Letters, Apr. 16, 1945

No Jonah Unity

Sirs: I am particularly interested in one quotation which you extract from the recent Communist attack on me in a recent Soviet publication and also over the Moscow radio —a bit of “Soviet caterwauling” (to use your phrase) the justification for which is “hard to guess” (TIME, March 26). The “caterwauling” tries to identify me as an “imperialist.” In support of this ridiculous theme, it charges me with wanting the kind of world unity “which Jonah enjoyed when he was swallowed by the whale.” Yes; I used that phrase in my Senate speech of last Jan. 10. How did I use it? I said: “We accept no conception that our contribution to unity must be silence, while others say and do what they please . . . and that unity for us shall only be the unity which Jonah enjoyed when he was swallowed by the whale.” In other words, this seems to be a point where Moscow and I agree; namely, that there shall be no “Jonah unity” in the postwar world. If we both mean what we say, we can get along famously together on this point. I should like to recall one other sentence from that speech: we shall not succeed in our desperately important postwar peace plans by “a snarling process of international recrimination in which every United Nation’s capital tries to outdo the other in bitter backtalk about the infirmities of each.” I earnestly suggest a moratorium by all concerned until we can sit down together in mutual good faith and try to discover “what’s what.” A. H. VANDENBERG United States Senate Washington

Wonderful Rescue

Sirs: My brother-in-law, Myron E. Brink, sent this letter written in lead pencil to be typed and sent to you. Mr. Brink was President of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce. . . . “After being starved, robbed, and kicked around for three years, we were rescued yesterday from the Los Banos Internment Camp. Yesterday we were to have eaten banana stalks. That was all and the Japs said there would be no more food. “About sunrise our planes came over, dropped paratroops and engaged our guards. The guerrillas also attacked, and during the fighting our tanks drove in through our prison walls. We were hurried into these tanks and started out. It was a wonderful sight to see this string of 70 tanks in perfect formation traveling steadily toward freedom through the water. “Imagine 150 American boys rescuing and transporting over 2,000 prisoners out of a territory surrounded by 6,000 Japs. We left behind us many graves filled with starved internees. . . . “Our Army men and officers certainly are angels. . . . Oh! how wonderful it is to be an American!” . . . MABEL F. RICE Whittier, Calif.

Potent Danger

Sirs: Artificial insemination (TIME, Feb. 26), though perhaps desirable from the standpoint of eugenics, has its dangers. Some popular demagogue might aspire to be the actual father of his country. Some crooner might flood the country with too much of the same thing. ERNEST RASTALL Rockford, Ill.

A Battle Is Personal

Sirs: Recently I read a description of the battle of Iwo Jima. There still remains that depressing journalistic tradition of comparative analysis: “the bloodiest battle of the war,” “toughest fight in Marine history,” etc. . . . A battle is each man’s personal hell. It is fought personally, felt intimately, and death is the individual’s own contribution to a not so satisfying ideal. Surely the aggregate of all that horror is no more than the sum of each man’s suffering, and the total can never be measured comparatively except by the individual who fights his own war in his own few cubic feet of earth, or water, or sky. . . . (PVT.) ROBERT LEE LAMBERT Camp Shelby, Miss.

Less Nonsense

Sirs: Apropos U.S.-Soviet relations, your readers might be interested in the following poem by A. P. Herbert, written in 1942, when the Russians were calling loudly for a second front. This would seem to show that the British can say what they think about Rus sia, without endangering international friend ship. Why can’t we?

Let’s have less nonsense from the friends of Joe.

We laud, we love him; but the nonsense—NO.

In 1940, when we bore the brunt,

We could have done, boys, with a Second Front.

A continent went down a cataract,

But Russia did not think it right to act.

Not ready? No. And who shall call her wrong?

Far better not to strike till you are strong.

Better, perhaps (though this was not our fate),

To make new treaties with the man you hate.

Alas! These shy maneuvers had to end

When Hitler leaped upon his largest friend.

