It’s then that you will see the Gremlins

Green and gamboge and gold

Male and female and neuter

Gremlins both young and old. . . .

White ones will wiggle your wingtips

Male ones will muddle your maps

Green ones will guzzle your glycol

Females will flutter your flaps.

Pink ones will perch on your perspex

And dance pirouettes on your prop

There’s a spherical middle-aged Gremlin Who’ll spin on your stick like a top. . . . —R.A.F. Coastal Commrnd

PERRY B. GRIFFITH

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A.A.F. New Orleans

Sirs:

In your article on gremlins you fail to mention “boojums,” though you have listed the names of other gremlin relatives and cousins. We who live in this section of Connecticut where the boojums are thickest don’t really care, but the boojums are offended.

About ten years ago, when we first moved into the old country farmhouse where we now live, the boojums had had the run of the place and were annoyed at being ousted. They used to steal or break anything new we put in the house, pour water in the new paint cans for painting the house, snatch the hub caps off the cars of anyone ^ho tried to visit us, and generally made lift miserable.

We finally chased them away to the other side of a stream about a mile from here, and thought we were rid of them. Supposedly they can’t cross water.

However, since the day I read my children your story about gremlins, the neighbors’ cows have broken down the stone walls to eat up all our apples, our own calf broke loose and chewed up dozens of precious trailing arbutus plants, and a strange horse, whose owner we’ve not yet found, trampled through the nursery flower beds and ate up half of our vegetable garden.

Animals don’t get loose without some malicious spirit to aid and abet them, and boojums are the most malevolent of all spirits as anyone who has hunted for snarks can tell you. We know that the boojums feel slighted by your article, and wish you would apologize to them.

MRS. H. LINCOLN FOSTER

Goshen, Conn.

Sirs:

I had thought I was too old for fairy stories, but I’m not. Thank you for “It’s Them.”

If you ever assemble an anthology from the many pieces of good writing in TIME, them should have a high place.

Among other fairies gremlins shouldn’t be confused with: duppies (West Indian nuisances who throw rocks on your roof at night and whose eyes burn like fire); afreets (Arabic sprites who cause dust whirlwinds in front of bad camels and sometimes are called “dust-devils” for it); jinn (far nicer Arabic folk who come out of bottles and alternately plague and help old people) and the numerous progeny of “Old” Al (the Mississippi River spirit who loves chewing tobacco supplied slyly at night by steamboat hands).

PAUL S. CARLEY, M.D.

Sparta, 111.

Sirs:

Your article on the gremlins … is as charming and as titillating a piece of pixilated journalism as I’ve ever read. . . .

MICHAEL KANTOR Brooklyn, N.Y.

Sirs:

In the Sept. 14 issue of TIME is a very interesting and realistic article [concerning gremlins].

As I read it, I am wondering if the writer has not drawn pretty heavily on his imagination, as well as the photographer, who prepared the original photograph.

Certainly no one expects us to take literally the story and description of these gremlins. I am, however, sufficiently interested to ask for a confirmation of my skepticism or a reaffirmation of the literal truthfulness of this story.

FLOYD E. BATES, M.D. Osceola, Iowa