Letters, May 21, 1945

  • (3 of 4)

    By the shade of Neville Chamberlain's umbrella, our State Department is really slipping! After so speedily admitting Argentina to the San Francisco conference, they have neglected invitations to the other Axis partners—Hitler and Tojo.

    Not only is the Argentine membership unfair and an outrage to the boys who lie buried in Europe, and to the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it is turning the security conference into a weird farce.

    Did Argentina goose-step her way to San Francisco via Egypt, or at Anzio, or was it Stalingrad? . . .

    Unless situations of this kind are handled better, without this bewilderment to the American people and the world, and our peace aims more clearly expressed, the cocoon of isolationism which we shed not too long ago is going to seem very comforting.

    MARY MERLE

    Elmer, NJ.

    Red Voice

    Sirs:

    In reading your April 30 issue concerning Paramount's new picture, The Unseen, I am somewhat disturbed by your description of Herbert Marshall as a "neighbor with a voice like sloe gin." As producer of Red Horse sloe gin, I am at a loss to understand the description. . . .

    Our sloe gin is ruby-red, has a creamy, frothy head, is slightly sweet, and is produced from imported sloe berries (the sloe berry, a cross between a cherry and a prune, is grown abundantly in Ireland). . . .

    GEORGE BROIDE D. J. Bielzoff Products Co. Distillateurs & Liquerysts Chicago

    Exactly.—ED.

    Ernie Pyle's Heart Sirs: The big, warm, human heart of Ernie Pyle has become known to millions of Americans since the beginning of the war, but members of the staff of Duke Hospital, at Durham, N.C., have known about it for nine years.

    In 1936, Pyle, then a roving reporter, wrote to the Dean of Duke Medical School about a pathetically afflicted child he had chanced to see, suffering from a strange disease, and offered to pay the expenses of diagnosis and treatment. That was long before the famous war correspondent was "in the money," and it meant no little personal sacrifice on his part.

    As a result, the child, a twelve-year-old boy, was taken to Duke, treated, and studied. . . . The case is frequently referred to by medical professors. The disease in its final stage was an incurable type of calcification of the flesh and skin, and the child died in about 18 months.

    "Please understand," Ernie Pyle wrote, "that I realize that the child itself cannot be saved, but maybe others could in the future if doctors knew what was the matter with this one. . . ."

    In the light of this case and of his later famous dispatches from the fighting fronts throughout the world, it is clear that Ernie Pyle's quick response to human suffering was a noble, ingrained trait, that he made no effort to avoid his own sense of responsibility. He suffered with the suffering.

    JOHN HARDEN Raleigh, N.C.

    Acetate for Acetone

    Sirs:

    1. 1
    2. 2
    3. 3
    4. 4