Unity for the United Nations
Sirs:
In your Feb. 15 issue, it seems to me you are unduly exciting your readers by telling them that the United Nations are not yet united after 13 months of war.
Has the joint declaration by the United Nations, which was dated Jan. 1, 1942 at Washington, been rescinded by its signers, which included all nations now fighting the Axis? Or do their pledges mutually to employ their full resources, both military and economic, against members of the Tripartite Pact and not to make a separate peace mean nothing?
RICHARD C. FORBES
Albany, N.Y.
> It takes more than a declaration to unite nations. It took more than the Declaration of Independence to make the U.S. independent. TIME, in reporting that the United Nations are not yet united after 13 months of war, was not trying to excite its readers, but to inform them.--ED.
Messages to Marines
Sirs:
Please tell me how I can get in touch with the radio program described in TIME, Feb. 8, which sends messages to Marines from their families and friends.
MRS. JOHN SNELL
Yonkers, N.Y.
> Write to Tell it to the Marines, c/o Office of War Information, 224 West 57 Street, New York City.--ED.
Bath, Aleutian Style
(Excerpts from a letter received by J. C. Pry or, of Omaha.)
Sirs:
I find that I am the least sleepingest and most workingest guy in the whole army. (You would probably find about 6,000,000 other liars who said they were--but we know better.) Not only am I the most workingest guy, but I am the least bathingest guy. Nothing would please me more than to see all of the male population of the U.S. have themselves a Saturday bath, Aleutian style. It is really quite simple and most effective. It's so effective that it practically kills you. It's done like this.
The first thing you have to do is to wait until mess is over at night, so that you have a chance to steal two pails from the cook to carry water in. It really isn't water, it's just ice that you breathe on until it gets unstiff enough to pour. You can't light a fire, because if you do, you would probably find yourself on the singing end of a Jap bomb. Well, you take the two pails of ice water, throw a little dirt in them, to act as a counterirritant, strip, and stand with one foot in each pail. Then you give yourself a good soaping (soap that's bear fat mixed with bacon drippings), until you are either fully lathered, or frozen, whichever comes first. Then you rinse yourself gently, by brushing away the crust of ice that has by this time formed on the top of the water, dipping it out neatly with the cup from your mess kit and pouring it slowly over your gorgeous pink (from the cold) body, being careful to cover the entire surface, so that all of you is frozen evenly. The glory of it all is that you don't have to go to the trouble of drying yourself when you have finished. The reason is that your arms are now frozen solid and rigor mortis is setting in. Of course, that really needn't concern you, because there will be a lot of men from the club, who are always willing to carry you up to your nice damp, dirty tent, and beat you back to life with the blunt side of their bayonets. I always get a great deal of pleasure out of watching them beat a man back to life after a bath--just as soon as he moves it's everybody for himself, and there is one hell of a race back to the pails to see who gets the water for his next morning's coffee. . . .
Come over sometime and have a bath with me.
LIEUT. F. R. BOYLES
Army Air Corps Intelligence
Somewhere in the Aleutians
Arctic Warm-Water Port
Sirs:
In TIME of Feb. 15 you say: "Common sense indicated that Russia, for her future security, will demand European concessions--possibly Petsamo in Finland, warm-water ports in the Baltic. . . ." Now it is strange but true that Liinahamari, Finland's Arctic outlet in the Petsamo section, is a warm-water port, though some 700 miles north of the "warmwater ports" on the Baltic. Actually these latter are cold-water ports kept open in winter through the medium of icebreakers. Liinahamari, on the other hand, is open the year round because of the proximity of the Gulf Stream. Indeed Finland's winter temperature is lowest in mid-Lapland, gradually rising toward the north. Situated in the midst of large nickel deposits, and terminus of the only road in the world to the Arctic Ocean, the warm-water port of Liinahamari has peculiar strategic significance.
CANFIELD COOK
Chicago
P.S. It was even warm enough up there to go in swimming, but not in the winter.