(And if he’d not, I wonder, by the way,

If Russia would be in the war today?)

But who rushed out to aid the giant then—

A giant rich in corn, and oil, and men;

Long, long prepared, and having, so they say,

The most enlightened leaders of the day?

This tiny island, antiquated, tired,

Effete, capitalist* and uninspired!

This tiny island, wounded in the war

Through taking tyrants on two years before!

This tiny isle of muddles and mistakes—

Having a front on every wave that breaks.

We might have said, “Our shipping’s on the stretch,

You shall have all the tanks that you can fetch.”

But that is not the way we fight this war:

We give them tanks, and take them to the door.

And now we will not hear from anyone

That it’s for us to show we hate the Hun.

It does not profit much to sing this tune,

But those who “prod” cannot be quite immune;

And those who itch to conquer and to kill

Should waste less breath on tubs* on Tower Hill.

Honor the Kremlin, boys, but now and then

Admit some signs of grace at No. Ten.†

ARTHUR DINWIDDIE

Another View

Sirs: Unfortunately I didn’t see Random Harvest, so I do not know whether Greer Garson is bowlegged. Since the picture published in TIME (March 19) is a side pose of her legs, I don’t think it offers sufficient proof. Would appreciate TIME’S publishing another picture of Miss Garson. CÉCILE BOISCLAIR Manchester, N.H.

¶ With a murmured apology to Miss Garson and a hard look for skeptical Reader Boisclair, herewith a front view.—ED.

Mediterranean Women v. British

Sirs: … I beg to differ with Rev. Douglas Hamilton Priest (TIME, March 12) and his gratuitous insult to Mediterranean women who are supposed to “get ugly and old-looking so quickly.” Coming from an Englishman, whose women are the strangest conglomeration of horse-faced, buck-toothed females this side of a freak show—this is really rich! A beautiful English woman is as rare as a black swan, whereas most so-called Mediterranean women are pretty when not beautiful. Who started this “ugly and old-looking” bunk? I’ve seen more ugly women in England than in Italy, France and Spain together. . . . I suggest the Reverend stop giving advice about Mediterranean women; it’s obvious he doesn’t know the score on this subject. . . . LACHESIS B. M. MUTA Gulfport, Miss.

“I Should Be Doing It”

Sirs: Not meaning to criticize your excellent magazine, but do wish you would omit letters from servicemen in the vein of “a debt all the people at home owe us.” They make me blush. So far as I am concerned, the people at home are: my wife, who weighs 82 pounds and wears a 2½ AAA shoe; my mother, who lost her husband as a result of World War I; my Aunt Madge, who paid my expenses in college; and my grandfather, who was 97 last month. I admit there’s a job to be done over here, but frankly, I don’t believe they should be over here doing it; I think I should be over here doing it. … R. P. WILSON Lieutenantc/o PostmasterSan Francisco

Propagandist’s Delight

Sirs:

I am rather shocked at your remark (TIME, March 19) that the British Armies were “ill-trained and vitiated by appeasement when war came, not unlike the ‘Old Contemptibles’ which the Kaiser scorned in 1914.” The phrase “Old Contemptibles” is one which the British Army treasures as one of its greatest distinctions. The British Regular Army was the best fighting force of its size in the world at that time. . . . P. C. ARMSTRONG Montreal, P.Q.

Sirs: … A more serious error, and one which must delight the experts of psychological warfare, is the statement about the Old Contemptibles, “which the Kaiser scorned in 1914.” The “Army Order by the German Emperor” commanding his troops “to exterminate the treacherous English, and to walk over General French’s contemptible little army” was a clever forgery of British propagandists. . . . The Kaiser had a low sense of humor, but he never referred to General French’s forces as a “contemptible little army.” RALPH H. Luxz Chairman The Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace Stanford University, Calif.

¶ Right are Readers Armstrong and Lutz; wrong was TIME.—ED.

* Some Britons pronounce it capitalist.

* British soapboxes.

† Downing Street, official residence of the Prime Minister.