Letters, Mar. 29, 1943

Horrible Holocausts Sirs:

. . . Our forces ended the Bismarck Sea action (TIME, March 15) by wiping out barges, lifeboats and rafts from the sunken enemy vessels.

Americans were proud and delighted when they received the news of the amazing success of MacArthur’s flyers in destroying the entire enemy flotilla. They cannot have the same feeling regarding the cold-blooded slaughter of the helpless. . . .

Another matter that is being freely mentioned, even in high official quarters, [is] the destruction of “the paper cities of Japan,” by aerial bombing. In plain words, this means that we propose to burn to death a countless number of women and children, the aged and the helpless. … But Americans want no horrible holocausts endlessly to poison the relationships between our countries. . . .

J. HOWARD CLIFFEIvyland, Pa.

> For advice on how to wage war on the Japanese, by an American who has often visited Japan, see p. 68—ED.

America’s Songs

Sirs:

I am getting tired of the attempts by Westbrook Pegler and others to try to “debunk” our national anthem (TIME, March 15).

The Star-Spangled Banner is not, and has never had any pretensions of being a martial song. … It expresses, rather, the deep and reverent feeling inspired in the hearts of a peaceful people when they are confronted with the symbol of the ideals which lie at the basis of their national life. . . .

The chief criticisms of the anthem come from people who, like Mr. Pegler, seem to look upon America with something of the same grade of sentiment with which a college sophomore looks on his alma mater.” . . .

America has songs for all kinds: let Mr. Pegler and his barbershop quartet amuse themselves with the truly American songs of George M. Cohan; let our soldiers march to the strains of Dixie and the Battle Hymn of the Republic; but let us reserve for our national anthem a composition which expresses the best we have in us—the Star-Spangled Banner.

STANLEY M. CLEVELAND Princeton University Princeton, N.J.

Great Organization

Sirs:

The following passage seems to me worth printing far & wide as one of the finest tributes to the U.S. Army’s World War II training system. It comes from a private letter written to me by a brilliant young Czech, who left Prague just before the fatal 1939 invasion, after graduating from the Prague University Law School with a year’s military service, then coming to a U.S. university law school, and now a corporal in one of our camps, after four months of indoctrination as a private:

“The U.S. Army is a great organization, as you know, and for anybody with a European military experience it is incredibly human. We get fine food, we are well housed, the personnel is very, very good. Reasoning, explanation and persuasion is the method used rather than compulsion.”

JOHN H. WIGMORE

Chicago

Harris’ Fifth

Sirs:

Your article on Roy Harris’ Fifth Symphony (TIME, March 8) reflects little credit on your magazine or on the person who wrote the article, obviously without hearing the symphony or reading the program notes. . . . Whether you have the right to be so flippant and even coarse in dealing with the work of one of the most sincere and high-minded artists of our century is more than just doubtful. . . .

You say that this symphony was prefaced by an “elaborate pronouncement.” May I quote what Mr. Harris actually had to say about his symphony’s relationship to “life, destiny and the U.S. soil”: “I hoped to express qualities of our people which our popular dance music, because of its very nature, cannot reveal. Our people are more than pleasure-loving. We also have qualities of heroic strength—determination—will to struggle—faith in our destiny. We are possessed of a fierce driving power—optimistic, young, rough and ready—and I am convinced that our mechanistic age has not destroyed an appreciation of more tender moods.” Any one that heard the symphony would have to admit that those words apply extremely well to the music, I am sure, and if the above quotation is an “elaborate pronouncement,” then I am a marimba. . . .

SIDNEY Cox Nashua, N.H.

>TIME’s music critic heard the symphony, read the program notes, sticksto his grimy guns—ED.

What Say the People

Sirs:

May a lawyer turned shipyard worker present these views on the “bastards” issue (TIME, March 1) ? . . .

We get up at 5:30 and walk two miles to work, eating whatever we can get on the way. We work in all kinds of weather on cold steel, with our hands, in winter, or in 130° or hotter temperature in summer. We eat cold lunches, and work from eight to ten hours per day, seven days per week, and get paid on a piecework basis (if we don’t produce, we don’t earn). We are subject to industrial accidents. Some of us are killed every day. In the event of serious injury or death, our dependents receive a small settlement under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, or we receive a small settlement, and are faced with our working days being over. If we are sick, our salary stops. We are paying the taxes that go to pay the salaries of the men in service.

We bastards and Uncle Sam are pretty good to those boys. We give them the best food that money can buy, and the best clothing (all wool), and the best medical care, and, we hope, the best equipment—the best planes and guns. … If they are permanently injured we keep them up the rest of their lives. If they are killed, their dependents are taken care of. They get furloughs and weekends off—we don’t. . . .

If those guys want anything to come back to “they’d better damned well” stop cussing us and try to see our side of the picture more clearly, and hold up their end of the bargain as well as we are trying to hold ours up.

J. C. SMATHERS Wilmington

Sirs:

. . . Just as the soldier gripes at army food and army discomforts, so the civilian gripes at his small hardships. . . .

It may even be that Captain Rickenbacker’s soldier, brought back from Guadalcanal to work in the aircraft factory, would after a short time start complaining if the shipyard worker made more money than he did.

VIVIAN BAKER Seattle