Letters, Feb. 25, 1946

What For?

Sirs:

In your issue of TIME, Dec. 31, you mentioned G.I. Joe as an unwilling hero “not knowing what he was fighting for.” What crass ignorance that exemplifies!

Perhaps it was the fact that G.I. Joe knew what he was fighting for which made for so much bitterness in the foxholes and in the tents. For three years we have been associated with nothing but G.I. Joes, and it seems to be common knowledge to even those of us who have been assigned as permanent latrine orderly in the officers’ area because of a “lack of capabilities in any other field” that we have been fighting, much against our will, for the damnable status quo. . . .

DELBERT KNUPPEL

BLAIR MCCLENACHAN

Iwo Jima

Sirs:

. . . You write [TIME, Feb. 4] that a lot of G.I.s were wondering why they ever had to fight the war, that 19% believed Germany was justified in starting the war. . . .

I lost more than half of my friends while fighting this war as a Naval pilot, and know such talk should not be tolerated without a thorough investigation. I would suggest that these young and spoiled G.I.s be shown a few horrors of war such as the concentration camp at Dachau—that they be shown the atrocity films that we have locked up for posterity, together with other scenes of a like nature which should stand witness to the ghastliness of what some of our G.I.s call a justified war.

DONALD R. PACKARD

Lee, Mass.

Dictator Carías

Sirs:

In TIME, Feb. 4 . . . an insult [is offered] to the President of the Republic of Honduras.

. . . Allow me to state . . . that the President of Honduras, General Tiburcio Carías Andino, whom the writer calls a “dictator,” was elected by popular vote and that his continuing in power is due solely to the decision of the National Assembly of Honduras, the members of which, in their turn, are elected by vote. Therefore, to remain in power, it has not been, and is not, necessary for General Carías, backed as he has always been by the great masses of the Honduran people, to resort to the methods of a dictator, such as the exercise of arbitrary force in any form or shape or the perpetration of any persecution whatsoever. . . .

The briefest visit to Honduras will convince even the most prejudiced mind that the slur “dictator” applied to President Carías is no more than the sour grapes of his political opponents. . . .

Every Honduran citizen out of loyalty to his country and pride in his national heritage is as one in rejecting this insult so strange to the language of inter-American fellowship.

JULIÁN R. CÁCERES Ambassador of Honduras

Washington

¶ TIME, too, is a firm believer in inter-American friendship—also in truth. Let loyal Honduran Cáceres recall: 1) that Dictator Carías sidestepped the constitutional ban against presidential reelection in traditional dictator style by having his term extended twice without popular election; 2) that Dictator Carías’ army and police in July 1944 mowed down 60 unarmed anti-Carías demonstrators in Tegucigalpa.—ED.

Re: War Dead

Sirs:

More & more frequently in the press occur letters regarding the final resting place of men & women in the U.S. forces who have perished overseas.

This is a matter of great delicacy and about which surviving members of families have varied, and naturally, deep feeling. What is said here is with full appreciation of how deep the memories go. . . .

The bodies of our men & women who have died or been killed are cared for as reverently and as carefully as may be. . . . From any angle it would be far better to let those who have died overseas rest there.

If a person is a sheer materialist, the bodies are properly cared for until they go back, inevitably, to the soil.

If one has faith, and believes in the spiritual resurrection from the dead, then too much emphasis upon the body which will soon disappear, is, in a sense, a denial of faith.

One must realize the conditions of battle also. Of some bodies, little is left. Also, it would be impossible not to mistake the identity of others. . . .

Often I have heard soldiers say that if they fell they wished to be in the countries they helped to liberate.

Perhaps these carefully tended acres of our dead will be a testimony as to the purpose of the United States, that men in later generations may see we have not been unmindful of the necessity to stop aggression, that the world cannot remain half slave and half free, and that many were valiant enough to pour out their blood for freedom. . . .

GEORGE STEWART

Rochester, N.Y.

Another Forgotten Man

Sirs:

There is another forgotten man—me.

When, in print and on the radio, the issues between General Motors, U.S. Steel and other corporations v. labor are reported, the impression is given that the large companies are fat, avaricious and Fascist. Labor delights in fostering that impression.