Manpower Solution
Sirs:
On reading American magazines and on listening to American radio commentators, one always comes across the sinister warning that a successful continuation and termination of this war is jeopardized by the crisis in the manpower problem.
In South and Central America live a considerable number of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries who would be glad to work for Uncle Sam. All those living at present south of the Rio Grande, who had to flee their native countries, will be forever grateful to the Latin American nations for the kind and generous hospitality they are receiving. The majority of these people, however, having families and relatives in the U.S., will try to join their relations as soon as the war is over. Why not let them now prove their eagerness to help the U.S.?
The U.S. is short of men. It has to resort to the limited capacity of cripples and of the blind. Yet before your very doorsteps you have strong, healthy men, willing to do whatever is asked of them, who are now engaged in occupations that are of little value to the United Nations.
F. H.*
Sosua Settlement
Puerto Plata
Dominican Republic
Dental Cripples
Sirs:
The article [on "dental cripples"] in TIME [Feb. 22] was a swell job. It "digested" that paper of mine in great shape.
It condensed the working day just a little too much, however, in a proofreading error that would make nonsense of my thesis.
Sixteen, and not six, should be the figure in the sentence reading -- "His solution is to set up some 40 clinics, each one fixing up 200 patients every six-hour day." Two daily shifts of eight hours each are contemplated.
CHARLES L. HYSER, D.D.S.
New York City
K. P. or Fight
Sirs:
Would you do a favor for the Lost Generation? Would you print a paragraph on the men over 38 in the Army?
There are lots of us "old boys" who still can fight and want to, but the Army won't let us. If we apply for discharge we are quitting in the middle of the fight. We are "damned if we do and damned if we don't."
I am 39. I can hustle my full field pack 35 miles in eight hours, the toughest trial our infantry soldiers have to stand in training. I have a college degree and plenty of experience in bossing jobs, yet I am and will continue to be a private on noncombat duty. There are plenty of others in the same boat (six in this company).
What we want is either a chance to go up to the front or a discharge so we can do something toward winning the war. . . .
The way things are now I am going to be washing dishes and picking up cigaret butts for the duration. . . .
--*
Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
Heavy Take at "The Gate"
Sirs:
Whaddyamean, "loser"? Bless your young reviewer's heart, the Lanny Budd series of novels is doing fine. They have won the praise of George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Lion Feuchtwanger, Emil Ludwig and Thomas Mann, to mention only a few foreigners who have been moved to write letters. Since money talks, in the TIME office as elsewhere, I will mention that the first three volumes have done very well for their author, and that Wide Is the Gate is listed as number five best-seller in the last week's New York Times. . . .
World's End, Between Two Worlds and Dragon's Teeth have all been best-sellers in England, and the publisher, Werner Laurie, wrote me that he was using nearly all his quota of paper for them; he added that he had sold 5,000 copies of Dragon's Teeth in Glasgow, and that, knowing the citizens, he considered phenomenal. World's End has been out for a year in Sweden, and the publisher, Axel Holmstrom, has just airmailed me a bunch of clippings, all expressing delight with the book. My American publisher, Ben Huebsch, writes me: "Those Swedish reviews are excellent, coming from a people who are not demonstrative and who take their literature seriously. . . ."
Also there are translations in Brazil and the Argentine, and a German language edition in Berne -- the publisher, Scherzverlag, cables that he is printing a second edition and cabling the royalties for the first. The editor of International Literature, Moscow, cables that the books are having a vogue there -- and I know that when this war is over there will be editions in some 40 or 50 countries where my books have been regularly translated over a period of 35 years. Ask your young reviewer if he can name any American writer who achieved international fame during his lifetime and who has since been forgotten.
Loser? No, no; far too much a gainer. The Government takes one-fourth of my royalties and it should take three-fourths. Pass that on to the congressmen. Up with the income tax and down with the dictators!
UPTON SINCLAIR
Pasadena, Calif.
*Name withheld by request.
*Name withheld by request.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.