Past & Present Indicative
Sir:
The joy and glad cries with which you welcome and encourage a third world war is amazing. Hurrah, your format is changed, your reporters and photographers will risk their lives to get Americans to fever pitch for war. According to you, we acted "quickly and well." One is speechless before your God-given insight . . .
(MRS.) FLORENCE WHITE Reno, Nev.
Sir:
Sincere apologies to TIME for my letter (published July 3, 1944) in which I charged your magazine with the dissemination of "potential propaganda" concerning the imminent threat of World War III . . .*
BAXTER S. SCRUGGS Los Angeles, Calif.
Sir:
I have just finished reading the War in Asia section of TIME. It is, in my opinion, a superb job . . .
ROBERT TRIGG Philadelphia, Pa.
"This Was a Man . . ."
Sir:
... As it is extremely doubtful that I shall be around at 1999 year's end, I should like to submit my recommendation now for the Man of the Century. Please hold it in trust for use by your future editors. Let it then be said of General Douglas MacArthur: "His life was gentle, and the elements so mix'd in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world" (with apologies to Mark Antony), "this was a man who knew the score."
BERNARD K. FRANK Portland, Ore.
Pin Money
Sir:
Many of your readers may have wondered what was the occupation of the Lady of Baptist Corner, Ashfield, Mass., as shown in the reproduction of the Edwin Elmer painting in TIME, July 17.
*Reader Scruggs's letter: "TIME continues to make statements which disturb me greatly. I speak in reference to your repeated comments about military strategy for World War III. . . . TIME should not entertain its readers with such potential propaganda" [July 3, 1944]-(Pfc.) Baxter S. Scruggs
She was twisting whip-lashes on one of many machines which were loaned or rented to housewives (in the 'gos) by a reputable concern which then bought, at what then seemed a fair price, all of the whip-lashes that a busy farm wife and mother could produce in her spare time. The lashes were made of pure silk in many bright colors, and were used exclusively for ornamenting the tips of buggy whips. As a child, I often watched my aunt operating such a machine in her farm kitchen within a few miles of Baptist Corner.
ROBERT FELLOWS WOOD Narberth, Pa.
The Protean Babbitt
Sir: Thank you for giving wider currency to the wise words of Peter Viereck on the protean Babbitt [TIME, July 10].
Someone ought to do for Gaylord [Babbitt] what Proust did for Madame Verdurin.* It would be a public service to publish a catalogue of the dreary cliches of so-called avant-gardism, and to point out that old George, with his uncomplicated enthusiasm for baseball and civil philanthropy, was no more hostile to genuine intellectual independence than Junior, with his exhibitionistic juggling of the phrases of psychoanalysis and wine tasting.
JULIUS KRAVETZ Tallahassee, Fla.
Sir:
Poet-Historian Viereck, true to the essence of anti-Babbittry, thinks the country is going to the dogs because of them. A junior anti-Babbitt, however, he mongers new-style stereotyped cliches to put across his point. Naive domestic Babbitts without any breeding will continue to prefer cleverness to wisdom . . .
V. P. MONAHAN New York City
Sir:
It is a tragic thing when TIME prints such a vile set of non sequiturs as Poet Viereck has spewed forth . . .
Poet Viereck must recognize as a historian that Gaylord [Babbitt] is a casualty in a sociological cultural change . . .
ROBERT J. CAREY Newton Center, Mass.
Human Milk & Polio Sir:
In your medical column it was reported that certain elements in human milk seemed to make the polio virus less active [TIME, May 29]. I have been wondering if human milk might not be a key to the entire polio mystery.
If you will note the history of the increase of polio, and compare it to a graph showing the years when breast-feeding of infants was discredited and bottle-feeding widespread, you will be sure to see a striking coincidence. Is it not possible that an immunity, to a greater or less degree, might be given the baby in human milk which safeguards it from polio? Polio used to be a juvenile disease--perhaps it now strikes the adults who were bottle babies . . .
This is just a speculation of a lay person, but there might be something to it?
ELENOR L. SCHOEN Leavenworth, Kans.
P:I Doctors have considered this long-shot possibility, are still working on it.--ED.
How to Discourage Pigeons
Sir:
. . . We note that rubber garter snakes did not keep pigeons away from the courthouse ledges in West Palm Beach [TIME, July.10].
A few months ago, a superintendent of one of our buildings here placed a liberal supply of sulphur on ledges frequented by pigeons--so far it has kept them away.
LESTER KAROW Savannah, Ga.
Sir:
. . . Leave a few stuffed owls in a conspicuous place.
Alberni, B.C. H. EMMERICH
Sir:
. . . Pigeons are shy of any moving object. If the rubber garter snakes had wriggled, the pigeons would not have come near them. An inflated paper sack tied where the breeze can move it will keep the pigeons away . . .
MILDRED H. EWERS St. Louis, Mo.
Sir:
We have for some time been manufacturing Rid-O-Pij.... We guarantee results . . .
PHILIP H. REISMAN
Chicago, Ill.
-A vulgar social climber.
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