It’s a lie. Labor is talking about me. . . the small stockholder who owns American industry. . . . I’m here with a protest that I and my kind have been completely overlooked. And I protest also that until labor is willing to do an honest day’s work, and permit its exploited members to compete with each other and to permit the brains and ingenuity and industry of the individual to earn more than a union scale for turning out a better-than-average day’s work, the best intentions of Washington will lead us deeper into a national mess, and democracy will become only a word for radio comedians to kick around.

MONTE SOHN

New York City

Cheers for Global Education

Sirs:

The suggestion of Senator Fulbright [TIME, Dec. 31] that the Government use the possible $6 billion credit from the sale of surplus war goods overseas to finance an exchange of U.S. and foreign students is the most constructive idea for advancing global understanding that we have yet heard.

It has been apparent to us in both Europe and in the Philippines that American soldiers abroad have misunderstood on every possible occasion the people they have known so slightly. The education of students abroad, with its advantage of personal contacts, would have a twofold value: the broadening of the individual student’s viewpoint, and his ability. . . to erase a few of (his countrymen’s) misconceptions concerning foreigners. . . .

. . . There is no better way to further global thinking, so necessary for the future, than global education.

(CPL.) BUD R. FISHER

(PFC.) JOHN S. DICKINSON

Luzon

Sirs:

. . . I was fortunate enough to participate in the U.S. Army’s “experiment” in sending Army personnel to universities in France and England where they were absorbed into the civilian student body and had an excellent opportunity, outside the bounds of the artificial environment that is generally created by the Army, to “discover” Europe

In places, Army students were billeted with civilians and ate civilian rations. And there they learned more about the people in three months than soldiers who had spent a year or more in the same region under Army camp conditions.

. . . Many erroneous conceptions of both groups were corrected for the benefit of mutual understanding. . . .

ROYER B. HELD Lieutenant, A.U.S.

Bremen, Germany

Continuing Storm over Iran

Sirs:

I have just read with peculiar interest a letter from Dr. Arthur Upham Pope [TIME, Feb. 4] concerning Iran. . . . I have just returned from Iran after serving for two years there as Administrator General of the Finances, and as head of an American financial mission, Once before, from 1922 to 1927, I had the privilege of serving in a similar capacity in that unhappy country. It appears that Dr. Pope’s preoccupation with Iranian art has left him, to quote his words, “shockingly innocent of the background,” and in much the same state of bafflement which he attributes, I think wrongly, to our reporters in the Near East.

Dr. Pope says: “Iran and her problems are crucial for the peace of the rest of the world.” But no inkling of the fundamentally relevant facts is given in Dr. Pope’s letter. On the contrary, he speaks of the country as “gravely weakened” by the “heroic services” that it rendered the Allied cause. Such a statement is complete nonsense. In 1941 Iran’s Dictator-King Pahlavi had delivered the country to the Nazis. It was brought to the Allied side by a Russian and British military occupation. Iran made no active contribution to the war. She probably gained more than she lost by the bridge-to-victory role that the Allies forced upon her. . . . It is quite true that Iran is gravely weakened; but the weakness comes from her own governmental incompetency, from a general psychopathic state of mind, from moral degeneration, and from Soviet interferences and fifth columnism. . . .

A. C. MILLSPAUGH

Washington

Mormons on the March

Sirs:

. . . I do not know Fawn M. Brodie [TIME, Jan. 28], but I do know that since Mormonism began, writers of her kind, who could not or would not live by the high standards of morals and self-discipline required by Mormonism have written scurrilous and slanderous books. . . .

TIMBERLINE RIGGS

Overton, Nev.

Sirs:

We sense the handicap of anyone attempting to refute misrepresentations concerning Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saints, in Fawn Brodie’s book, which you have reviewed in your issue of Jan. 28. We who are descendants of this man, and who represent the only faction of Latter Day Saints which retains the original doctrines and beliefs, are convinced that he was not responsible for “Mormon” polygamy and was not a polygamist, all the claims of his enemies and the Utah Mormons to the contrary notwithstanding. . . .

. . . While it is true that I am interested in maintaining that the founder was an inspired prophet, yet I can and do say that if he was a polygamist, if he was responsible for the alleged document on polygamy. . . which we do not believe and which we emphatically deny, then he broke both the law of God and the laws of the land, and to that extent was a “fallen” prophet. . . .

ISRAEL A. SMITH

Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Independence, Mo.